April
2007
By Douglas Kent,
Email: doug of whiningkentpigs.com or diplomacyworld of yahoo.com
On the web at http://www.whiningkentpigs.com
– follow the links to the Diplomacy World
section for this subzine, old Diplomacy
World articles (and even some full issues in .pdf format), Message
Board, Chat Room, and other items of interest.
Or just go there directly at http://www.whiningkentpigs.com/DW/
All Eternal Sunshine readers are encouraged to join
the free Eternal Sunshine Yahoo group at http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/eternal_sunshine_diplomacy/
to stay up-to-date on any subzine news or errata. Also, any Diplomacy players in the
Quote Of The Month – “Sand is overrated. It's just tiny, little rocks.”
(Joel in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”)
Bonus Quote of the Month – “I’m not sorry for whining and throwing a fit, but I am
sorry for not saying thank you.” (Heather, in a classic Heatheresque moment)
Welcome to the third (but
hopefully not final) issue of Eternal Sunshine, the official subzine of The
International Brotherhood of Surly Creeps, of which I am a founding member. I’m starting to get into the swing of things
again, becoming more comfortable with the publishing process. Things certainly are a lot simpler than they
were back when I started Maniac’s Paradise. In those days, I was using a DOS version of
Word Perfect (I think 5.0), email had to be saved to files and reopened and
reformatted (cut-and-paste wasn’t an option), and the copy machine I used was
one-sided and super-slow. It took MUCH longer
for me to print, collate, staple, and mail each zine issue as it did to compose
and format it! Hmm, any of you who read
my zines back then are probably nodding your head thinking “yeah, that’s why
they were so lousy!” Since I distribute
this subzine by email or web for the most part (Jim-Bob does the print version
when he prints his own zine), those headaches are currently things of the past. But the general process I go through remains
the same as before: I take my prior issue, use it as a template for the new
one, add in some notes on items I might want to include, and then wait to see
what responses I receive from the prior issue (if any).
Perhaps because I do enjoy
the time I spend on this little subzine, and the time I spend doing hobby
activities in general, I’ve been convinced to take on a new project – or an old
one, depending on how you look at it.
Jim Burgess and I are working together to revive Diplomacy World
for the umpteenth time. I’m really
looking forward to seeing how this all works out. Since it will be a pdf publication with
basically zero print/post mail distribution, all the energy can be spent on
trying to collect the best possible material.
That’s always been the trickiest part – trying to find people to write
articles. The zine is only as good as
the submissions. Besides that, all DW
needs is a decent layout, publicity, and occasionally an editor’s red pen. If you’re not familiar with Diplomacy World,
go to my website and read some of the back issues I’ve posted as pdf
files. And if you are familiar with it,
why not try your hand at writing an article?
It doesn’t have to be all that difficult you know. You can cover just about anything
Diplomacy-related. Strategy &
Tactics has always been popular: what negotiating tricks do you have? What is the best English opening? You could design a puzzle or quiz. Relate Diplomacy to something historical, or
literary, or pop-culture in some way.
Anything about variants is always welcome. Attended a Con or a club meeting and had a
great (or terrible) time? Tell us
why. There is no limit to the topics you
can tackle. If you need some direction,
email me and we’ll talk about it. Length
of the articles can vary. Give it a try;
you may be surprised at what you can come up with! If nothing else, drop me a line when the new
issues start to come out (we’re approaching Issue #100, with #97 the one we’re
working on now) and let us know what you think…about a particular article or
the zine as a whole!
Hmm, what else did I need to say? Before I forget, check out the Eternal
Sunshine Games Section for a gamestart of By Popular Demand, which I decided
to run now that Andy York’s game in his subzine has finished up. Join in, and who knows, maybe I’ll send a
prize to the winner when it’s all over? What’s
the matter, are you scared? I double dog
dare you! Also, see the Movie Review
section for the list I threatened to come up with last issue – the 100 movies I
enjoy watching over and over again.
Yeah, maybe I do have too much time on my hands. I think I’ll start doing a monthly movie quiz
of some type next issue, depending on if I get any sort of feedback or response
to this rag at all – as I’m writing this I’ve only gotten a single letter of
comment on ES besides a note from my youngest sister and a concert review from
my oldest brother! Well you can’t get
rid of me that easily – I’m used to being ignored or making people uncomfortable. Nice try!
