More Unusually Smart David Mitchell

For your procrastinating pleasure:
Peep Show is now on Hulu. More David Mitchell greatness. Plus that other guy who hangs around him. :)

Brilliant Frivolity

Sometimes silly, delightful little cream puffs of fiction are so silly and delightful as to be brilliant. For some reason, this genre has been my focus of the last week, starting with reading Something New (aka Something Fresh), the first Blandings Castle book by P.G. Wodehouse, the absolute master of all things silly and delightful.

Then I found Rings on her Fingers, which is quite like The Lady Eve -- Henry Fonda getting duped by a beautiful con artist who ends up falling in love with him. This got me thinking of Preston Sturges (as Lady Eve is one of his), so I rented Easy Living, an early Preston Sturges movie that somehow I had missed until now even though Jean Arthur stars. Perhaps in another mood I would not have thought it so wonderful, but I have decided I am quite fond of it. Screwball comedy is film's answer to P.G. Wodehouse and humorists of his ilk.

And now I am back to P.G. Wodehouse. Damn you Google Books and your full pdf texts of books out of copyright. I shall now go start reading A Damsel in Distress, forsaking much needed sleep.

His Girl Friday

Best movie not under an original copyright. Plus, it's Howard Hawks, Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, and one of best fast-talking dames in the history of film. And now it's available for free online. Thank you, Hulu.

Wallace and Gromit!!

I love Wallace and Gromit for several reasons:

1. The patience involved in claymation always amazes me.
2. Cheese!!
3. Rube Goldberg devices in all their delightful frivolity

And so I'm super happy with Hulu right now for adding Cracking Contraptions to their lineup. Now if only they could get A Close Shave. . . .