Mark movie-going

I'm savoring each of my visits with my pal Mark, since he'll be leaving for college in Ohio come August... This afternoon, as a birthday present, he took me to see "Millions", this sweet little independant flick that 20th Century Fox picked up:

( Review behind the cut... )

Reaffirming my love for opera

::Hugs whoever set the programming line-up for tonight on one of the local PBS stations, since it (among other things) helped me get my mind off a very disappointing news headline...::

I've just been watching a couple of really *great* documentaries on the world of opera. The first, was about the English National Opera's "Operatunity" competition for non-professional singers, to allow them a chance to sing a role in a fully staged production, for one night, at the ENO. The two ladies who made it to the final level of the "competition" were phenomenal: one was a grocery check-out cashier, the other was a blind mom to three kids. Lovely gals, lovely voices! I was crying happy tears for them at one point. The second, which I missed the beginning of when I came up to check my messages, was a very sweet, folksy program about the Amato Opera, a tiny mom-and-pop opera company in New York City, run by a former opera singer and his wife (who recently passed away...).

It brought back a lot of memories for me, spending Saturday afternoons in my teen years listening to the radio broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera, scurrying to get my homework done so I'd have the whole day free...