Well, I spent most of the past week sleep-deprived, which means I spent the weekend trying to get back onto some kind of remotely human schedule. That, and desperately trying to avoid doing the Angel recap. Because I was too tired to rant about how dumb the show is. Sad, really.

The upshot is that I watched some movies, but often I watching them in the hopes I would fall asleep. Trying to pick things that I would be reasonably entertained by, but that I could follow if I closed my eyes and gradually drifted off. So: I watched/heard the director's commentary of The Nightmare Before Christmas. It was fun, but not so fun that I'll feel compelled to listen to it again for quite a long time. There was some interesting stuff about the techniques -- especially how they had to do special effects on a tiny budget. Like, the shots with Zero, the dog? Those weren't superimposed later with a computer -- they were double-exposing the film so that he'd have a see-through effect. Which means that if they screwed up, they had to redo both Zero, and whatever background he was interacting with. I would go insane with that kind of pressure. There are lots of odd technical details like that, which are neat to hear about once, but I'd probably just rent the DVD to get that stuff. (The Tim Burton shorts, I'd pay for, though, so that's fine, too.)

Let's see, early Saturday morning I half-watched Wells' The Magnificent Ambersons, since I'd been complaining about the new version. And I fell asleep about halfway through, but that's got nothing to do with the movie. I almost re-watched it that night (or Sunday morning), but I thought I'd probably fall asleep again. Plus, then I discovered that on the same tape I still had a few old MST3K episodes. With Joel. That was nice, especially since it helped inspire a few bits of the Angel recap. (Not in any obvious way, it just revitalized my will to mock.) Oh, and I tried to watch Legend of the Rangers on Saturday, but it bored me silly. I taped it, so maybe I'll watch it later and see if my opinion is changed by the second half.

Hey, did I mention finishing The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven? I don't think I did. I really liked it a lot. And I want to see the movie (Smoke Signals) even more, now. But for a real reason: the stories in the book are divided among three or four different characters across a wide span of time. And because I read the book mixed in with twelve other things, I sometimes lost track of who knew who and how they turned up in each other's stories. I figure the movie will help sort some of that out for me -- yes, I could just reread it without all the interruptions. I know. And I will at some point, but I also want to see the movie because even with me being a bad reader, the book was excellent. Funny and sad, and even with my interruptions I could tell all the characters apart because they were so distinct -- I just couldn't always remember how they knew each other, and how particular stories fell into the overall timeline.

It doesn't help that, in my continuing random flips through Don't Know Much About History, I've been reading about the Trail of Tears. So lately I've been thinking about the strange emotional complications that "Americans" feel about "Native Americans." I think the strangest part is that it's so rarely talked about. The fact that Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day certainly adds a degree of irony, don't you think? I don't know, maybe I'll do a general write-up with the the crowd-pleasing theme of "Guilt." Because I'm a fan of it, and I think it's under-appreciated.

I had a media-intensive weekend. Saturday morning I woke up horribly early -- before 7 -- which was only a few hours after going to sleep. Argh. Wandered out to the living room, figuring I could find some movie and probably end up falling asleep again for a couple of hours. I came across That Hamilton Woman, which I'd wanted to see but never had. Vivien Leigh and Lawrence Olivier. Prettiness. I mean them, not the scenery, since there isn't any.

It's a slightly odd movie, because it's trying to be relatively accurate, sweeping, historical epic, love story, only the romance is fairly understated, and the cast is actually fairly small and there's not much in the way of conflict until the second hour. And all but one of the thrilling battles happen off-screen because naval battles are expensive. There are lots of crowd-scenes that you don't see, too: riots and parades and so on. Most of this is because it was made in 1941, so between the war and the state of the art at the time, you can only expect so much. My favorite part was when Lord Hamilton explains to his sheltered wife what this nasty war with the French is about, anyway. He tells her that the British Empire is this wonderful, beautiful creation, and that sometimes there are nasty people who just want to destroy things. Because the British Empire was created without any battles and nasty destruction, you see. It's only when other countries, like say the French, try to build empires that there's a problem. Well, it made me laugh, anyway. There are a couple of odd "England must save the world" bits like that, but again, it was 1941. A little nationalism is understandable.