Okay, on to my monthly ramblings and babblings.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Heather and I have developed
very comfortable routines and schedules since I returned home, and each of us
have specific duties we handle. I do the
cooking, the cleaning, the laundry, and Heather … well, her number one job is
to sit on the couch and look beautiful and allow me to serve her! One of my most challenging tasks, however, is
getting Heather out of bed in the morning.
The exact start time changes every two weeks to match her shift at work,
but basically the routine is the same. I
get up, make coffee, and check my email and the news on the internet for about half
an hour – and then the fun really begins!
Heather cannot simply wake up and climb out of bed all at once; it has
to be accomplished in stages, which means I have to start a full thirty minutes
before she needs to be conscious.
The first step is simple:
you wake her up and tell her she can sleep for ten more minutes. No further discussion is necessary at that
point. Ten minutes later, you wake her
up and she’ll ask for “one more ten more minutes.” No problem, there’s time for that. The third time you wake her up, however…well, have you ever seen a child
bargain with his parents to stay up for a few more minutes? Or, perhaps more accurately, have you ever
seen a death-row inmate bargain for more time?
Even half-asleep, Heather can come up with a multitude of reasons why
she doesn’t need to get up yet. “I don’t
have to wash my hair today; I can sleep five more minutes.” “It’s Friday, I can wear jeans today, that’s
five minutes more.” “I don’t need to
bring my lunch today, three more minutes, please!” Of course that excuse doesn’t hold since I’m
the one who gets her lunch together. As
her pleadings are ignored, I expect she’ll become more creative in her
reasoning. “I put these socks on last
night, so I can wear them again, that’s two more minutes.” “I can run all the red lights, five more
minutes.” “I don’t need to wear any
makeup, ten more minutes.” I’ll have to
put my foot down when she tries “I can wear this underwear one more day” or “I
think it’s Wear Your Pajamas to Work Day.”
The odd thing is, no matter what time she does finally get out of bed, Heather
always winds up leaving home about three minutes late. ______________________________________________________________________________________
I listed a bunch of books
I enjoy rereading last issue, and then mentioned other books I have been
reading recently for the first time. The
last two books I’ve finished as I type this are Magical Thinking and Possible
Side Effects, both by Augusten Burroughs.
Augusten Burroughs is just about my favorite writer of the moment. He is also seems to be the reason I rarely
write anything of my own these days.
I can’t remember exactly
when I first heard of Burroughs. I think
I saw his memoir “Dry” on the windowsill in the stairwell of prison, and I
considered reading it up before changing my mind and putting it down
again. I guess I was a little burned-out
on the idea of digesting yet ANOTHER memoir about addiction or recovery – I’d
just finished “A Million Little Pieces” and my participation in the Residential
Drug and Alcohol Program (RDAP) made drug and alcohol use the major topic of almost
every day. I didn’t even bother to open
the book and read a page or two. If I
had, I probably would have read the book despite my feeling of overkill. Certainly I didn’t get another chance – books
left on the windowsill rarely made it more than an hour or two before they
disappeared.
Perhaps a word of
explanation is in order. In the prison I
did most of my time in, there were two “libraries”. The first was the official Prison Library. This is where you went if you wanted a
newspaper – assuming when you say “newspaper” you mean the classified section
from three weeks ago for the
I don’t mean to make it
sound like the nonexistent selection of books was all the fault of the prison
system. No, as it turns out there were a
number of inmates who were equally responsible.
Early on I would bring my personal books down to the library when I was
done with them, figuring if I donated them other inmates could enjoy them after
me. What I didn’t realize was that there
were a few odd and utterly selfish inmates who spent their time scanning the
bookshelves looking for any new books, especially hardcover. Why?
Because they’d pack them up in boxes and mail the books home to their
families so they wouldn’t have to buy them, and so they could try to sell them
on eBay or trade them in at used book stores.
I guess the idea of going to the library in their home town was out of
the question? I don‘t know, I never
fully understood it, especially as it wasn’t all that cheap or easy to send big
packages out. But it happened, and it
was always a problem. About the only
thing you could do to make a hardcover book less tempting was to deface the
cover in some way so it wouldn’t be considered sellable.
