The Friday Four, Part 28

~1~

A few months ago, a couple of my friends started a "movie club" and invited me to join.  The four of us each pick a movie, we watch the movies over the course of the month, and then we meet via a Google hangout at a prearranged time to discuss the films.  This month the films were:

A documentary called Man on Wire about Philippe Pettit, the French high-wire walker who crossed the span between the World Trade Center towers in 1974.  I'm not sure I breathed during the last half of the film.  Insane, I tell you.  Absolutely insane.  But I couldn't look away.

In The Way, Martin Sheen stars as a man whose estranged son dies while hiking the Camino de Santiago in France.  He takes up his son's walking stick and starts on the 800km trail, meeting odd characters along the way, each with his or her own reasons for making the journey, who help him come to a place of acceptance. The movie was a family affair with Sheen's son, Emilio Estevez, directing it and acting in it as, you got it, Martin Sheen's character's son.  Sheen's daughter Renee has a small part as well.  The film kind of reminded me of the book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed, though I found Martin Sheen's character a bit less annoying and naive than I found Cheryl.

I'd seen the Hitchcock classic North by Northwest, starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint several times before, but it had been years.  I love, love, love me some Cary Grant!  (My husband's "Cary Grant" cleft chin was one of the first reasons he caught my eye.)  The cropduster scene, and the scene when they climb on Mount Rushmore, get my heart racing every time!

Young Elle Fanning is exquisite in Phoebe in Wonderland as a troubled girl trying to figure out how to navigate a world in which she doesn't fit neatly and the fantasy world she has created for herself.  The real world and Phoebe's fantasy world collide when the school's new drama teacher puts on the play of Alice in Wonderland and Phoebe decides to audition.  Felicity Huffman and Bill Pullman are perfectly cast as her parents who are fighting their own struggles to keep their family intact.

Man on Wire, The Way, and Phoebe in Wonderland are all available on Netflix, and I got North by Northwest at my local library.  Seriously, if you haven't seen these films, I highly recommend any and all of them.

~2~

I'm still running the Couch to 5K program.  This is week 8, so I'm up to running 28 whole minutes straight, which at my slooooooow pace is about 2.5 miles.  I'm on track to run the 5K Labor Day Family Fun Run that the North Spokane Stake has sponsored for more than 30 years, and a friend just informed me about the first annual Chocoholic Frolic this November (that will definitely keep me running after I'm done with C25K!).  Any other relatively short races in the Spokane area I should look up?

~3~

I love Oreos.  The ones with the mint-flavored creme are a definite favorite, but I'll take a Double-Stuf Oreo (or several) any day.  With a big glass of milk.

Then I saw this article.  And I feel cheated.

Why, Nabisco?  Why?!?!?!

(Read my sister's take on Nabisco's inane response here.)

~4~

We went to our second to last Spokane Indians baseball game of the summer tonight.  The Indians lost miserably, but we had a good time with friends and family, as always.  I was mightily disappointed to discover that the frozen Reese's Peanut Butter Cups had jumped in price from $2.50 to $4.00.  To make matters worse, they hadn't changed the price on the brand-new-this-year sign, so the poor volunteers at the food stand had to be the bad guys and tell everyone about it.  I declined to purchase them when they informed me of the new price.  Not cool, Indians administration team.  Not cool at all.