If I did movie reviews, I’d write a rave review about The Secret of Kells. But I don’t.

This blog has a whole category for books, and none for movies. That’s no accident. Books are much more important to me than movies. If I had to live without movies, I don’t think I’d miss them much. Books, on the other hand, are essential. (So is the internet, for that matter.) And I often have opinions about the books I read, whereas I don’t know enough about the art of making movies to be able to say anything particularly intelligent about them. I don’t think in images, I think in words; I don’t process images as well as I process language.

In the evenings, when both kids are asleep, Eric will often watch a movie or part of some TV series, while I’d rather spend time reading blogs or a book. But I often listen to whatever he watches with half my attention. Sometimes I decide partway through that his movie sounds so interesting that I want to see the rest. And sometimes, very occasionally, I will take the time to watch a whole movie. Even more rarely, I will ask Eric for a particular movie, rather than just “tag along” with whatever he chooses.

I can only recall three movies that I’ve watched from beginning to end during recent months. (I may have seen more but in that case they didn’t make a very strong impression. And watching Ingrid’s “Barbie Rapunzel” with her does NOT count.)

The Secret of Kells, as I said, was wonderful. This one we all watched together on New Year’s Eve, in order to stay awake until midnight, and everyone loved it. It is beautiful, magical, gripping: a fairy tale excellently told.

Babies was one I had wanted to see. Just 4 babies doing their stuff: somehow totally riveting. Perhaps because I have one at home myself? (Review at Salon.com)

How to Train Your Dragon was just plain fun.

I was also expecting to blog about the conference during the day. But access to power outlets was less than generous, so I couldn’t type my notes during the sessions themselves, meaning I’ll have to process them before they’re in a bloggable state. A real blog post will be coming soon.

I’ve been thinking for a long while (about a year, since I first migrated to WordPress) that I would like to have a banner image or something of the sort, but never managed to settle on a design idea. I couldn’t think if any kind of photo that would fit. This Blog Needs No Name, because it has no mission, no message, no plan, and for the same reasons, it matches no image. (With the exception, perhaps, of an orange.)

But last week I finally found something. I have been reorganizing and tagging my old photos, and found some from the Chihuly exhibition I saw back in 2005. They’re beautiful and orange, and imply nothing more than that. (The whole installation looked like this.)

As memes go, it’s a relatively good one, I’d say. Unlike stuff like “The 5 best books I’ve read” and “5 reasons I blog” this actually requires some creative thinking.

I’m back now, anyway.

Back soon, hopefully.