I am apparently a very low-class person, and I think I am okay with that. I am more comfortable in a sports bar, having a beer and eating burgers, than I am at a fancy restaurant. If I am with friends and there’s a choice as to where to go, I would almost always pick a brewery, sports bar, a diner, or a (not overly expensive) steakhouse over any place where the posh congregate. I don’t mind restaurant chains.

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I have Amazon prime, and a lengthy collection of movies on my watch list. Whenever I place a movie on the list, I would really like to watch it at that time, but am too busy. This week, I have allotted some time for myself to watch a movie or two. This time is so precious that I invariably  squander it, because none of the movies that I know I wanted to watch at one time seems special enough to spend my hard-won 2 hours on. So I watch nothing, and instead fart around on the web or work on a grant annual report, so the time wouldn’t be a total loss.

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As per me being low-brow: I will watch all sorts of movies. I like drama and comedy, especially indie, but I also like science fiction, action, and thrillers; I think of my taste as the amalgam of an educated middle aged woman and a teenage boy. I don’t expect every flick to move me or educate me; there is nothing wrong with some escapism. Occasionally, when I approach a movie with no expectations whatsoever, I actually end up more moved than when I watch overwrought grown-up movies that take themselves far too seriously.

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There are certain actors that I simply like and will watch any movie with them in it. Most of these are not particularly good actors, but watching them do anything on the screen cheers me up. There are actors who just grate my cheese, and them being in a movie is generally a deterrent more than an an attraction.

a) An incomplete list of attractors (people whom I will watch in anything because they are so darn adorable):

Mark Wahlberg (also, Research Wahlberg https://twitter.com/ResearchMark is a hilarious twitter feed); yes, I will probably go see the new Transformers, solely because he’s in it; I just watched Daddy’s Home with him and Will Farrell and it’s as silly as you think, but I enjoyed it

Sandra Bullock

Charlize Theron

Jeff Bridges

Channing Tatum (I want to adopt him)

Reese Witherspoon (mild attractor)

Drew Barrymore (mild attractor)

Adam Sandler (mild attractor)

Chris Pratt (mild attractor)

b) An incomplete list of repellents:

Leonardo DiCaprio (seriously; he only started looking like an adult once he hit 40; I haven’t watched “Titanic” because I just cannot with his baby face in that role)

Zach Galifianakis (I don’t know why, but I can’t shake the impression that he’s just an awful person)

Nicole Kidman (mild repellent)

James Franco (mild repellent)

Blogosphere, who are the actors you always looks forward to seeing? Or avoid seeing as much as possible?

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Books and entertainment of note:

The Handmaid’s Tale (the show) is bloodcurdling.

The Good Fight (spin-off of The Good Wife) is awesome. I never realized how glad I would be to be rid of the Florricks.

The Expanse (2nd season) is even awesomer.

Becky Chambers’s “A Closed  and Common Orbit,” the 2nd book in the Wayfarer series. This is sci-fi with a lot of heart and just beautiful, uncluttered, compelling writing, asking what it means to be a person.

Scalzi’s “The Collapsing Empire.” I haven’t read it yet; I’m saving it for an overseas trip in a couple of weeks.

Charlie Jane Anders’s “All the Birds in the Sky” just got a Nebula; not sure if I should buy it or not, as even a hint of magic sends me running in the opposite direction.

Clarissa has some very interesting book reviews (Russo, Strout, Hannah, Ng),  especially books on neoliberalism and on fluidity and the collapse on the nation-state, such as Bauman’s (also here).

Dear readers, tell us about actors you like/hate, shows/books/movies that you enjoyed or hated recently?