Le Dîner des Cons (The Dinner Game) is delightful.

The Lion King is better than I expected, though I don’t quite get how the rightful king prevents drought. Only one of the songs is abominable.

The Matrix (again). At 111 minutes there is a scene that could not have been made much later than 1999: a helicopter crashes into an office tower, causing a fireball.

Whenever I watch a recent French movie, I miss just enough wordplay to wish it had French subtitles.

Kurosawa’s Scandal has his two favorite actors, Mifune and Shimura. When the latter appeared, I thought “ah, it’s Shimura — or is it?” His speech and mannerisms were curiously unlike those of his other characters.

I’m watching the pilot episode of Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles. In this iteration the machines have a sense of humor!

Seems to me the most useful thing Sarah can do with her shotgun is aim for the eyes. Does she ever learn that?

Summer Glau is prettier here than in Firefly. Gained weight?

I used to have a ringtone that, pardon the pun, rang a bell: I was sure it was from some modern string quartet, but couldn’t find it in my collection.

Years go by. Today I get in the car, turn on the radio and hear that musical phrase. I wait for the piece to end, but the title is not announced. Well, maybe the station webs its playlist. I get home, refer to the website and find, for the time in question, some song by Daniel Lanois (surrounded by other songs rather than string quartets). Argh.

An hour later I turn on the radio again and hear “Every Day Is a Winding Road”, which was on the list. So I scroll back an hour . . . .

It is in fact the second movement of Ravel’s string quartet in F.

I watched 27 minutes of The Plainsman (1936) and found it unpromising. Then I looked up Cecil DeMille and was a little surprised that I had never seen any of his work, other than his cameo in Sunset Blvd.

The Big Clock (1948) starts slow but pays off quite well.

I enjoyed the first half of Jekyll (2007) more than the second half.

Saturday I made chili, varying Grandmother’s recipe by replacing part of the chili powder with curry powder. It was not a disaster.