I watched Equilibrium Saturday. It was much better than I expected, for some reason I had it in my head that it would be really really horrible and I would have to suffer through it for Christian Bale (and Sean Bean).

But I was pleasantly surprised. The beginning is kind of pretenious and off putting, but the Bale is wonderful, so is what's her name the chick. Plus it had That Guy from As The Worlds Turn - whose character had one of those stupid "it wasn't rape, okay maybe but look! he's good and they are in love!" story lines.

The fight scenes were really well done. I wish I'd had a chance to watch the commentaries, but I checked it out from the library and then waited until the day it was due to watch.

I should get some (eps) tomorrow.

Cool, Erika! We are watching the last episode tonight. One warning--You may not get into it until episode two or three so give it time to suck you in.

That's pretty much HBO SOP although maybe I loved the first "Sopranos"

Also, she stars in my all-time favorite romantic comedy, I Know Where I'm Going.

Oh, that's such a good movie.

I like both of them, a lot. My Fair Lady may be a "why" musical, but it's a good "why" musical

I have to say that despite all the things I dislike about MFL, I have an embarrassing love of "On the Street Where You Live."

Oh, I don't dispute that the music doesn't suck. Not for a moment.

For some reason, "On the Street Where You Live" always segues into "People Will Know We're in Love" in my brain.

Dennis DeYoung has a really good doo-wop version of "On the Street Where You Live" on his 10 on Broadway album.

"On The Street Where You Live" is a marvelous song, as are many others from MFL; I just wish they were in some other musical so I could enjoy the context as well as the songs.

I mean, for heaven's sake, Shaw wrote an afterword to the play that was, IIRC, some forty pages or so, explaining in excruciating detail exactly why Eliza would never return to Professor Higgins, why she would marry her pretty but callow intellectual inferior, and why she'd be glad of it in the end. Shaw was entirely on the side of Higgins's mother: He treated Eliza with a sort of indulgent contempt, he didn't see her as anything like an equal, and even if he knew deep down that she really was, he would never bend enough to acknowledge it openly.

Pretty inferior boy? Dim, but at least he knew it, and he knew Eliza wasn't. He may have been frivolous and foolish and he may have idealized her and doted on her to a mildly sickening degree, but he was idealizing and doting on her brains, her wit and her drive as well as her prettiness. He knew he was neither a match nor a catch for her in anything but social standing and wealth, and it didn't stop him from loving her in the least. Shaw's position was that no matter his inferiority to Higgins on many accounts, he could and would provide Eliza with the freedom to be herself, and be admired and loved all the more for it.

The musical certainly has its virtues, but I'm pretty sure that if Shaw hadn't been already dead, the ending would have killed him. Actually, I'm pretty sure that Lerner and Loewe would never have dared write it while he was still alive.

my all-time favorite romantic comedy, I Know Where I'm Going

Squee! Not my very favorite, but oh so wonderful.

But didn't Shaw romanticize the ending for the Hiller/Howard movie version that he adapted? IIRC, it was definitely more in line with MFL than the original play.

But didn't Shaw romanticize the ending for the Hiller/Howard movie version that he adapted? IIRC, it was definitely more in line with MFL than the original play.

I don't remember -- it's been so long since I saw the film, and it was a tape from a crappy print with lots of sound distortion, so my memory of it is very fuzzy. But the essay at the end of an earlier edition of the play is seared on my memory.

If he went and pussied out on the ending to please the movie people, I'm'a dig him up and kick his dead ass.