My favorite people are, and have always been, animal people … people who deeply care about animals. The day I met my wife at church, I also met her mom and sisters. They told me about all their dogs, cats a rabbit and a pot belly pig. They had me at dogs.

Last night I was flipping through channels and landed on a biopic about a woman named Temple Grandin. Claire Danes played the leading role. I’ve loved Claire Danes since My So Called Life so I started watching even though the movie was already half over. Now I can’t wait to go back and see the whole thing.

From my perspective, movies hardly get any better than when they tell a real life story about a person who struggled through life to make a difference. Temple Grandin is now a Doctor of Animal Science and professor at Colorado State University. She also has autism.

Because of the way she was rased, she pushed through limited expectations to do something that changed the way we treat the animals we eat. Autism gave Grandin the gift of thinking different. As a grad student, she had to visit a stockyard where cows were being prepared for slaughter. She reacted to the stress the cows were going through and went to work figuring out how to alleviate the stress. She says, “I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we’ve got to do it right. We’ve got to give those animals a decent life and we’ve got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect.” She designed a system that not only got cows from stockyards to slaughter peacefully, it also saved money.

In addition to her work with animals, Temple Grandin is also an advocate for autistic children. She’s been able to explain to worried and confused parents of autistic kids what the kids are experiencing when they spin in circles, put their hands over their ears or rock back and forth.

I’ve never heard of Temple Grandin before last night so I figure I’m not alone. The movie I watched is in rotation on HBO, but if you care about animals, you might want to order it from Amazon. She wrote a book called, Thinking in Pictures, one called, The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism and Asperger’s and another one called, Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals. I can’t wait to learn more.

Here is a video of Temple Grandin speaking at TED. Tech people need to see this!

As a gospel music lover, Ally McBeal is one of my all time favorite TV shows. I’m shocked that Vonda Shepherd didn’t grow up in church…she just has that pentecostal alto vibe that sends me into a Jesus frenzy. The series isn’t available in the U.S. because they can’t clear all the music rights, so I ordered the series from Amazon UK, along with a region 2 DVD player. It shouldn’t be this hard, but every time you involve the RIAA, everything gets way too complicated.

We spent the afternoon yesterday at a Doctor’s office trying to figure out what’s wrong with Luria’s (Cali) hands. No clear word on that, yet. We have to go back for more tests today.

We got home, Cali took medicine to help with the itching, and we put in the movie 300 based on a Frank Miller graphic novel. This genre isn’t our taste, but we LOVE Sin City.

That we love the movie Sin City surprises us to no end because we hate violence in movies. We don’t oppose it, we just don’t want to see it. The violence in Sin City rises to the level of art, and somehow, it’s beautiful.

300 didn’t quite work for me on that level. It succeeds in looking different than any other movie I’ve ever seen. Some of the erotic black and white scenes are as beautiful as scenes from Sin City, but I still found myself wanting to fast-forward through the battle scenes.

If it hadn’t been for Sin City, I wouldn’t have watched this movie at all, and I’m certain I would have enjoyed it more if I was more interested in that period of history or war movies in general. It just wasn’t my thing.

Tonight we’re going to watch Brick. I’m extremely excited about this movie. It’s a modern film noir set on a high school campus. I can’t wait!

There are about four hours a day we take for ourselves. Two of those hours are usually spent watching a movie. Tonight the movie is Saint Ralph.

It’s a coming of age movie…probably my favorite genre. My favorite coming of age film is Just Looking. It was directed by Jason Alexander from Sienfeld. Saint Ralph is turing out to be just about as great. Plus, it has Campbell Scott in it, and he just happens to be one of the coolest dudes on the planet because he narrates the Hermux Tantamoq audio books.

There’s a Southern Gospel song that kept ringing through my head as we wound our way back home. It says,

They say that Heaven’s pretty and livin’ here is too,
But, if they said that I would have to choose between the two,
I’d go home. I’d go home, where I belong.

The song is talking about home being Heaven. In my head, home was just home, and it’s good to be here.

After we crashed for a day, we started back to work. We shot a Brief yesterday and two more today. Now we’re watching an Anthony Hopkins movie called, Fracture. It’s one of those quiet crime dramas that remind me of a rainy afternoon in the fall. There is no rush or dependence on noisy action.

Usually films like this are set in New England. This one is set in Sunny L.A., but it still feels rainy.

This is Anthony Hopkins at his best. The character he created is brilliant and confident. He is evil and lovable at the same time.

These moments when we put work aside for a couple hours to watch a movie…that’s home.

I was going to write about my frustration with Ally McBeal not being released on DVD for Region 1 (the U.S. and Canada). It’s available in the PAL format for Region 2 (Japan, Europe, South Africa, and the Middle East) at Amazon.com and has been for a long time. Before I started to write, I looked at the Wikipedia page for Ally McBeal, and got the explaination I was looking for.

Due to music rights issues, the first complete season of Ally McBeal has not been made available on DVD in the United States (only 6 random episodes can be found on the R1 edition), though it has been available in Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Japan, France, Germany, the UK, Mexico, Australia and Brazil.

I still don’t like that it’s not available, but I can understand how it would be difficult to clear all the wonderful music used on the show for a DVD release. That’s a lot of people to pay. I’m wondering how difficult it would be to convert the Region 2 set to Region 1.

There are players, like the Philips DVP5960 All Region PAL /NTSC that will play everything. We happen to have a Philips DVP5960, also available on Amazon.com. It’s about $37 less, but the title doesn’t say anything about being multi-region. Would a two players with the same model number have different functionality? Don’t know.