Three Days of the Condor

Due to a friend's recommendation, I rented Three Days of the Condor and watched it last night. I'm not sure what I think. I didn't like it as much as I thought I would and I've been trying to figure out why.

First of all - I did not buy that Faye Dunaway's character would sleep with Joe Turner after one day of being kidnapped. I mean, please - just because the guy looks like Robert Redford (BTW - I'm understanding why he was so popular in the 70's...) does not mean that the average woman would believe a man who KIDNAPPED her and was holding her hostage with a gun! Are we really that stupid? Not to mention that I would hope most women would not sleep with a man the first night she met him under any circumstances. I think it also might be a testimony to Dunaway's acting skills in the first half of the movie. I believed that she was terrified of Turner and the switch was just too sudden for me. After that scene, I just couldn't take the story very seriously. I know, I know - it happens in movies all the time, but for some reason it bugged me in this one.

Also - the movie seems like a pioneer of the "spy thriller" genre. The problem with movies and stories that blaze a trail is that other stories come along later and improve the trail. So - while I think there is value in something because it is a classic example or because it was first -- I've watched too many spy thrillers that were probably riffing off of Three Days of the Condor to enjoy it. Isn't that sad? I feel a little guilty, like I'm one of those people who doesn't like black and white movies just because there is no color.

On another note - summer has officially begun for me! Yesterday, I turned in my check-out sheet and left the high school for the year. Woo Hoo!! Although, I woke up this morning and thought, "What am I going to do today?" It's such a dilemma. When I have a lot of things to do, I long to sit around and vege out. When I'm without the structure of work, I wish I had deadlines. It's not that I don't have a long to-do list. I do. I just don't have a deadline beyond "My roommate is returning in two months." This means that probably I'll be frantically running around getting things fixed on the house the week before Megan gets back. :-) :-) In the meantime, I'll be visiting friends, doing A LOT of reading, watching TV and checking out movies I've been wanting to see.

I found out one of the downsides to being a homeowner yesterday. My mortgage company sent me a letter that said my monthly payment was going to increase by $150 due to tax and insurance increases. I'm in a little bit of shock and not sure how I'm going to deal with this. One thing I did today was cancel my subscription to Netflix. Although it's very convenient and offers a lot of movies I can't find anywhere else - I just can't afford it anymore. Bummer. It was nice to have all those foreign and independent films just a few days away...