The windowsills were the
*real* library system, especially when it came to paperbacks. When you finished reading a book, you just
left it in the windowsill on the main stairwell. At least 100 times an hour somebody would
walk by, and within an hour or two the book would have found a new reader to
enjoy it. If it stayed longer than a
day, somebody might bring it to the library themselves (I often did that on the
way to breakfast) or in the end it would be thrown away by an orderly. Obviously there isn’t a lot to do in prison,
so even people who rarely read at home can find themselves avid readers. Most popular were books by Dean Koontz, or
similar authors who can write an intelligent story and churn out a new book
every year. The wealthiest inmates would
have them sent by families using Amazon as soon as hardcover versions were
published – it was considered a status symbol not to wait for the paperback. Second most popular were books on how to buy
real estate with no money down. It
seemed half of the inmates were convinced THIS was how they were going to get
rich. I always thought it odd, since
many of them had never had a real job, had no credit history, and were left
with little or no money in savings.
Their projections for price appreciation and income were always a little
suspect too – I’m no expert, but do most houses go in price up by 50% a year,
offer a ready list of problem-free tenants to pay rent, and never require
material repair or upgrade? One clever
inmate suggested he could make his OWN fortune publishing a book called “How to
Make Mega Bling Bling in Real Estate” because that title was guaranteed to
attract every inmate’s attention, and consequently sales would be massive.
The other books which were
hugely popular were the True Crime books.
I always told Heather that when she was sending a package she should
throw in a few used True Crime paperbacks if she didn’t have other books to
send. A few friends like Elaine would
send “care packages” of four or five books twice a year. Those books were like heroin to most inmates
– if they saw you reading one, they’d ask to get it after you…and usually that
reading list would be two or three names by the time you finished the
book. It was a rarity to find a True
Crime book on the windowsill, and if you did odds were high it was one you read
yourself at least six months earlier.
Serial killer books were favored, but it seemed to me that there didn’t
even need to be anything especially unusual for a killing to warrant its own
book; all it needed was enough press coverage and court records for the author
to throw a book together without too many personal interviews. That and a catchy title or gruesome photo or
cover artwork.
As usual, I’ve gone off on
a tangent, so allow me to return to my original subject – Augusten
Burroughs. In one of her packages,
Heather sent me his most popular book, Running With Scissors, and wrote
in an accompanying letter that his stories reminded her somewhat of my own
childhood tales. I’d worked through a
few David Sedaris books in the prior months, Naked being my favorite,
and this looked to be the same sort of thing.
Only it wasn’t – it was much better.
Burroughs tells his tales with such matter-of-fact delight, while reflecting
the understanding that as children so many of us didn’t have the experience or
the point of view to realize how odd or unusual our circumstances really
were. Within his pages I found stories
not so different then my own – well, except for his homosexual exploits with a
pedophile at age 13 which I was somehow lucky enough to skip in my life. But many of the other elements sounded all
too familiar: the crazy mother, the manipulative psychiatrist, the filth – an
“alternate universe” version of my family’s oddball years. And normal
people were buying this? Literary
types were enjoying these
stories? I was shocked and inspired
simultaneously. Perhaps there was hope
for The Screaming Adventures of the Whining Kent Pigs after all? I’ve only got a few chapters written, but
I’ve promised myself many times that I would make it a priority and finish that
project one of these days.
Unfortunately, in my
overwhelmingly negative outlook on myself (and much of the world), the success
of Augusten Burroughs is also a reason for despair. After all, if I do finish writing my
childhood stories, compile them in a book, and by some miracle get them
published…how could I hope to make them as entertaining or refreshing as those
Burroughs wrote? And wouldn’t anything I
compose simply be looked at as a rip-off, or a poor man’s homage to a literary
formula which has already had its potential market saturated? In the end, those who know me will realize that
if I didn’t want to use those as potential excuses not to proceed with that
project, I’d find other ones. I’m
working on my negativity, and I do think I am getting a bit better at forcing
myself to move forward without regard for those voices inside of my head – on
this project as well as others – but it’s a daily struggle. Perhaps it isn’t all that bad though…would
the world really be better off not hearing about the time my father licked
something disgusting in order to stop his children from arguing? Does it help anybody to read about my
mother’s mental illness, or my ex-wife’s for that matter? I suppose if you make the picture big enough,
everything loses its focus and its meaning.
I’m good at doing that!
______________________________________________________________________________________
In other personal news, wedding
plans proceed in the Whining Kent Pig household. Heather designed and purchased invitations
from the VistaPrint website, using a Halloween theme and adding her own
touches. They’re nice enough, not fancy,
and certainly far from expensive; just goofy and fun which is the image we want
the wedding to portray. Heather also
purchased some customized magnets which we’ll include in the invitation envelopes,
so people can stick them on their refrigerators and be reminded of their social
obligation to buy us expensive presents.
