As Ever, Weird Al Rules.

I know I should have brought this up sooner, but let me tell you about last week's episode of The Simpsons.

That's right--Weird Al had a cameo, again. Unfortunately, it was a cameo in the truest sense of the word, being all too brief. Homer invented grunge music, you see (it was a flashback episode), and Weird Al parodied his song. Amusingly, the fake parody was totally lame and nonsensical and involved food in some fashion--it was a parody of Al's parody. Well played, The Simpsons, well played.

I also feel I should note how good a sport Weird Al is for singing the bad song.

Possibly the best thing about Weird Al's cameo came after his cartoon form had left the screen. Homer, all depressed (which is why he invented grunge music, of course), not even cheered up by the parody, muses on his lowly state, acknowledging, "He who is tired of Weird Al is tired of life." How true.

The good line leads me to the most surprising thing about the episode--it was actually good. I don't know how long it's been since I've seen a first-run Simpsons that I've enjoyed, but safe to say? A long time. I mean, there was single, cohesive plot; the jokes were funny instead of lazy and random; and it was character-driven instead of cram-every-one-note-bit-character-in-there . . . driven. I was so pleasantly surprised that I even watched the episode that came on after the Weird Al one, and discovered that it was pretty good, too. It had the latter-day-Simpsons banes of the totally unrelated B-plot and of "Homer makes up a song! Because he's always done that all the time! Remember?!?" However, the B-plot was introduced in minute 2 instead of minute 15, unlike many newer episodes I've seen, and the "Homer sings!" was . . . not as annoying as it could have been.

In short, the good news is A: The Simpsons has apparently turned a corner, back toward being halfway decent television and B: Weird Al continues to ROCK MY FACE OFF.

Atone-meh-nt

The gentleman caller and I took in what the commercials tell me is THE GREATEST MOVIE OF THIS OR ANY OTHER YEAR! last night.

I didn't care for it.

It's pretty to look at. It's obviously very well made. But, clearly, my tastes are less sophisticated than those of movie critics, and I was more concerned with the fact that it was very long, quite depressing, and did not make me care about the characters.

It starts out promisingly, if slowly, as an inter-war English-country-house drama--but pervy. In the beginning, it seemed very complex and finely layered, one of those movies where you slowly find out about the characters and their backstories, as if it's a puzzle.

But then it's not.

It doesn't answer most of the questions it asks in the first scenes; it in fact forgets about having posed them. It doesn't even bring up new questions, it just turns into a (still lushly-shot) boy-goes-to-war, boy-wants-to-come-home-to-his-girl story. And don't be fooled by the fact that it's a "war movie." It's a war movie like Gone with the Wind is a war movie. The closest thing we see to a battle is the boy traipsing through France, and even that is all about feelings and stuff.

And then the ending is pretty stupid. SPOILERS: the only thing you're really wondering about during the middle of the movie is Whether He Makes It Home Alive. Is the movie going to dish out the happy ending or the sad ending? Instead of doing either, the movie yanks us out of the 1930s, turns the main character (who you don't even see in the previews) into Vanessa Redgrave, who has written this story and who tells us that it turned out (in Vanessa's real life) not only did he die, she died too. But also that in her book, she made it into a happy ending as her way of--you guessed it!--atonement. So you get the worst of all worlds: the downer-ness of a sad ending, and the cop-out-itude of a happy one. HERE END THE SPOILERS.

So anyway, I didn't like it, and I feel perfectly justified in not liking it. My disliking it doesn't even have anything to do with the chronically overused Kiera Knightley, as she is balanced out by the adorable Mr. Tumnus (OK, James McAvoy. Whatever. He's Mr. Tumnus from here on out, as far as I'm concerned).