Sore and tired today, but it’s a good kind of tired.
The downstairs bathroom is stripped back to the plaster, and the only fixtures still in place are the tub and the toilet. The toilet comes out tonight. The tub leaves sometime later this week, depending on how tough it is to disconnect the plumbing. Probably Thursday, but I may want to wait until my dad gets here on Friday. The current debate is if we want to take the walls down all the way back to the studs and put up new drywall, or if we want to keep the existing plaster.
We also moved all but the last two pieces of Rob’s girlfriend’s furnishings out of my basement. She’s coming back from Romania this week, and now she’s got everything she needs to set up housekeeping, apart from a file cabinet and a metal wardrobe.
After the moving, we headed out for dinner and beers. The place we picked had an hour and a half wait for table space, so we got take-away and wandered over to rent some movies while they made it.
We decided to do a double feature of “The One” and “The Others.” It would have made sense to watch the two movies in that order, but the first one we watched was “The Others” then we watched the other one, “The One.” One wasn’t bad, but the other was pretty lousy.
Try saying that out loud. The temptation to use ‘finger quotes’ is almost overwhelming…
Anyway, “The One” was disappointing. Jet Li seemed wooden, and the only thing that made the movie worth watching were the special effects. The thing is, if you’ve seen “The Matrix” then you’ve seen these effects. And “The Matrix” did them a thousand times better. Still, it was a fun no-brainer film. If all you want is to see Jet Li swing a motorcycle around like a flyswatter then it’s worth a rental, but I wouldn’t buy it.
“The Others” was the polar opposite to that. The movie is flat-out creepy. The acting is well above Hollywood Standard Horror Movie par (“Ok, look that way and scream! And cut! Print it!”) and the special effects are subtle and add to the film without constantly poking you in the eye. The DVD we rented was a two-disc set with a brief montage of how they assembled some of the scenes. Most of what they did was adding fog, but that’s all they needed to do… There’s a great review by a funny reviewer over at The Brunching Shuttlecocks.