Hmm, which reminds me, we need to go on Amazon.com or something and
build some registry wish-lists. There
really isn’t any household item we need or want, so I imagine the lists will be
suggestions of what kind of gift cards we like!
Being a Halloween wedding,
Heather also went online and bought some cute Halloween decorations from
Oriental Trading. The box arrived last
week, with Halloween-style bubbles (instead of rice), a big Heather and Doug
Halloween banner, some table centerpieces, and some little stuffed bears
holding suckers, dressed in witch hats.
The place where we are having the wedding supplies most of the decorations,
but since Heather wants things to be Halloween in theme, we’re buying some
stuff to develop the flavor she’s looking for.
Since there are still seven months to go, I suspect those purchases are
not yet finished. Maybe you’ll all be
unlucky enough to see some photos in the subzine here after the big day.
Since last issue, the
final BIG piece of the puzzle - the one which had been making Heather typically
frantic and manic - was put in place: we found our photographer. This was not an easy project, for a number of
reasons. First there was the matter of
cost – this is going to be a small ceremony and reception, with maybe 35 people
attending, and we don’t need (nor can we afford) one of these professionals who
wants to charge you to show up and take the photographs, and then wants to own
the rights to the photos too, forcing you to buy them one at a time. There won’t be a bridal portrait or stuff
like that. All we want is someone to
take photos of the house, the decorations, and ceremony, and the
reception. I figure one or two of our
friends can be counted on to bring digital cameras to take some photos, but if
it isn’t too much money we would both prefer to have a designated, skilled
photographer there to do the job. After
all, we’re both hoping this is our LAST marriage, and it might be nice to have
some decent snapshots of it.
The initial search was
difficult. Most professionals were out
of our price range immediately. So
Heather started calling around to make appointments with the few we might be able
to afford. That’s when we discovered a
new problem, one which I never considered beforehand. As it turns out, down here in the Buckle of
the Bible Belt, some people have a problem with a Halloween wedding. That problem is compounded when Heather
explains to them that we are having a non-traditional ceremony, complete with
Celtic handfasting (or a version of it that Heather wants anyway), and that our
wedding officiant is nondenominational.
Suddenly the more ignorant among them imagine a ceremony where we
sacrifice a newborn child and drink its blood.
One woman flat-out told Heather she would not do a wedding on Halloween
“because it is against my religious beliefs.”
Ha, I bet this same holier-than-thou woman allows her children to dress up
on Halloween and go to the doors of strangers asking for candy. Oh well.
In the end we made
appointments to see two photographers on a Saturday afternoon. In the morning Heather had her College
Algebra class, which meant all we had time to do was come home, eat lunch, and
then leave again to drive the 30 miles to the agreed upon meeting place for the
first appointment – an Olive Garden in Arlington, midway between Dallas and
where the first photographer lived. While
as recently as 2003 I lived in
I did my best to calm
down, and we started the meeting. Right
away I could see this guy was not going to be the one for us. First of all, it felt more like WE were being
interviewed by them, instead of the reverse.
His “portfolio” was impressive enough, but strangely there were hardly
any wedding photos – most of his work was photos of animals, weather, or his
wife in modeling poses. As it turned
out, he had recently left a larger photography studio to work on his own, and
obviously those photos he had taken while employed there were not his legally
to show as samples. It’s hard to
describe why they weren’t right – just way too stiff for Heather and me, too normal
for lack of a better word. Our typical
banter and semi-sarcastic jokes were met with polite giggles or (more usually)
uncomfortable smiles. We didn’t stay and
eat or anything, as soon as we were done we left the restaurant and went to the
car, where we both agreed they probably wouldn’t work out…but as a last resort,
perhaps we could settle for this guy and his wife, assuming they didn’t decide
that photographing a wedding on Halloween would cause them eternal damnation.
The second appointment was
about 20 miles further west, on the west end of
I am not ashamed to admit
that viewing the carnage in front of us, and realizing the mess was left that
way even with the knowledge days in advance that we were coming for an
appointment, I felt fairly certain that we had just found the photographer for
us. Not so much because the place was
chaotic, but more because this appeared to be someone who was willing to be who
they are, to put on no false pretenses, and to allow the world to accept them
that way or reject them entirely. An
independent spirit like that was without question the type Heather was bound to
connect well with.
We walked up to the open
garage to come face to face with two grease-covered men in jeans and flannel
shirts. Instead of saying anything, they
just stood and kind of stared at us, until finally Heather broke the silence to
ask if Melissa was around (the name of the woman we were meeting – as usual I
hadn’t even been given that much information). Broken from their comas, the men grunted and
motioned towards the front door, where Melissa suddenly appeared to usher us
inside, apologizing for keeping us waiting.
