I guess we're getting unreasonable in out old age - not wanting to spend money on crummy films :-) It's funny - I love Johnny Depp and have most of his movies, but it's his acting I love - I never thought he was cute! George Clooney is a perfect example of the man I'd love to run away with :-) Back in the day, the big love of my 14 year old life was one of those guys in the band Duran Duran. I can't even remember what his name was now - not the singer, the guy with the hair and the hat... My brother got me the big box set of Monty Python's Flying Circus for my birthday, so I think we'll be satisfying our movie urges with that for awhile. BP

Vee, thanks for the link to the Gallup poll. Whew! It will take me a while to assimilate it. As for "the sad state of affairs": I understand now. I tied it to the wrong paragraph. :-) Woodnymph, yeah, I realize that I'm in the minority about the film of To Kill a Mockingbird. I figure my love of the whole book makes me too critical of the adaptation, which picks out and gives emphasis to a particular part. Which reminds me: June, if you watch the Olivier/Oberon Wuthering Heights, don't expect to see the whole story -- you will only get part of it. Otherwise, it's a quite fascinating interpretation: telling, I think, of what adaptors of the 1930s thought was important and what subsequent audiences have taken in. Woodnymph, I saw The English Patient film first, and then read the book. While the "essence" of the book might have been captured in the film, the two are so different! I like the film better. Another essence capturer, I think, is The French Lieutenant's Woman. Oh gosh, yes, the Polanski-directed Tess is superb, I think, and very faithful. Actually I like nearly all of the film versions of Hardy's books, particularly Tess and Far from the Madding Crowd -- Alan Bates will always be my Gabriel Oak. I also liked most of the Merchant-Ivory productions. I certainly like their adaptations of Forster, though I find Forster's writing insufferably Edwardian. I do like some Edwardian writing but Forster's was even more uptight than most. Knowing his bio and the times, I can understand why he wrote the way he did but the priggishness still exasperates me. Speaking of another Forster -- Margaret Forster, that is -- and Alan Bates: I adore the 1966 adaptation of Forster's Georgy Girl. I loved that book so much as a teenager that I determined I was to live in London. When this subject comes up, I always have to mention two of my favorite short story adaptations: John Huston's "The Dead" (from Joyce's Dubliners) and "Babette's Feast" (from Dinesen's Anecdotes of Destiny). June, you're right: there are so many good films that owe their genesis to a book.

Like you I sleep much better if the home is cool. In the winter I set back to 65 and most night the heat never comes on until warm up the next morning. For A/C I run 68 at night and 73 in the day and have done it for years. Continuous running is not a problem and is actually better for the system as long as there is a heat load in the home and the outside temperature is above 60. I tend to not run my unit if it falls below 65 any way though. I don't fully understand how it works, but I know the refrigerant starts doing funky stuff when it gets cool outside and can damage the compressor. There are units designed to run in cool/cold weather, but they are of the commercial variety, very expensive and more than likely use more power that is supplied to residential dwellings.

A cool bit of trivial for the MASH theme, Suicide is Painless, that I learned from Wiki a few years ago. The film's director, Robert Altman, tried to write a lyric to go with the Johnny Mandel music but got stuck. He asked his teenage son to give it a crack and he came up with something in less than 10 minutes. The second interesting tidbit about this is that his son made more money from his share of the writing royalties from use and sales than Dad made from directing the movie.