The movie's just over 2 hours long, which got vexing since I was dozing off near the end. Not that it's dull, but I hadn't had much sleep. I really wanted to stay awake and see the end, since the movie's all told in flashback and I wanted to know how Emma Hamilton ended up a drunk in Paris. But after Lord Nelson died, I couldn't keep my eyes open any more. Heck, for all I know, the Napoleon won. That'd be a surprise ending.

And Saturday night, Johanna came over with two more Christmas presents for me. Hooray! I knew what the first one was: Buckaroo Bonzai. If you don't know by now, I can't try and tell you, but joy and happiness abounded. The DVD has an plethora of extras. We watched it with commentary from W.D. Richter (and Reno!), which is very funny. I'd like to hear out-takes from the commentary, because it seems as if there were a few times when someone must have broke character. I guess that could turn up on the ultra-special bonus edition which will turn up when DVD's are replaced by holographic crystals. Uh, you see, the commentary is done with the understanding that the movie was a docu-drama of actual events, so they discuss what the real Buckaroo thought of the movie, and the information Richter was able to get from the Bonzai Institute, so on. Also: the real reason for the watermelon is finally revealed! And it has nothing to do with airlifting food, in fact. Johanna and I were a little depressed when we heard about what happened to Penny Pretty though. Bummer.

Man, did I mention there were extras? We didn't watch them all last night, so this afternoon I looked at some more. Character biographies, a "Radio Bonzai" interview, tons of Jetcar specs (the jets are capable of barbecuing dinner for an ice-cream social in 60 seconds!), deleted scenes, Hong Kong Cavalier album covers and track listings ... yowza. My current favorite is the pages of mathematic formulas explaining the oscillation overthruster. I'm sure that within a month, someone will have magnified them (see, the writing's small)) and transcribed them and will have a website explaining that these are actually formulas describing how DVDs work, or something. Which is fine. Basically, everyone involved with the DVD is insane, and I love them all for it. Later this week I'll have to watch the full movie with Pinky Carrothers' subtitled comments. I scanned through and looked at a couple, one of which mentioned Einstein's work on the Philadelphia Experiment. Heh. I will warn you that a lot of the extras are text, so you may want to pull a chair a little closer to the TV.

But wait, that's not all! Johanna had a bonus surprise present. I spent part of the week playing 20 questions with her about it (she'd told me about getting Buckaroo Bonzai, figuring I might buy it myself if I wasn't warned not to). So play along: it's a DVD of something I'd seen before, with no TV show connections, made within a few years of 1990. Oh, and it's somewhat geeky (surprise) -- I'd actually asked if it was something you could buy at a comic store, and Johanna asked if comic stores sold DVD's. Which I took to mean that, if they did, they'd probably sell this. I also asked if it was by a director I liked, and first she said yes, but then changed her mind and said she didn't sure. That last one was a big giveaway. And on Friday she told me it was a musical, which confirmed the guess I had come up with by then:

The special edition of The Nightmare Before Christmas! With Vincent and Frankenweenie, and more extras, and woo! We watched the Burton films -- I hadn't seen Frankenweenie before, so that was very exciting. Shelly Duvall doesn't get enough props for being weird. Remember when she had that fairy tale show, I think on HBO? That was fun. We also checked out most of the other extras. I liked the Scooby-Doo ending in the "alternate identity of Oogie-Boogie" bit just for the line: "Skellington, you meddling stick-figure!" I still have to hear the director's commentary. I imagine it'll be tiring to hear about: "And then we moved his index finger, and took a picture, and then we moved his thumb, and took a picture..." Well, okay, they pretty well cover that idea in the making-of feature in the extras. So the commentary will probably be more interesting.

Can you believe I'm still not done? Johanna had received the Buffy season 1 DVD set, so we watched some snippets from it-- the "interview" segments mostly consist of Whedon explaining over and over and over again that, see, it's subversive, because the traditional girl-victim is actually beating up monsters, instead of getting killed. I had no idea. No, really, I didn't, because in the horror movies Whedon's comparing the show to, the girl usually survives. Halloween, anyone? Okay, yeah, I know what he means, I guess, but maybe someone should send him a copy of Men, Women, & Chainsaws, just the same.

