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The apartment maintenance man was able to come by early Friday evening and take a look at our bum air conditioner. After all the usual suspects were eliminated, we discovered that the condenser was kaput. Thankfully, he was able to replace the broken one immediately, and we had a cold house again by the time we went to bed. Huzzah!

Met up with my sister for lunch and movie on Saturday. They had a convenient 12:45 showtime at the downtown theatre with the big comfy seats, so we planned to eat lunch at the Cheesecake Factory which is right next door. But when we arrived at 11 (opening time) there was already a hefty collection of people waiting for tables, and they told us the wait was already 45 minutes! We found out later that there was a 2pm showing of Frozen the Musical (explains all the tiny Elsas running around downtown!) at the concert hall across the street, so it seems everyone had the same idea of getting lunch before the show.

So we noped out of there and walked up the street to a Mexican restaurant which had no line, and ate a mediocre lunch there. I always hope that location will be better than before, and it never is. But the chocolate tres leches cake was nice.

We headed over to the theatre just in time to catch the previews (there is absolutely nothing worth seeing in theatres coming out in the next couple of months.) The movie itself (Talk to Me) was good, but I think I had hyped it up too much to myself because of all the good reviews, and was mildly disappointed. Even at only 90 minutes, there were times it felt like it dragged a little. The end was great, though, which is good because a lot of horror films just don't know how to conclude their stories satisfactorily. I'd recommend it, but wait for it to come on streaming.

I definitely overexerted myself on that outing, because I was exhausted for the rest of the day. It's so damned hard to breathe with my lungs all squished upward and my heart working twice as hard even while I'm just sitting, that the two or three blocks that we walked in downtown were just too much. There are times when my heart beats so hard when I'm doing nothing more strenuous than just sitting around that it makes me cough. I hate it, I feel like some wilting Victorian invalid.

Sunday I was no longer exhausted, but it was a Bad Food Day. I couldn't stomach anything more interesting than cheese and crackers. I also managed to eat half a bag of potato chips. But the smell of almost any other food made me really woozy, so I just grazed on crackers all day and drank fruit juice. I think I could have handled a light soup, but we had nothing of the sort in the house, M was asleep all day, and I did not feel like venturing out again. M is planning to make a soup for dinner tonight, so I should be able to eat a real meal again.

Finally heard back from the last person who was considering taking the reservation for the Dickens house, and she has declined. I was able to cancel my reservation over the weekend and get my full deposit back. Huzzah! It was a nice chunk of change returned to my account, which I'm trying hard not to spend, but Bloomchic just put out all their cute Halloween stuff and I have a might need.

The Inheritance (1997)

It's such a shame when good costuming happens in bad movies. I just watched a 90s costume film called The Inheritance, based on Louisa May Alcott's then-recently-discovered first manuscript. The acting was terrible. Hotch from Criminal Minds plays the love interest with about as much emotion as a walnut. The music was atrocious (90s made-for-TV movie stuff) and the conflict was so downplayed that it felt inconsequential. The characters are completely two-dimensional - the heroine is all good all the time, the love interest is in love with our heroine and that's all the personality he gets, the daughter is bookish, the villains are bad because we need villains (though the villainess get the added motivation of she wants a man but all the men, literally every single one of them, only want heroine), etc.

But the clothes were fabulous. It's set in the 1870s, so we get lots of gorgeous bustle gowns. The hair was good! The makeup was very 90s, but it was only really noticeable on the mother figure. There are fabulous ballgowns! Sure it's not Age of Innocence levels of drool-worthy, but it was nice eye candy all the same.

The original book was written in 1849 and is apparently very much in the gothic style. I think the film could have benefited from a more gothic air. The villainess tries to frame the heroine for stealing jewels! The secondary potential love interest attempts to assault the heroine in the dead of night, which causes the heroine's father to have a heart attack! The film just sort of rushes through these events and concludes them hastily and they don't have much umph to them. Apparently the conflict in the book is similarly low-key, with one reviewer describing the entire book as "peaceful escapism, even during conflict."

It's one of those films I could see benefiting from a remake. Apparently this was the only adaptation of the manuscript, so it's a practically untapped source for filmmakers!