Movies.
The new Starplex Cinema that was built a few blocks from where I live has sucked me in recently.
I went to see my first 3-D movie, Avatar. Wearing the polarized glasses over my own was kind of annoying at first, but the movie was so engrossing that I stopped noticing the glasses after the first few minutes. The story-line was your standard military man goes native plot-line, but it was so well executed that I went to see the movie again a few days later. I wanted to see this movie at least twice in 3-D. It's not exactly the same as real life, but it definitely added an extra dimension (no pun intended) to the show. I liked that the 3-D was used to enhance the feel of living in another world, rather than being an obvious attention getting device. For instance, when they first have the main character's avatar walking through the forest, it seemed real enough that I could practically smell the ripe odor of vegetation. Very cool!
More recently, I went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. Also very good, but I didn't react as strongly in favor of it as I thought I would. I think this may be due to having just been dazzled by Avatar, rather than through any fault in the movie. However, having Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law to look at in the same movie made for a fine evening.
I also picked up a couple of DVD's from Wally World. About a year ago, I picked up Gettysburg (which I had seen when it came out at the theater), but I'd never seen the prequel Gods and Generals. So I bought it from the $5 bin. I didn't like it as much as Gettysburg. I thought it was too self -indulgent, spending unnecesary amounts of time on repetitive sequences. It could have used better editing. The other movie I picked up was Frequency, starring Dennis Quaid. A cute story about time traveling radio messages between a man and his son 30 years later. Oh, yeah, and I bought Steven Spielberg's movie A.I. That movie gets me, about a child-like android who wants the Blue Fairy to turn him into a real boy so his adoptive mother will love him as much as her own son.
Hmm...guess I've been watching a lot of movies lately... Oh, well, when it's in the negative digits outside, that's about my speed. : )