See, these are the kind of people I don't go to movies with anymore.

I know now not to risk it anymore with those two. The girlfriend was a new factor in the movie-going experience. Looking back, I shoulda known better.

I went to see Cold Mountain with a now-ex-BF, and in the first ten minutes he turned to me and said, "So what do you think of the movie so far?" as if he fully expected to carry out an analytical conversation as the movie was in progress.

I have a friend who is a movie talker and the last time I went to a movie with her (HP5) I was like, "Okay, love you but not sitting near you because you talk and it bugs." She was totally cool with it because, well, she has a normal sense of humor about herself. (and she's really not that bad of a movie talker)

I considered getting up and simply moving to another seat, but then of course I'd face the consequences long after the movie was over.

uh, I'm thinking if one of the consequences is these people not wanting to go to movies with you that maybe would be a good thing!

JZ! Oh, how we could gasp and whimper together (dirty!) over Matt Damon's flexing muscles and manpain!

My sister! I staggered through the first book and gave up just three chapters into the second, and it felt SO DAMN GOOD to stop.

I'd have stopped reading the book, but I've begun enjoying updating my mother on how awful it is. It's also poetic that the binding came undone and the book is falling apart as I read it. I've never read a book where I enjoyed stopping. I've always read to the end and then wished I hadn't.

Movie! At several points in the movie they flashed pictures of Bourne's picture from his file, and seeing that baby-face and smile just really put the spotlight on how beatup and rundown he was becoming, how everything was bearing down on him. And then at the end when he turns to the asset and says "Look what they make you give", he was just ready to let it end there. Oh, movie!Bourne!

uh, I'm thinking if one of the consequences is these people not wanting to go to movies with you that maybe would be a good thing!

more like harassment for the rest of the month along the lines of "you big baby, were we bothering you? Hey, [everyone], Julie went into the back of the theatre and sulked! Remember? It was sooo funny."

I totally loved reading at least the first Bourne book. What sort of espionage deprived childhoods did y'all have?

The Bourne books are hilariously baroque. There's a 100-page digression about financial transfers across national borders! There are detailed cockamamie explanations of brain trauma! And actually, what I always liked best about it, there are all sorts of little details of paranoia, Plans B, C, D, and E, and keeping them all available at all times.

In the books, Bourne starts out with a lot more skills. And it's the skills -- at lying, at being charming, at assessing his chances and perpetrating armed robbery -- that are his first clues that he is Not A Normal Guy. He's also got about a billion times more affect than in the book, so he comes across as John Q. Public slowly having his own underbelly revealed to him, rather than as Scary Robot slowly being humanized.

I went through a major Robert Ludlum (and James Bond) phase in college. And the first Bourne novel was one I couldn't put down. Ludlum kept the action moving fast enough that I didn't realize, in particular, what a ridiculous character Marie turned out to be.

And Nutty put her finger on a lot of Ludlum's appeal. Most of his lead characters are fairly normal people roped into very dangerous spy situations. And they end up doing things that, at the beginning, they never dreamed they'd do.

Satisfactory literary cotton candy.

I haven't seen the movies, so I can't comment. May I cast a vote for Our Man in Havana instead?

May I cast a vote for Our Man in Havana instead?

Having read the book, I don't know if I could watch the movie. Severe read-from-the-hall for me.

Alec Guinness (as the lead), Ernie Kovacs (as the police officer), and Burl Ives (as the doctor) are magnificently cast. And I found the movie very droll in the British way. But I can agree that it isn't everyone's cup of tea. And the luncheon scene is decidedly watch-from-the-hall stuff.

Severe read-from-the-hall for me.

I'm heading in that direction on Two for the Seesaw. Two people with too many issues to belong in a relationship get together and drive each other crazy. And not in the comedy way.