Are you in the house alone?

This week, your good buddy Gleemonex has been by her lonesome in the windswept house at the edge of the continent while Mr. Gleemonex occupies his own suite at the Venetian in Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada [pause while you, and I, consider the raging unfairness of THAT], all expenses paid by his employer because he’s there for “work,” aka a bigass convention.

As a consequence of having read too much Stephen King and In Cold Blood and John Motherfucking Douglas and STILL being unable to stop myself from that terrible habit, I’ve never been a good sleeper when home alone, so I’ve rented a few flix to take my mind off the moment at the end of the evening when I have to barricade all the doors and windows (pyramids of bottles & cans, dining room chairs, pile of magazines spread out for like fifteen feet in the living room, the better to trip a home invader with — it’s really, seriously pathetic) and go to bed, lights a-blazin' and ears alert for sounds of approaching boogeymen, be they natural, supernatural, or meth-addicted. Anyhoo.

Brokeback Mountain: Meh. It’s about an hour too long, and some parts (a scene featuring shirtless frolicking of the sort that makes me suspect the dialogue was written as: “tee hee!” comes to mind) were frankly hilarious (I assume unintentionally). Whatevs.

Saved!: LOVE. THIS. MOVIE. This was a re-watch, and I liked it even better the second time. Would be a strange and fun pairing with, say, Jesus Camp (a horror film unlike any Mr. King ever devised, I must say).

The Devil Wears Prada: Blecccch. Watched it for Meryl Streep, who did rock a bitch. Movie was a hyooge improvement upon the “novel,” which blew large steamy goat chunks, but — well, you can see how that’s not much of an improvement. Grenier, you sure phoned this’n in, didn’t ya?

Speak: Caught part of this once on TV, always wanted to see how it ended. Pretty good stuff, if about some downer subject matter.

Mona Lisa Smile: Jesus H. Christ in a panty girdle, why did I do this? Two words: Set design. Nice clothes and whatnot. But holy shit, what a piece of smeg. Dunno what was worse, the historical inaccuracies or the performances. Or maybe the story itself. Ugh.