The reason for her tardiness became apparent as we entered directly into
the living room, where an infant lay on the rug with a pacifier in her mouth,
smiling up at us.
Everything about the home
and Melissa seemed to put Heather at ease.
Te room was decorated in what I would call Late Country Texas: license
plates and other auto memorabilia on the walls and the shelves of the
entertainment center, denim-covered sofa and loveseat, and a few photos of
typical
Melissa and Heather talked
for what seemed like an hour, about her ideas for the wedding, family, second
marriages, and Melissa’s work experiences (both as a photographer and earlier
as a security person for a department store, tackling shoplifters). In the middle of the visit, a sleek black cat
we learned was named Voodoo wandered in and we both spent some time giving her
affection. I had to fetch something from
the car at one point, so I missed a story Melissa told, but Heather filled me
in later…it was about a woman who came to talk about having her wedding done,
but seeing the house she chose not even to stop, just slowing down and leaving
before she called fifteen minutes later to say “something had come up.” That’s just the kind of story that touches
Heather’s heart. Anyway, by the time we
were getting up to go meet Apache the Golden Retriever and then leave, Heather
had gotten out her checkbook and handed over a deposit. There really wasn’t any reason to wait or to
think about it. With the same certainty
she’d chosen the location for the wedding, the officiant, or the groom for that
matter, Heather had chosen our photographer.
I doubt Melissa has any issues with a Halloween wedding, as she’d been
in the bridal party for one a couple of years earlier (so she couldn’t be the
photographer unfortunately), and at her own second wedding had done the whole
thing “Chevy Style” – which included driving up to the ceremony in a ’57 Chevy,
and wearing a Chevy “bow-tie” on her dress.
What are a few witches and pumpkins after all that?
Zodiac – The long-awaited
adaptation of Robert Graysmith's book "Zodiac" (long-awaited by me,
anyway, having been a fan of the book for 15 years) has finally arrived.
Graysmith was a political cartoonist in
For those of you who aren't familiar with the case, Zodiac was a serial killer
in the
The movie centers on three main players in the Zodiac case: Graysmith (played
by Jake Gyllenhaal), San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey
Jr.), and police detective David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo). Graysmith comes
off as a Boy Scout-type oddball who develops a feel for Zodiac and an obsession
with the case. Avery is accurately portrayed as a self-destructive
alcoholic who can't see past his own desire for press - "this is good
business" he is heard to comment in regard to the killings. Mark
Ruffalo's performance is very strong as Toschi, the famed detective who Steve
McQueen modeled his “Bullitt” character after, loved by some and envied by
others, about to face the biggest case he will never solve. The murder of
cab driver Paul Stine suddenly evolves from the simple robbery it appears to be
into the latest victim of a serial killer when Zodiac writes the newspapers and
details his crimes. As
Eventually Graysmith decides to write a book on the case, as his obsession costs
him his job and destroys his marriage. Running back and forth between
locations, suspects, archives, libraries, and police departments, Graysmith (in
book and film) makes a case for one particular suspect. A follow-up book,
"Zodiac Unmasked", was basically devoted to building that case.
Sadly no charges were ever filed, and that suspect has since died of a heart
attack. In 2004 a partial DNA sample was found under a postage stamp on
one of the Zodiac letters and I believe this suspect was not a match, but
nobody has really decided how to handle that. Likewise, suspects were
eliminated throughout the investigation on the basis of a partial hand-print
found in the cab (which may or may not have been Zodiac's) and writing samples
compared to the letters. The confusion in this case helps point out how
far law enforcement has come to eliminate the types of problems which plagued
the Zodiac investigation from Day One.
It’s hard to adapt a book like Graysmith's for the screen, especially when
there is no big payoff - we all know they don't find the bad guy before you
even walk into the theatre. And the case is so complex, and filled with
so many tidbits, readers of the book may argue that some information should
have been put in the film. Yet even with all the things missing, it runs
over 2 1/2 hours. You have to stop SOMEWHERE!
I had heard lukewarm reviews of the film before I saw it, so I was delighted to
learn it was better than I expected. Overall I give it a B+. Take a
trip back 35 years and experience all over again a period in history when
"the good old days" were ending and violent crime started to become a
daily occurrence.
