Movies, movies, movies...

If you haven't seen Withnail and I, be prepared for a treat. It's a wonderfully funny and endlessly quotable tale of dissolute actors at liberty. I got it at Facets Multimedia, which is where film-lovers go when they die. Then, yesterday, I hunkered down at the Music Box (a repertory theater here in Chicago) for a double-feature. I wasn't planning on it, but after the first movie was over, I walked in to the other screening room to listen to the man playing the organ, and decided to stay. (Yes, I paid.) The first movie was a CBC documentary called The Take, about Argentina's growing movement of workers occupying their old abandoned factories, and putting them back to work. It was really inspiring. The second movie--which was probably even better--was Nobody Knows, a story about four Japanese children who are left alone by their mother. Really wrenching, but beautifully filmed and utterly original. As to books, I'm reading Stephen Kanfer's great biography of Groucho Marx. My book-collecting compulsion has been letting up a bit recently (mostly because we are slowly being crowded out of this little apartment by books), but I'm sure that's only temporary.