Oh, and I have sworn to say this. We watched a selection from "The Puppet Show" (AKA "Ventriloquist-Dummy-Guy") so that Johanna could prove a point. She kept insisting that when my chinchilla runs around, his scampering sounds just like a doll or a midget running up to kill her. I thought she was crazy, so she played the scene when, well, a doll is running around in Buffy's bedroom. I have never been able to sit through "The Puppet Show," so I hadn't seen that part before. Johanna's right. Sounds exactly the same. I wonder if they recorded a chinchilla running across a floor to get the sound, in fact. So I hereby retract my claim that Johanna is insane. At least on that count.

And then we looked at a few things on my ever-increasing number of Farscape DVD's, and ended the evening by watching "Crackers Don't Matter," because it's funny. Like when Crichton calls Chiana a slut and threatens to tie her up and rape her. Oh, wait. That parts creepy. But a lot of it's funny, honest.

So, yeah. We watched DVD's for, like, 6 hours. I'm pretty sure I had weird dreams last night as the result of media overload.

One more movie note, and this one isn't geeky, I promise. I just tuned in to watch a few minutes of The Magnificent Ambersons (not to be confused with The Royal Tannenbaums) on A&E. Not good. It just made me want to watch the Orson Welles version, which I have on videotape. As George, Jonathan Rhys Myers did have an impressive American accent, which is just weird to see, and I like him lots, but: blah. He's doing his villain stuff again, and he's certainly good at that, but George is supposed to be faintly likable. In Welles' movie, George is arrogant, but it's because he's spoiled, not because he's genuinely evil. Yeah, I'm going to have to keep citing the earlier movie, because I haven't read the book. I should, I know. Stop bugging me. So apparently they made this from Wells' original script, since a lot of his version was trashed by the studio. And Wells' movie isn't perfect, which is why they redid it, but you know, it is Welles. Take the things that work, at least, because you're not going to come up with anything better. His movie is a portrait of a time, you've got the elite upper-class city folk losing their fortune in the face of new technology and growing liberalism. This version seems to be a very literal, PBS/BBC costume drama, and there's no other levels to that. I mean, what was the point to all those shots of extras dancing except to say: we did lots of research on the fashions of the time! Swell. Yawn. Wells has that incredibly long shot where the dancers swing in and out of frame, so you can hear bits of their conversation and actually learn something about them. It's a heckuva lot more interesting to do that.

Other random complaints: Would anyone buy that Jennifer Tilly ends up as a bitter spinster? I didn't think so. Is anyone ever going to be cooler than Joseph Cotten? No. So okay, they're screwed on that one no matter what, point taken... Why do the Amersons live on a giant estate? -- the whole point is that they're in the town, that's how everyone else in town knows about them. I just saw a shot where you can see the giant lawns of the home, without another building visible. Just because they're rich didn't mean they lived in a Hollywood mansion, for heaven's sake! And the timing and the direction and the extended scenes that tell us what's obvious over and over and all the hopping back and forth in time and, oh, I'm not impressed at all.

Just to say something nice: one shot did seem like something Wells would have done. At the party, Isabel and Eugene go dance outside while the snow is falling, and we see two servants desperately hopping around them, trying to stay out of their way while keeping umbrellas over their heads. That was nice, because it was pretty and yet you got a sense of just how insanely rich and indulged the Ambersons were. But again, it went on much too long. Shot of dancing. Shot of George, glaring. More dancing. George. Dancing, dancing, George. Is he jealous? Yes, we get it! Sigh.

I did read Lucifer: Children & Monsters last week, and enjoyed it. I need to reread the first collection again and then reread this, though, because I've forgotten a lot of the background and so there were a few times when I just had to assume that what was going on made sense. I mean, I really am sure that it did, but I couldn't always remember who was who. But poor Mazikeen, getting her face fixed like that. That part was pretty funny.

So, no, I don't have anything profound to say about it. But it was fun.

Been reading more of Don't Know Much About History. Edumacational! Earlier this week I was reading about the industrial revolution and robber barons and wow, what a bunch of bastards, eh? Again, it's one of those things I knew about in a very tiny way ("there was corruption in the 1800's" blah blah Teapot Dome blah blah Boss Tweed-cakes). And this is only slightly more detailed, but it helped. Next time I get into a fistfight about the Red Scare and blacklists and Elia fucking Kazan, I'll at least be able to say that hey, maybe there was a reason people were pretty pro-labor by then. I mean, Stanford and Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan and Vanderbilt and Gould and Carnegie -- what a pack of assholes!

Good thing I'm not obliged to be insightful here.

