Dark and dangerous times lie ahead. Soon we'll all have to choose between what's right and what's easy. Just remember, your friends are here. You are not alone.

I watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on opening night, but it took me a while to wrap my head around what I thought of it. My first impression was that it was a fine movie. It was well acted, the script was pretty good, it was undoubtedly gorgeous, and even the action scenes were a lot of fun. But there was something missing. The way I've been putting this to friends is that the movie didn't have a soul.

The reason I had to let this stuff stew for a while is I wanted to be more specific than that. Saying a movie doesn't have a soul is kind of hard to quantify, and I feel like it might be unfair to the movie. Yes, the movie wasn't perfect. It was sometimes a bit too goofy for my tastes. And it would do mood swings way to fast without some kind of transition. This is the first Harry Potter story that has some truly dark stuff in it, and going from light hearted comedy to dark material and back again is a little jarring to the mood. Don't get me wrong, tension breaking comedy is important, but that's not really what this was for me. But in the end those are minor gripes. Overall it's a good movie. But it just lacked that something that can make a movie memorable and great. It lacked a soul.

Drill Sargent - Why the fuck are you here marine?
Marine Recruit - Sir, I got lost on the way to college sir!

I have no personal experience to evaluate how close what I saw in Jarhead maps to reality. But my estimation is it's pretty close (others have said the same thing as well.) This is the story of a guy who joins up with the marines after high school and ends up as one of the first soldiers on the ground in Saudi Arabia for the first Iraq war.

Every war movie tends to have a theme or a message. They just can't really get away from it. Black Hawk Down was about how to the soldiers on the ground politics or the reason for the fighting is unimportant, all that matters is the guy standing next to you. Saving Private Ryan was about the strange choices we make in strategizing for war, and not all soldiers have the same intrinsic strategic value (in that case, Private Ryan was viewed as being more important to the military then the other soldiers lost in the parachute drops or the soldiers in the squad sent to fetch him.) Jarhead is about hurry up and wait.

That's a classic term in the military. Everyone busts their ass to be ready to go, and in their place, then just hangs out waiting for the right time. In this case, they busted their asses in training, were ready to go, got shipped out to Saudi Arabia, and then cruised around the desert for months being bored out of their minds. This movie is about that boring time.

Now, one would think it probably isn't the best idea to make a movie about a bunch of people being bored - it would probably end up being kind of a boring movie. Jarhead only has this problem a little bit. It focuses on how the guys passed the time, and didn't linger on things too long. It skipped through months of time quickly, stopping to take peeks into how the characters are doing. The good part of this is, as we would expect, a bunch of guys bored out of their minds in the desert come up with some humorous ways to entertain themselves - so it's a funny thing to watch.

But the real achievement of this movie is how is translates that feeling of boredom without actually being boring. I'm not sure how they did it, but I'm impressed. I guess that's just the sign of good film makers.

You don't want to fall in love with someone who doesn't appreciate a good cheeseburger.

I watched Nice Guys Sleep Alone again last night. This is a fun, independent, romantic comedy that I first found long ago in a "independent film festival" special section in a video store. I rented it because I thought the title and the back of the box was interesting. I've been happy with that choice ever since.

It's got a lot of the classic quirks that independent movies have. It gets a little silly, and sometimes goes off the deep end, but most of the time is pretty good. The acting isn't anything to write home about (especially when you get into the smaller parts - once again, welcome to low budget movies) but thats ok because at the end of the day it's a fun movie. It overcomes those quirks.

The director, Stu Pollard, has had a tough time of it. He hasn't really broken into the Hollywood scene. I occassionaly get emails about his current project, Keep You distance, as he tries to tour the country to raise some money for distributing it and getting it into film festivals.

Go chase this movie down. It might be hard to find, but I know Netflix has it (I also own it, but given it's rarity tend to not lend it out.)

Do this job for a few more years. Do it a little longer. You think you know who you are, but you have no idea.

I've been meaning to watch Crash for a long time and finally got around to it this weekend. This is a great movie. It's one of these movies that bounce between lots of different characters, whose stories intersect in ways only a carefully scripted movie could. Often times this plot device falls over, they don't strike the right balance of commonality between the stories and keeping them seperate enough that the characters are distinct.

This movie took a different turn. Other movies with this structure bind it all together by having the characters be related or people who share a common experience. Crash works a little differently. All the stories are related by their theme of race relations, and the resulting misunderstandings and isolation. The movie bounces between the stories, doing very little exposition, but it's always easy to follow what's going on.

This film keeps feeling like it's going to be ridiculously tragic, but doesn't end up being that hard to watch. It's certainly not a positive movie, and I did feel sad when I was done watching, but it wasn't downright depressing. I think my biggest take away was that the whole thing was that the situations were tragic in their base. The characters are stuck in their isolation, created by racial devides, and no one is breaking out of that and reaching across the gap.

Those are the kinds of troubles we get into all the time. Most major misunderstandings start out as minor ones. People see the same thing in different ways, and those differences start to amplify. When we don't make an effort to bridge that gap, to find common ground - that's when things get bad. This movie was example after example of people not reaching out across that gap - and the unfortunate things that come from that.

I'm not watching TV, I'm killing channels.

I've been slacking on watching movies recently, but I did go to a play this weekend. I went to see Defending the Caveman at the ACT Theater in Seattle. It's a one man comedy about gender differences. The whole theory is that men and women come from different cultures, which is loosely related to our respective roles long ago as hunters and gatherers.

It was frickin hilarious. It's about 90 minutes long, there's only the one performer, and no breaks - normally a recipe for trouble. But the performer (Issac Lamb in our case) was great and had no touble keeping me hooked the whole time. He sort of oscillated between overdone comedic stuff and more truthful things. But like all great humor, the reason it resonates is because there's some truth in it all.

It's important to note that this play was written in the late 80's, before such things like Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus took over the popular culture. It's a smart and funny play, all the way through. I also think it's best when seen with someone of the opposite gender, there's plenty of "Is that really true?" moments, and laughing at the gender differences always takes a lighter tone when you're there with someone of that different gender.

Highly recommended! You can read more about it and find a tour date near you at their website.

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