Two movies

Last night I saw Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight at Market Square, the western about eight mostly dangerous people stuck together in a snowstorm. (I was going to see the documentary about Ingrid Bergman, but it turned out to be at 18:15, so I didn't have time to get there.) The only woman was played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, who was born on the same day as me! (February 5, 1962.) It was pretty scary and funny.  As usual with Tarantino, there were lots of references to other movies.  J.J.L.'s character had the surname Domergue, which must be a reference to Faith Domergue, Howard Hughes girlfriend and actress in film noir Where Danger Lives and scifi curio This Island Earth.  Like Django Unchained, it had a reference to the silent classic Greed. (I'd say what it was, but that would be a spoiler.)

Have I mentioned the Biddle Family before?  When I was little, my siblings and I put on Biddle Family plays, the main rule being that everyone died in the end. (We also did fairy-tale spoofs where the good guys became bad guys and vice versa.) So in my family, a "Biddle Family ending" means an ending where a lot of characters die.   Hamlet and King Lear are Shakespearean examples of Biddle Family endings.  Well, fans of Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs won't be surprised when The Hateful Eight takes a Biddle Family turn!

Today I saw Ron Howard's In the Heart of the Sea at the Kingsway in Royal York, about the ill-fated voyage of the whaling ship the Essex, which inspired Moby-Dick.  It was a conventional but grimly enjoyable sea story.

I thought the movie was going to be at 15:00, but when I got there it turned out to be at 17:00.  Oh well, better early than late.  I had time to kill so I walked all the way to the Kipling station.  Etobicoke isn't Toronto's fanciest neighbourhood, but strange vicinities are always worth a visit when they aren't crime-ridden and dangerous.  I passed by the Arthur Murray dance studio where I spent a fortune thirteen years ago, but I didn't look in the window because I was afraid I'd see someone I knew and risk reopening a closed book!