A little rain today, the first this calender year. It's an unusually dry winter, I'm told, even by west Texas standards.

Latest French movie watched: 8 Women. This is a strange one: a combination of classic, suspects-sequestered-in-a-country-manor murder mystery, melodramatic chick-flick, star vehicle, and musical! The mystery isn't taken seriously; it's only an excuse to show varieties of female personalities and relationships. The musical numbers, renditions of 1960s French pop songs, are jarringly out of place and uninteresting to most Americans, although those with a taste for camp might find it fun to see the all-star team of actrices like Deneuve, Huppert, Beart, Ledoyen, and Sagnier hamming it up. If you fast forward through the songs, give it a B.