Last night was the first night (but not, for some reason, the “opening night”) of the Wisconsin Film Festival. We had tickets to see Fathers and Guns and OSS 117: Lost In Rio, a pair of comedies. I don’t see how you can go wrong starting off with a laugh.

Fathers and Guns was sort of a buddy movie: Jacques and Marc are father and son, as well as police officers on the same team trying to bust a local crime gang, but don’t work very well together because, well, they don’t like each other much. As it happens, the lawyer who defends the local crime boss doesn’t get along with his son, either, and when the police discover they’re going on a father-son camping trip with one of those self-discovery groups, the police sign up Jacques and Marc on the same trip. Hijinks ensue. B and I both gave this film a 4 out of five.

OSS 117: Lost in Rio was a spy movie or, as one of B’s friends put it, a movie that’s a cross between a James Bond action flick and an Inspector Clouseau whatever you call a flick like that. Jean Dujardin plays the Sean Connery look-alike spy called “OSS 117,” because all spies have code names that look like they fell out of a Bingo machine. He goes to Rio on a secret mission to buy a microfilmed list of French collaborators from a certain Nazi villain. To find him, OSS 117 saunters into the German embassy and asks to see their list of Nazis residing in South America. “Surely there must be a club, or association?” he asks. Hilarity ensues. 4 out of five.

Tonight, we have tickets to see yodeling lesbians in The Topp Twins and slavering monsters in the Korean horror flick The Host.

On a personal note, the downside to taking a couple days off work so we can see more of the film festival, if it can be said there is a downside at all, is that, having the time off during the morning and afternoon when there aren’t any films showing, the temptation to sit around and do nothing at all is just about irresistible. I was thinking about brewing a batch of beer today, but when I started laying the plans I found I had even though I had the desire, the effort was too much for my lazy bones. I put on a pair of shorts and took a long ride on my bike instead. When I got back, I sat down in a comfy chair and read a book for about a half-hour, until my eyelids got too heavy to hold up and I had to stretch out for a short nap.

These are the perils of time off from work. I could get used to them.

About the photo: Something’s way wrong with my camera. State Street does in fact climb a gentle hill up to the capital but it’s nowhere near as steep as that photo makes it look. I’d get a hernia walking up that.