Rainy day movie weekend

January 27th, 2008 · No Comments

It was an inside/outside weekend, with nomination screenings mixed in with some L.A. sightseeing and restaurant-going. We found the one moment of sunshine in each day of the weekend to do our outside activities: a hike in Caballero Canyon on Saturday morning, which was a nice little hour-long stroll through some rolling hills with a creek alongside, once again in the middle of everything yet somehow pretty isolated. (Note the Snowy-as-example-dog)

Snowy and the Pick-Up Mitt

It rained the rest of the day, but we enjoyed a delicious dinner at Mozza, finally. It’s just a few blocks from our house, but we’ve been unsuccessful in getting a reservation there for a decent hour until a few weeks ago, when I managed to get one for Saturday night. We split two pizzas, and thoroughly enjoyed them both.

This morning, we got up early to do another Walking L.A. walk, this one near our old stomping grounds on The Sunset Strip, fairly empty at 8:30 a.m., but pleasant to walk through. We enjoyed the various views of the Sunset Tower Hotel, strolled through William S. Hart Park, and had a bagel at the other Abbot’s Habit.

Sunset Tower

As I try to catch up on all of the nominated films, I watched the two World War Two dramas in the foreign film category this year, The Counterfeiters and Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn. Both were impressive stories of lesser-known incidents from the war, and each had its strong points. The Counterfeiters was fascinating and heart-wrenching on a personal level, while Katyn was simply overwhelming. I’m just amazed that Wajda, who directed the landmark Kanal fifty years ago, is still directing, and has produced a film like this. We also caught Michael Clayton this afternoon – why did it take us this long to get around this film? – which was really enjoyable, so well made, and brilliantly written. Having now seen them all, I’m pretty impressed by the entire slate of Best Picture nominees this year. Adding in the four Live Action shorts I saw last week, I’m up to 24 out of 58 titles. Getting there…

Tags: Film · Los Angeles ·