Oh yes, and would someone please make the Giant Remaindered Book Sale store go away? I can't go to the grocery store without coming away with books. Although it's been fewer each time, at least. I went yesterday (I just wanted milk and some salmon steaks!) and nothing looked too interesting. I did pick up a couple of copies of Sedaris' Christmas on Ice, because they were really cheap and I bet next year I can give them out as presents. And for me, I got a comic version of Chandler's The Little Sister, illustrated by Michael Lark. Lots of black, so it feels properly noir, and it looks very pretty. I haven't gotten too far into it yet, but I may finish it tonight.

I'm a big liar. Rick Veitch writes Greyshirt. I just assumed it was Moore because it's his character, and he's already writing like ten comics a month, so one more didn't seem that unlikely.

So I read the two issues today, and they're fun. Plus, he seems to building a pretty complicated history, which you get disconnected pieces of in the course of the stories. I like that a lot, although I get the feeling I may need a flowchart to keep track of who's who and when they did what and so on. I also love the bits of the Indigo City Sunset, the city newspaper, which fills out the last few pages of each issue. I particularly like the fact that the cover illustration is always for something mentioned in the newspaper that never turns up in the comic's stories.

And the new ongoing plot seems to be about a movie being filmed in the city, which is based on a Sopranos-esque show about the city's gangsters. Meta-pop-culture references, whee!

I also read V for Vendetta which really and truly is by Moore (and David Lloyd). Liked it much more than Watchmen. And plenty more pop culture fun, too, if you're into that kind of thing. In his afterword, Moore lists his inspirations as including Ellison's "'Repent Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman," Orwell, Dr. Phibes and the Theater of Blood, David Bowie, The Prisoner, and a dozen other diverse creations. So, from that you can probably guess that it involves a dystopian future, and a lone rebel, and, okay, I'm not quite sure where David Bowie comes in, to be honest.

It's, uh, complicated. And my brain's all full from reading all day, so I don't know if I can say much about it. Let's see. There's been a nuclear war. England is a fascist state. And a guy dressed as Guy Fawkes starts blowing things up and promoting anarchy. I think that maybe there should be a little insert at the front that says, "Note to Americans: V is dressed up as Guy Fawkes." Because I do know who Fawkes is, and I know about the effigies, but I didn't know what they looked like, so I didn't get that part until halfway through. I though he was just wearing a random mask. I'm sorry.

There's also a large cast of people working for the state, their wives, a girl who becomes entangled with V's mission, and everyone's history and romantic entanglements and so on. So it's damned hard to summarize. But I liked it, and I guess you're just going to have to trust me on that.

That just leaves the Lucifer book, which I might start on tonight. Or maybe I'll give my eyes a rest for a while (by staring into a computer monitor -- yeah, yeah.)

Actually it's just after midnight, but I'm not talking about what I did today, so... I'm worrying a little too much about the stupid dates, aren't I? So yesterday (that is, Friday) I came home and found a birthday present from Gustave. Hooray! And it was Jonathan Carroll's The Marriage of Sticks! Hooray times two!

And then I kinda crashed on the couch for a few hours, which might be why I stayed up all night reading the book. Or maybe I'm just obsessive. Or both. I'm not sure when I finished it and went to sleep, but I'm guessing it was probably 4 or 5 AM. I really liked it. Completely made up for The Wooden Sea.

This book was much more in the tone of Carroll's first couple of books, The Land of Laughs and A Child Across the Sky, in that it was a about a deeply flawed, yet sympathetic, character, and the supernatural yuckiness they experience. The narrator, Miranda, is likable, but you also can pick up on the parts of the character that doom her. Or do they? The ending is left open. And the creepiness? Gah. There were a few parts where I really regretted the fact that I was reading it at 3 in the morning. Only a few, but they were pretty effective. Or maybe I'm just more suggestible at 3 AM.

I really should have marked pages as I was reading, because there were a bunch of paragraphs that I had to stop and reread for their prettiness. That kind of thing can be distracting, so if you don't like poetic phrasing you might not like it, but it works for me.

