18 November 1998: Objects at Rest

Wednesday, 18 November 1998:

Objects at Rest

The work seems to be piling up at the office faster than I can get through it. Today, it seemed to be piling up faster than I could think about it. And of course none of it is what I really want to be working on (read: development); it's all retrofits and emergency bug fixes and PQA and that. Sigh. Hopefully this will change in a few weeks after we pass a small milestone we have to clear as a company in our current development cycle.

It's also been quite warm lately, up in the 50s. Very pleasant.

Tonight I went to see Now, Voyager (1942). I'd never seen a Bette Davis flick before (at least, not one from her heyday, that I remember). She's certainly an interesting looking actress, not at all the classic beauty one expects from 30s and 40s films. And although she seemingly spends most of the film with a concerned look on her face, she does do a good job of switching between that and more confident expressions.

The plot is certainly quite interesting, inasmuch as it involves Davis' character, Charlotte Vale, growing up and out from under the hell of her domineering mother, and her romance with a man, Jerry Durrance (played by Paul Henreid, about whom I know basically nothing, although I see that he played Victor Laszlo in Casablanca), who is married - unhappily - with two daughters. This seems like pretty daring stuff for 1942 - portraying some sort of a romance without falling into adultery.

The story skips around a lot, and almost seems abstract at times, showing us (for example) relatively little of Charlotte and Jerry's cruise to South America, relying rather on a handful of key scenes. (I understand the film is based on a book, so I presume this is largely condensation of lengthier prose sequences.) Although Charlotte's improvement is perhaps a little hard to swallow in its speed and decisiveness, the movie takes off once she returns to the States in her new frame of mind, and she deals with her mother on new terms and starts figuring out what she wants in life.

Overall, a pretty good film, and quite wittily scripted in places.

Afterward I watched the penultimate episode of Babylon 5, "Objects at Rest". The series is coming to a relatively slow conclusion, lavishing time on not only the departure of the original cast, but the assembling of their replacements on the station. I almost wish the series ended with a bang - the destruction of the station as foretold in "Signs and Portents" - and I suppose it still might, next week, but not in quite the same way.

I think this episode fell a little on the side of contrivance, with Emperor Mollari's appearance on Minbar (foreshadowing aside) seeming like a way to work Peter Jurasik into one more episode in a major role, and Lennier's actions on the trip back to Minbar seeming like one more twist in an increasingly-tiresome plot thread. But overall I think these last few episodes have been a nice conclusion to the series, a real difference from the haphazard plotting of most of the fifth season.

Next week's the big finale, folks! If I feel up to it, I'll reminisce a little about sticking with the show since its very first episode.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)