French Fry Friday

At Pigskins. We later delivered a basket of these to Rebecca Nicholson-Weir.

Spring Twins

The Builders

March Madness

Fortunately, I am not afflicted by an unhealthy enthusiasm for college basketball (though I did enjoy seeing Kenton Paulino's buzzer beater against West Virginia last night, which got the Longhorns into the elite eight), so I do not suffer from the seasonal malady that affects others (some near and dear) during this month when the 64-team NCAA championship tournament is played. Some time in the days preceding the March 5th Academy Awards show, however, I imagined filling out another kind of championship bracket of Academy Award-winning films. The films would be seeded from 1 to 64 based on the year of their release, so each year, when a new winner is announced, the match-ups would be different. And since my judgments about the value of many of these films is sure to change over time, the result of some of the re-matches would not necessarily be a foregone conclusion.

Rocky (1977) was the first Academy Award-winning film I remember seeing in a movie theater, but between the beginning of this year and yesterday, I’d seen 51 of the last 64 Academy Award-winners, and since then I’ve seen eight more on TV or on DVD: In the Heat of the Night (1968), A Man for All Seasons (1967), Tom Jones (1964), Gigi (1959), Bridge on the River Kwai (1958), All About Eve (1951), and The Lost Weekend (1946). Right now, I have five more to see to fill out my bracket: Marty (1956), The Greatest Show on Earth (1953), An American in Paris (1952), Gentleman's Agreement (1948), and The Best Years of Our Lives (1947). I'm curious to learn if any Academy Award-winning films of years past are the "to see" list of any of the readers of this blog. (Here's a link to a list of all the winners.)

Today, I watched Around the World in 80 Days (1956) for the first time all the way through. I’d actually seen the first five minutes of it on video on Saturday, April 5th, 1986 at the end of the famous Around The World Date, but like many of my travel companions, I promptly fell asleep. Now that I’ve seen it all the way through, I can say that it’s not likely to win many games in a film tournament. I am, however, very glad that I’ve seen it because of my surprising discovery of a bullfighting scene shot in Spain, which was included, I believe, in order to show off Cantinflas’s abilities as a bullfighter (he did not use a stunt double for these scenes). As it turns out, the bullfight was filmed in Chinchón, Spain, which happens to be the same small village in which María José and I were married on May 27, 1994. The bullfights in Chinchón—including the one in this film—actually take place in the town’s plaza central, which on special holidays can be transformed into a bullring by closing the five roads that lead into it. One of the buildings that look out on the plaza is the Ayuntamiento (City Hall), so you could say that Mari and I were married in a bullring.