I feel like I should give some kind of summary here, but I don't know how to do that without giving things away. Miranda is a book dealer, living a rather self-absorbed life. Then she begins an affair with a married man, and that's when the supernatural spookiness begins. And then people start dying. It's really difficult to describe Carroll when he's on, and he's on in this one. I think one of his talents is in making the reader sympathize with people who are kind of despicable -- Outside the Dog Museum is another one where you feel torn between liking the narrator because, hey, he's the narrator, and thinking that he's really screwing up his life. That's a hard thing to do as a writer; showing someone's flaws without making them a monster. At least, not at first.

I may have to reread The Wooden Sea now, because the main character in it turns up in this book, and maybe that would add some depth to the book. But, okay, I'm skeptical about that. Although I can maybe understand it a little better; I know the problem I had with the book was that the main character was too nice, he was trying too hard to be a good person, and that's very different from most of Carroll's protagonists. I'm not sure if that means that Carroll can't handle genuinely good heroes, or if that's not what I read Carroll for. Probably worth rereading to try and figure it out, though.

Oh yes, and then after sleeping in till a ridiculously late hour, I went to the comic store. And a few other places, but we all know what's important here, right? Here's what I got:

• Batman: The Ten-Cent Adventure, by Greg Rucka. Okay, if you don't keep up with comics, you think that's a really goofy title. But it's called that because it actually just costs a dime. Part of some wacky publicity/get-new-readers scheme that DC has going now. I have no idea if it'll work, but I did buy 5 copies so that I could give some away. Which (from what I read at the Ellis forums) is what a lot of people are doing. Except some of them are buying hundreds of copies to disperse. Bless 'em for their idealism. Lord knows if it'll help. It's definitely a cliff-hanger, to get you to buy other books, but I think that's fine since clearly the point is to publicize books. I think anyone who watches the animated series would like it; the look is similar. I don't like the constant use of all-caps, but that's an ongoing irritation of mine so if you're going to read comics I guess you might as well get used to it here. It's mostly easy-to-read; there's one two-page spread that I think is a bit cluttered, but it's a reasonable intro to unconventional panels for newbies. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see if it brings in new readers.

• Midnight Nation #9, by Joe Straczynski: I've said it before, I'll say it again: pretty. There are some panels where the drawn figures and the electronic colors don't mesh as well as you'd like, but even so, if you want to show someone a current comic that is visually pleasing, I'd pick this one. There are also a fair number of panels where JMS lets the images tell you what's happening. Thinking about it now, I think the technical details are more impressive than the actual plot, but that's not to say the story is boring. I just suspect I wouldn't be as enthralled by it if it looked like Rising Stars.

• Bad World #2, by Warren Ellis. Coming closer to a point, but still sort of disconnected. I don't think it's bad, I just think it'll read better when it's collected as a TPB. And I think it'd be better if the art was super-realistic, since the anecdotes are meant to be about actual events. Yeah, I'll never stop whining about the visuals in everything. Cope.

• Lucifer: Children & Monsters, by Mike Carey. Haven't read it yet. So can't say anything. Except that I've been looking for another Lucifer TPB since I read the first one, so I'm glad it's finally here.

• Greyshirt #2 and #3, by Alan Moore. Haven't read these yet, either. Probably will as soon as I log off tonight. I'm willing to bet they're funny, though.

• V for Vendetta, also by Alan Moore. Okay. I think I've mentioned somewhere that I was underwhelmed by Watchmen. As I understand it, this is the other ground-breaking Moore comic from the '80's. And, as I understand it, this one doesn't require a knowledge of the superhero mythos, so I suspect I'll like it more. Plus, I've seen it praised as being better than Watchmen; I suspect it just wasn't as flashy. So I'm excited about reading it -- probably tomorrow. Oh yeah: when the clerk at the comic shop rang up my purchases he singled this one out for praise. Then he quickly added, "Not that everything else you're buying isn't good too, but this is excellent."

I like my comic shop -- the clerks usually give the obligatory, "Find everything?" when I go to the counter, but it's almost always a joke since I've generally got a hefty stack. And I should mention that before Xmas, I was looking for a copy of an issue of Cerebus to give to my token right-wing friend. So I asked, "Do you have the issue with Sim's crazy rant?" And then we both laughed, because that isn't really specific enough to distinguish an issue at this point. (I eventually clarified that I meant the one about how homosexuals are conspiring with feminists, and the clerk looked for it but they were sold out.) Yeah, this is just a little story for comic fans, because it's too complicated to explain. Trust me: it was funny.

