Chopper had Paisley with him during the movie and at the end, I decided that it was time again for a feeding frenzy of mealworms.  Mmm.  Paisley sort of fell off Chopper onto the down throw I’d been using and stayed curled in a ball.  I fed her some mealworms off a spoon (what, spoiled?) and then busted out the camera.

Tell me this isn’t stupendously cute.

More in her photo album on Flickr.

Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring (more properly Manon des Sources) are the two films made from Marcel Pagnol’s novel L’eau des collines, which I have read in both French and English.  It’s a magnificent book and the movies (surprisingly for book adaptations) are equally good.  The story is a tragedy — a greedy old man and his stupid nephew are desperate to buy a nearby farm, and when a hunchback inherits it, they close up the spring that is essential to bring water to the farm.  The two films are the story of the aftermath of that decision and the revenge of the hunchback’s daughter, Manon.

I’m actually giddy at the idea of getting to see them again.

Unfortunately, when it comes to TV and movies, having an emotional attachment to things can be a serious detriment.

Several months ago, Heather and I went to see ‘Life Aquatic’ (Great movie, if you haven’t already seen it. Worth the price of admission just to hear Ziggy Stardust in Portuguese. Two thumbs up). The trailers started rolling, and one opened with a 20-or-so-second slow zoom on the Earth, from outer space. There is no sound but Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World,’ one of the all-time great songs.

After 20 seconds of the slow zoom, the Earth explodes, and so do about eight thoughts in rapid succession:

It’s Hitchhiker’s.
They got ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ made.
Finally.
Douglas Adams is dead.
It’s a pity nobody could finish a good screenplay in 20 years while he was still alive.
20 years.
Being a tech freak, he would have wanted to CGI the whole thing anyway.
Please, let it not suck.

That last thought is the one that I kept coming back to throughout the night. ‘Please, let it not suck.’ Not ‘Let it be great,’ or even ‘I hope it’s passable enough that I can tell people what a big fan I am of the books.’

Just for it not to be terrible.

What’s scary is that I’ve recently been saying that a lot about things that I’m attached to: Hitchhikers, Sin City, the new Star Wars – too many hopes and anxieties there to even list – and, when I discovered it, the new Doctor Who.

North Carolina public television carried Doctor Who in the late 1970 and early ’80s, and it was one of my biggest influences as a young science fiction fan. Sure, Star Wars was there, but I was really too young to appreciate the first one, and while Empire was incredibly cool, its strength as a film didn’t sink in until much later. Also, in the pre-VCR world, going to the theater was the only way to see the good sci-fi or the day. While some people may have seen Star Wars and Empire 50 times each, it wasn’t me.

So, before I read Hitchhikers (and Tolkien, and decades before Rowling), and long before I really appreciated the first two and half Star Wars (‘Return of the Jedi’ is another discussions for another day), I got hooked on Tom Baker and Peter Davison.

Then, last Saturday, I was poking around online looking at a list of recent TV shows, I saw a listing for ‘Doctor Who (2005) 27×01 Rose.’ (The 27×01 refers to the first episode of the 27th season) And again, one of my first thoughts was, ‘Please, let it not suck.’

It took a night to download, but when I clicked it and that opening theme kicked in, I was hooked again.

I’m not going to review the show, because that would just get mushy. But, if you’re a sci-fi fan, I highly recommend finding it online. Possibly start at btefnet.net, but I wouldn’t know anything about Bittorrent, or downloading…

That’s one down that doesn’t suck. Let’s hope we’re as lucky throughout the summer.