For those of you thundering masses wondering where Auntie M has been, I’ve been to NYC for a writers convention and quite frankly, to enjoy myself.   The loan of a friend’s apartment coupled with a cheap ticket made this possible, and the days included a meeting with The Agent Who Knows All…but that’s another story.  Whilst there, I saw two movies on the big screen (versus none, since the closest cinema to me is over an hour away and we rarely get there–yes, I know, I live in a ridiculously rural area, usually spoken of with three ‘very’s, as in “very, very, very rural”–and how we got here from NY is yet another story.

There was something to be said for seeing “Atonement” in all its period beauty stretched across the wall in startling color, the fashions, the flat-chested  but well-dressed Keira Knightley, and of course, that darkly lit but lovely sex scene in the library.  What kind of bibliophile would I be not to like a movie that has  a sex scene in a library?  Fairly faithful to the book for a change, worth seeing, I’d give it an 8 1/2 out of 10.

Then “The Savages,” with an actor I admire, Philip Seymour Hoffman, who I knew was destined for great things when I first saw him in “Dead Poets Society.”  He plays the brother of Laura Linney, also great in this sometimes amusing but mostly realistic heartfelt story of sibling coming to terms with their aging father, beautifully played by Philip Bosco.  His scene alone on the plane taking him to a nursing home should get him some kind of award for chutzpah.

I  was also gifted a ticket to “Curtains,” an old-tyme musical revolving around murder on a Broadway show set.  Plenty of singing and dancing, and the divine David Hyde-Pierce playing the detective.  So much energy in live theatre makes me want to run to my laptop and start revising a novel or writing a new one…or writing a blog!