Oh, and then tonight I watched Resevoir Dogs on DVD, which my friend Kelly gave me for my birthday. Fun. Especially now that I've got my stereo hooked up right. Ahhh. There's not too much I can say about the movie at this point. I know it's a rip-off of some other movie, and I don't care, because the dialogue and the direction is great. Stories aren't that big a deal; it's all in how you tell them, okay?

Later...

Oh, wow. Elsewhere I mentioned running across an episode of The Prisoner on a local PBS station. Turns out it's a festival, I think. Now they're showing "Many Happy Returns," which is one of my favorites. I hadn't even noticed before, but there's been virtually no dialogue for 15 minutes and I think that continues for a while longer. And it's not a show-off gimmick (if you know what I mean) -- it's just that there's either no one for Number Six to talk to, or there's no reason for conversation.

I can't decide whether I should hope if this is an all-day festival or not. Because if it is, I should watch. But I should also go to bed soon, so I hope it isn't.

I took a break in the midst of my renovations, and watched TCM for a while. I saw the very end of The Three Musketeers (the Richard Lester version). I thought I was in time to catch the last half-hour, but it was really only the last ten minutes. I'll have to see it sometime, just because: Michael York and Faye Dunaway and Raquel Welch? Yowza. I gather that it's a slightly silly interpretation of the story, but neat cast. Also, that reminds me that I've finally started seeing ads for the new The Count of Monte Cristo, and I want to see it. Even though I still can't imagine how they fit all of that into one movie, it just looks purty.

And then they showed Robin and Marion. Another Lester movie, which I've been meaning to see for years and years and years. I missed a few bits because I was doing laundry, but I saw most of it and liked it. It's another Richard Lester movie, with (do I need to say this?) Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn as Robin Hood and Maid Marion. In their forties, just to be clear. I really enjoyed it, but it is a little bit peculiar. Mostly because the sense of humor is -- not dated, but it's very unusual compared to current movies. It kept reminding me of Monty Python & the Holy Grail. Not because it's got the same sense of humor, exactly, but the images are fairly realistic -- everyone's grubby and nothing looks romantic. The humor is more realistic as well (unlike Python). I suspect it would be funnier in a theater, because it's quiet humor that doesn't make you laugh out loud if you're by yourself, but in a crowd I expect it would play better.

My favorite bit was when Marion complains "You never wrote!" and Robin, looking bemused, explains, "I don't know how." It's hard to explain, really; it's not all wacky punch-lines and cartoonish exaggerations, which is what a lot of comedy seems to be based on now. It's not making fun of the fact that Robin can't write, it's just, "Hey, it's the 1100's. Literacy not a given." The portrayal of Robin is really nice -- it's not bashing him, but it doesn't glorify him either. You get the idea that he's a really heroic person, but not the brightest fellow. Not stupid, either, it's just that he was a fighter, a hero and he was at his best with villains to battle. He doesn't want to be practical, he wants ideals to fight for. Little John and Marion love him for that, but they're also more rational even when they stand by him. Lester also did A Hard Day's Night (and Help!) and maybe that helps describe the sensibility. The characters say funny things, but they aren't breaking character to do so, and that doesn't diminish any emotional impact.

And the end certainly has emotional impact. The battle between Robin and the Sheriff, and the death scene? Sniff. Nicol Williamson as Little John was lovely too. And the shot of Nottingham forest, when Robin and John return, and you get a sense of how huge the forest is -- it reminded me of the parts of T.H. White's The Once and Future King, when he talks about the vast wilderness in England.

From the little TCM afterward, I gather that the movie got bad reviews because of its mix of comedy and pathos. And I understand, because at first I was wondering, "Is that meant to be funny?" at different bits. So it's not for everyone, but I really like movies that aren't all one genre or another. And I do think that the humor of the earlier scenes makes the ending much sadder.

Oh, and then they showed Casablanca. Such a good movie. Not because of the primary story, but because of all the details and subplots slipped in with it. I love it, but I'll just make fun of it a little. The one part that really makes me wince is the "Is that cannon fire, or just my heart beating?" line. And funnier than that is Rick's response: I can't remember the exact quote, but he's totally matter of fact and just answers her question by describing the exact kind of artillery fire that they're listening to. I still kind of expect Ingrid Bergman to slap him and say, "It was a rhetorical question, you heartless cad!" But it's a great movie.