You know friend, this is a god damn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation.

Watching Brokeback Mountain was strange for me. I think it suffered for all the expectations surrounding it. This is a slow, methodical movie that I think really depends on giving yourself over to it. The kind of movie where the pacing is a deliberate part of the style and feel of the movie, almost like another character (or at the very least, a significant part of the exposition.) The trouble is with all the talk about what a breakthrough film it is and all the Oscar chatter I'm not letting myself just watch the movie, instead I'm waiting to see this amazing breakthrough movie everyone keeps talking about.

I think I broke through most of that after the first hour or so, but in a way it was already too late at that point. I think I kind of missed the artistry of the movie because I was spending too much time thinking about it (heh, what's new about that?)

A key theme to this movie is that these characters have a deep inner desire to be with each other, but feel that they can't because of how society will judge them. There's an element of tragedy to this, but I didn't really see it as any different from other similar stories of forbidden love. Yeah, they're gay. So what? Maybe it's just that I don't find the concept of gay relationships strange, so I don't feel they really get a special pass. The movie isn't ground breaking for me in that sense because we all know there are gay folk around and we all know that societies have traditionally judged them very harshly. It just feels smug to hail this as some kind of monumental gay rights film. It's not like people who are prejiduced against gays will watch this and all of a sudden connect with people who at a deep core feel attraction to the their own gender. I will give them that it's a well made drama about a place and a time and some people in a tragic situation, but I didn't see any kind of groundbreaking civil rights stuff.

What I did see is the two main characters destroy the lives of all kinds of people around them because the didn't feel they could live the lives they wanted to. And yeah, that sucked for them, but I don't have a ton of sympathy because at the end of the day they were still willfully living a lie that was destroying the lives of the people close to them. Gay or straight, that's not cool with me.

It actually made most of the characters pretty unlikable for me. The only person I really cheered for was Ennis' wife. She was the only person who really took control and made the best of a bad situation.

I did think the dichotomy of scenery was kind of neat. There are many gorgeous, peaceful scenes in this movie, and they're all when the cowboys are up in the mountains and able to be with each other. The rest of the movie when they're stuck in society has a drab and downtrodden style. That was good, and not too heavy handed. But the scene at the end with the closet was just laugh out loud heavy handed symbolism for me.

I really do think this is a better movie than my reaction here portrays. Like I said, I think it's just suffering from the meaning's people have attached to it. However, regardless of all that I have no problems with Crash winning best picture this year. Brokeback Mountain is a fine movie, but as far as I'm concerned Crash was clearly better.

- The ancient male symbol was the blade, it's a basic phallus. It's still used today on military uniforms.
- Yes, and the more penises you have, the higher your rank. Boys will be boys!

Many people have told me I just absolutely *have* to read The DaVinci Code, but from what I've heard and seen of the story it never seemed like it was as fantastic as they make it out to be. My theory is that this is a work of fantasy where people's minds get engaged in what could be possible in our world. But for me I've spent a lot of time with science fiction and fantasy stories, where fantastic ideas are allowed to run free.

Admittedly, the book seems to be a great thrill ride as well. What will happen? Will Langdon escape and live? In essence that's what the movie provides as well. It's a fun ride as we follow a story. It doesn't really try to make any points, and it doesn't delve all that far into the codes and puzzles that are clearly a key theme in the story (any of you who have read the book, I'm curious how much the book really digs into those codes and puzzles...)

The movie did have some key highlights. Tom Hanks continues his trend of excellent acting work, but the movie was really stolen by Ian McKellen. He was just fantastic as the elder Englishman on a grail quest. I felt the movie noticeably perk up when he became involved.

Ron Howard continued some of the techniques he used in A beautiful Mind for showing how very smart people might solve puzzles or problems in their mind. That ghost looking visualization that highlights different pieces of the image with some muttering dialog does a great job of portraying quick though, something terribly hard to show in the movie medium. Also, I really enjoyed the special effects work they did in fading between modern scenes and historical ones. My favorite was the fade from the modern London skyline to middle ages London. Shots like that remind me of the amazing history that some of these places have seen, something we here in the relatively young United States tend to forget (especially those of us that live on the west coast.)

It's a fun ride, and I've even heard from a few people that read the books that it's a solid complement to the book - exploring the story in a new medium. Just try not to roll your eyes at the spectacularly bad police work during the chase scenes...

Our time on Samui was all about bumming around in island paradise. We hung out on the beach, played in the water, wandered around the island, and generally acted like tourists.

I finally stopped being a slacker and have written a big long article about the Thailand trip I went on in March with my friend Kai. This was an amazing trip. Thailand was fantastic and Kai was a great travel companion for me. You may want to break it into chunks though, as the thing came in just shy of 5000 words!

2006 Thailand Trip

Do not interrupt me when I'm asking rhetorical questions!

Mission Impossible 3 was very different from the previous two. This third installment ventured into the genre I think of as self-contained spy movies. These are movies with almost no exposition or external significance. Movies where the whole thing is just about this small group of people and whether or not they can pull off this hard to do job and not get screwed by double crosses in the process.

That's essentially the deal here. Tom and his buddies have to steal this "Rabbit's Foot" item, of which the only think we know is it's about the size of a breadbox (this is true throughout the movie.) Why do they need it? Why does the villain want it? Who cares! It's cool to watch them fight over it, and that's pretty much the whole point of the movie.

For this genre, I thought MI:3 was excellent. It was fast paced, all the characters are smart, and they got to do lots of over the top things. But by far the best part of the movie was Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the main villain. He didn't mess around with being a half hearted villain, or a good guy that lost his way. He is cold, self serving, and completely without morals or remorse to guide his actions. It's almost refreshing to see a pure villain like that in a movie.

This isn't a movie I'll remember as being ground breaking, but it sure was fun to watch.

The penguins are psychotic!

I gave Madagascar about 30 minutes last night before I gave up on it. The jokes were really funny, and the characters weren’t really interesting. I did like the penguins though and was sort of wishing that there was a special cut of the movie that just did the penguin highlights. It turns out there’s kind of one, and the DVD has a short film of penguin antics which I plan to watch before I ship the movie back to Netflix. This movie just didn’t resonate with me at all, it fell totally flat.

Still want more?
Read the Archives!