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July 30 movie: The Facts of Life. No Mrs. Garrett, no Tootie, no Blair. It's actually another Bob Hope movie. I recorded it because at the end of My Favorite Brunette, Robert Osborne introduced The Facts of Life as the best movie either Bob Hope or Lucille Ball ever made. I'm not familiar enough with either actor's body of work to know if that's true, but it is far and away the best movie I've ever seen by either of them. It's billed as a comedy and has humorous scenes, but it's got more serious drama than I expected. They play a couple who are married to other people but fall in love with each other. I've seen Ball in roles with some drama before, but Hope surprised me. I didn't know he had it in him. I guess I have to stop saying I don't like his acting. I guess I'd never seen him really act before. Supporting actors include Ruth Hussey as Hope's bored wide, and Louise Beavers as guess what, the maid.

July 29 movie: My Favorite Brunette. Another silly movie. I recorded it because I thought it was Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, the sequel to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Actually it was a Bob Hope vehicle, the followup to My Favorite Blonde. Bob Hope isn't my favorite actor -- at least not the Road movies, way too much winking at the camera for my taste -- but I watched it anyway because it was a parody of the Raymond Chandler detective movies and Peter Lorre was in it. It wasn't high art, but it was ninety minutes of satisfying entertainment.

July 22 movie: Having Wonderful Time. This was a silly and fairly boring movie starring Ginger Rogers as a bookish secretary who goes on vacation at a campground. At first she resents the "mandatory fun" tone of the camp, and oh lordie, Ginger, do I know how you feel. Eventually she falls for Douglas Fairbanks Jr., a waiter/gigolo working at the camp to pay for college. Supporting actors include Eve Arden, miscast as a prudish debutante, a very young Lucille Ball as a party girl, and an even younger Red Skelton as the extremely annoying camp social director. Ostensibly the purveyor of mandatory fun, Skelton's real job is to do impersonations of campers which involve falling down a lot.

Know what? I miss the movie list. Actually I've been keeping the list all along. What I miss is writing them up. I've been thinking about starting again for weeks, but the thought of trying to go back and write up all those movies -- many of which I don't even remember anymore -- has stopped me cold. So I'm going to try starting fresh and going forward. No more beating myself up about trying to catch up.

In the interest of writing in the now, let's start with the movie I'm watching right now. A series, actually: The Adventures of Sharpe. BBC America is showing one a week. It's a series of movies from the mid 90s starring Sean Bean as an officer in Wellington's army. I started watching due to its similarities to the Aubrey/Maturin series: first and most obviously, the Napoleonic War. Also, Sharpe's sidekick (whose name I forget) is Irish, like Stephen Maturin, so the issue of Irish/English hostility shows up in both series.

The Sharpe series, while highly entertaining, lacks the depth and character development of the Aubrey/Maturin series, which may just be a factor of a TV movie versus a book. There just isn't time enough to tell a ripping yarn and explore the characters. Also, one of the things I really like about the Aubrey/Maturin series is the characters' complexity and imperfections. Stephen Maturin is a cranky bastard with a recurring drug problem. Jack Aubrey is a brilliant ship's captain, but not the sharpest tack in the box on land. Their flaws are what make them interesting.

On the other hand, Richard Sharpe is basically perfect. He never makes a mistake, everything he does is right, everyone (except his inept commanding officers) love him. Especially the ladies. Possibly the most entertaining thing about the series is Sharpe the ladies man. Every movie features women flinging themselves at Sharpe. Who gently rejects their advances, being much more chaste than I would imagine of the typical actual soldier of two hundred years ago.

July 10: Sharpe's Battle. Sharpe befriends a dandyish gentleman officer whose wife offers herself to Sharpe, which is somehow a sign of her love for her husband, for reasons I did not understand. Sharpe says no, and there are lots of battles, and also a sexy Spanish woman who wears trousers and is secretly working for the French.

July 15: Sharpe's Sword. This time the unfulfilled love interest is a traumatized nun who can't speak after seeing her priest and two other nuns get killed. She travels with Sharpe's troop, and she can't sleep unless she's in Sharpe's bed, but he won't touch her, and for a little while there I thought I was watching that "Ribaldry Theater" sketch they used to do on Saturday Night Live. What the heck, it's Sean Bean, and he looks awesome in that uniform with all the gold braid. Sharpe takes a bullet in the gut, and there's a nasty villain who seems to be a recurring character. Also the Irish sidekick is tricked into marrying his mistress, a Spanish camp follower.

July 24: Sharpe's Regiment. I think they're showing the series out of order; this one seems earlier. Sharpe and his Irish buddy lose their regiment, and they decide the best way to get it back is to volunteer under fake names, and they end up in a crazy sadistic camp where the soldiers are bought and sold like slaves, and I didn't understand much understand that part. But who cares; Sharpe has sex! With a high class courtesan and a saucy tavern wench. (Size positive note: the saucy wench has ample charms, which Sharpe amply enjoys.) The villain from Sharpe's Sword shows up, apparently for the first time, and Sharpe gets engaged to his niece. The Prince of Wales makes an appearance as well.

July 29: Sharpe's Siege. The movie starts with Sharpe marrying the girl from Sharpe's Regiment, who promptly gets malaria. I have a bad feeling about her future. It would explain why he's all broody and celibate in the other two movies. The inept commanding officer is even more inept and obnoxious than usual. And of course there's the unfulfilled love interest: a brave loyal Frenchwoman who bizarrely sides with Sharpe against her own brother, a Bonaparte agent. I guess she just can't resist Sharpe's uber-manliness. [eta: It just ended and I was wrong, the wife lives.]