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My first week of school went by with hardly a hitch, and I was rewarded for my patience with Katharine Hepburn on TCM last night.

I finally watched "The Philadelphia Story." There were some things that I really liked about it, and some that bothered me. That tends to happen a lot when watching older films, though; ideas about romance and relationships have changed so much over the years and some things that probably seemed incredibly romantic back then seem slightly absurd now. I'm not a huge Cary Grant fan so it wasn't surprising that his character didn't appeal to me much (Dexter was probably my biggest problem with the movie). James Stewart has never been one of my favourties, either, so I was surprised that I loved him so much! That was a very well-deserved Best Actor award, because I absolutely fell in love with him in this movie. That was probably why the end of the movie was something of a disappointment. Of course, the ending was rather obvious from the beginning of the film, but I had to hope for something a little more satisfying. Oh well; the majority of the movie was extremely entertaining, so I can forgive the fact that the last ten minutes weren't exactly what I wanted to see. I also caught the first half of "Holiday" (I'd only seen about the last hour of it before). Cary Grant is definitely more appealing in that film, and I do actually like the way it ends.

Even though I have minor quibbles with both of those movies... Katharine Hepburn! She is so incredibly awesome that she can make any movie enjoyable! I was disappointed that most of the films were Hepburn and Grant rather than Hepburn and Tracy, but after looking at the TCM schedule for the rest of the month I think they are saving some of them for Spencer Tracy's day (which is on a Saturday, so I can probably catch them).

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I finished reading "Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies" today, and have thus finished the entire Hornblower series. It took me about a year of on-again off-again reading to get through the series, and may I say that it was completely worth it! What am I going to do now for my new Hornblower fix? HH seems to be one of those rare fandoms where there really isn't any fic that matches up to canon for me. That isn't to say that there aren't some really lovely authors out there who have come up with brilliant and insightful stories, but somehow none of them manage to give me that same feeling of excitement and curiosity that I get while reading the books. I will have to settle for rereads to satisfy me; of course, it has been a while since I've read the earlier ones, and it will be interesting to read them again in light of the later books. I suppose it is probably too much to hope for more Hornblower movies, but I really think they should consider making them because I know I would keep watching them.