Meanwhile, in Rivendell . . .

Hi, friends! I'm popping on here to let you know that if I seem really absent in the blogging world lately, it's not for lack of enthusiasm.  I've been wanting to write several different posts, but due to some health issues I'm having right now, I haven't had much physical or mental energy to finish them.  Same with comments:  I'm still reading (and loving , may I add) many of your posts, but commenting isn't always doable for me at the moment.  I'm used to peaks and valleys in my blogging motivation, since I've had this blog for almost seven and a half years.  So that's nothing new, and that doesn't scare me.  But this feels like the longest stretch I've had in a while in which I'm posting so infrequently and commenting so tardily, and I did want to explain that .  Just so you guys don't think I'm yeeting myself out of the blogosphere or something. 😉 All that to say, I'm still here, and I still love this blogging communi

Beauty and the Beast (2014) ● not rated I've been wanting to watch this movie for quite some time, and I was delighted to finally discover that it's available for free (with ads) on Tubi, where you can stream it without even setting up an account. Visually, it was even more stunning than I'd thought it would be.  Narratively . . . I don't know.  I loved certain aspects of the retelling, and didn't care for certain others.  The Beast character was extremely . . . predatory . . . in more ways than one.  That made me very uncomfortable, and I wish it was resolved more thoroughly.  But I still liked it overall, and I'll want to watch it several more times to see how my opinion evolves. Denial (2016) ● PG-13 This was excellent.  I wasn't very familiar with the realm of Holocaust denial before reading a review of one of Deborah Lipstadt's books (Lipstadt is the protagonist of the film, based on her memoir of the same name).  That review mentioned the movie ad