Faithful readers of Mu-sings will recall that last week I wanted to get Mer a nice Italian movie to see on her birthday, and that I failed pretty thoroughly.

I took today off from work to have a “get-caught-up-on-life” day. I did errands and chores for almost 11 hours today. Since I was near Borders, I stopped by and picked up Loreena McKennitt’s new album. While I was there, I glanced in the foreign language section. I saw one of the films that was rated highly on the internet – Bread and Tulips. I picked it up.

Mer got home from CVCA around 6:00, and we watched the film. It was pretty good – excellent sound and film quality, the subtitles were easy to read, and I liked the characters. It was a (mostly) sweet film (you have to ignore that some of the characters being sweet are already married). The movie suffered from the lack of butchering of animals on film, but it tried to make up for it with good humor, and by being set in Venice. Venice really is a magical place, and the film shows you a slice of the back alleys and side paths (not many canal shots). It made it feel more Italian and less touristy.

After watching this sweet, fairly romantic film for almost two hours, we got to the end of it. As I expected, Mer turned to me and said those words I knew were coming: “I have to grade.” Oh yeah, baby!