favorite movie #27: midnight in paris

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #27 - Midnight in Paris (2011) - As a writer and artist it's hard not to feel that Midnight in Paris was made for me. Owen Wilson is frustrated in work and in love, and the beauty of Paris is luring him to follow his true dream - to ditch his Hollywood screenwriting career and move to Paris to finish his novel, a la his idols F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. One evening, strolling and soaking in the city's beauty, a vintage Peugeot rolls up and whisks him away to the Paris of his dreams - the 1920s. He meets not only Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston) and Hemingway (Corey Stoll), but Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), and a beautiful artist's muse named Adriana (Marion Cotillard). Gil has many adventures in the past, and who wouldn't want to meet their heroes? There are plenty of wonderful art in-jokes, including Gil suggesting to Luis Bunuel the plot of his classic film The Exterminating Angel. Midnight in Paris is a wonderful tribute to the city, art, love, and realizing that one can honor the past while living in the present.

nancy drew and the case of the summer library

The kid has fallen head over heels in love with reading this summer — yay! No big surprise, as books always would trump any other sort of purchase that I tend to make, and our house is full of them, but a lot of it she has done on her own. She loves the Diary of A Wimpy Kid series and has been flying through those, as well as a series of books featuring Judy Moody. We have been paying a lot of visits to our fabulous local library — he kid for the latest in her book series, and me for another book about Marilyn Monroe, my summer research project.

$5 for some classics — what a bargain!

To both of our delights, the library is holding a summer-long book sale, hard backs are $1 each and paperbacks are 25 cents. I managed to restrain myself with the grown-up books, but on the children's library floor the "for sale" bin was chock-full of books she wanted and could buy with her own allowance. She got the first Wimpy Kid in paperback and a bunch of books featuring animals, mostly dogs and cats. How surprised and excited was I to find a bunch of Nancy Drew books there too. I grabbed a bunch of them, ostensibly for her, but were they, really?

The first of very many Nancy Drews that I read in my youth

What immediately caught my eye was the slightly faded cover of The Spider Sapphire Mystery — #45. I remember my dad bought this book for me for my birthday when I was in third grade. Sapphire is my birthstone, and it was my introduction to Nancy, Bess, George, and Ned and their adventures. I got a few more Nancy Drews over the years, but most of the books I read in the series were from the library.

The illustrations were always fun, and Nancy managed to get herself into trouble on a pretty regular basis. Who's that guy in the suit and fedora running away through the bushes? Hmmm ...

When we got home with our treasures  the kid plunged into one of the Judy Moody books, but I was happy to see her later reading the first chapter of The Whispering Statue — #14. Nancy Drew, the next generation ...