Saturday night tv

I never thought of myself as the kind of person who would watch CNBC - I'm so staunchly Canadian - and yet I ended up watching it this evening. I rather like their American Greed show, which describes how various people have stolen money from people who entrusted it to them. It's a bit heavy-handed and over-the-top, painting the villains as greedy and evil and the people who lost their money as hapless losers who got in over their head and didn't know any better. The reality is probably a big more gray than their black-and-white portrayal.

I also watched their documentary House of Cards which describes the events leading up to the real estate crash starting from the 9-11 attacks, when the US economy was stalling and Alan Greenspan lowered interest rates. This, in combination with the changes some banks were making to allow anyone to get a mortgage caused problems. The show implied but didn't state that George Bush and his administration were partly to blame because he was on tv saying that he wanted everyone in America to buy a house, whether they could afford to do it or not. It was an interesting show.

As I write this, I'm watching Elizabeth, which I haven't seen. I was admiring the guy (Joseph Fiennes) who plays Robert Dudley; it's the same guy who played William Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love. I thought he was quite a dashing character in both movies and that he had done a fine job of acting. And then I realized that it's the same fellow who played the lead character of Mark Benford in FlashForward - where he was painfully wooden and generally an awful actor. I think a costume drama is more his style than something contemporary. or maybe he's better in movies.

Speaking of movies, I'm enjoying Elizabeth very much and highly recommend it. I also watched Rosemary's Baby and Silent Hill the other day and quite enjoyed those. Silent Hill was a sort of interesting horror movie; it's not great, but it's worth seeing if you're watching tv. Rosemary's Baby is a spine-tingler that holds up even though it was made 35 years ago. It's definitely worth seeing if you've never seen it before.