Color Me Kubrick - Color
Me Kubrick is an enjoyable little farce, based at least partially on
fact. John Malkovich plays Alan Conway, a strange alcoholic con artist
who spends his free time pretending to be the recluse director Stanley
Kubrick. It is my understanding that Alan Conway was a real person, and
that the movie is based on press accounts of his exploits.
The film could have taken a number of directions with this material,
focusing on his effect on the numerous victims of his scam, or perhaps deriving
sympathy for a sad, lonely person who generally only manages to acquire free
drinks or some male companionship. Instead they chose to allow Malkovich
to romp through scene after scene, clearly enjoying himself along the
way. His Alan Conway shows little knowledge of Kubrick's actual
accomplishments, and adjusts his version of the director depending on what he
thinks his audience wants to see. Sometimes he is an aloof, quiet,
mysterious individual. At other times he is boastful and
boisterous. But at almost every turn both Conway and Malkovich spend
their time smiling.
The plot is basically the same scene over and over:
The film almost plays itself out too repetitively, but the witty dialog and
minor characters keep the fun moving along, and Malkovich's hammy performance
is a treat. I should add they make an
effort to insert music from Kubrick movies in spots which give it a very
sarcastic feel (“2001” theme as he takes dirty clothes to the laundry as an
example), and there is also a mention of John Malkovich as an actor cast in one
of the fictional Kubrick “my next film” descriptions, which I imagine was irresistible
to the writers. The movie never takes itself seriously, and neither
should you, but overall its a fun way to spend an evening. How many
chances do you have to hobnob with a famous director?
The
Lookout - The Lookout is one of those movies where I tried
to keep my expectations low, and found myself rewarded for taking a chance on
the film in the first place. Scott Frank wrote and directed this
suspenseful and moving story of a young man trying to find his place in the
world, and in his own head, after a serious accident from which he may never
recover in more ways than one.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who you may remember from what seems like ages ago as the
youngest child on “3rd Rock From the Sun”) gives a strong performance as Chris
Pratt. Once the envy of all the teenagers in his small Kansas town -
jock, good looking, confident, with a beautiful girlfriend - Pratt causes a
deadly car wreck one night, killing two of his best friends, injuring his
girlfriend, and causing serious brain damage to himself. Now four years
later he is still reeling from the guilt of what he did to himself and his
friends. He also suffers from memory
loss, not just of the accident but on a daily basis. Unable to keep reliable
track of his daily routine, he has to keep writing in a notebook to avoid
forgetting important but small details of life - things as simple as to use
soap in the shower.
Working as a night janitor in the local bank, Pratt unwittingly becomes friends
with a group who plan to convince him to help them rob the bank. Between
his mental problems and the desire to regain a sense of the friendships that
surrounded him in the past, Chris is drawn into their plans and becomes a
willing accomplice. But how willing will he be when the time comes, and
can the group succeed at all? More importantly, how does this new
direction of his life change who he is and how he feels about himself, the
world, and his place in it? Those questions are left for the film to
answer.
Jeff Daniels does a wonderful job as a blind man sharing an apartment with
Chris. As a man who has learned to live with the sad state he put himself
into, his character tries his best to lead Pratt into the world of acceptance,
where he can deal with what he did and try to make the best of the life he is
left with. His character is a powerful reflection of the potential still
living within Chris, if he can only find it.
Writer/Director Scott Frank keeps the suspense throughout the film. Much
in the way of Hitchcock's "bomb in the drawer", often in the film the
viewer knows tragedy is about to strike, but the characters remain oblivious to
the impending danger...just as people in real life would be. Yet how the
suspense will exactly play out is always a mystery until the next step reveals
itself.
With broad comedy and family animation topping the box office this week, do
yourself a favor and search out this gem of a movie instead. Learning to
forgive yourself not just for what you've done to others, but for what you've
done to yourself, can be terribly difficult...I know that as well as (or better
than) anybody. In the end, that is this movie's message: whatever
situation we've put ourselves in, it won't get much better until we learn to
accept it, forgive ourselves for getting there, and then try to make the best
of it.
Seen on DVD – The DaVinci Code (D – wooden
acting and cardboard dialogue); Love Song for Bobby Long (B-, the last 30
minutes make up for the slower pace of the rest); The King of Comedy (C+, what
I originally found to be incredibly funny when the film first came out just
didn’t hold up so well, now that we’re in a world of instant celebrity status);
March of the Penguins (B+, beautiful cinematography, moving storytelling my
Morgan Freeman, and an honest study of the awesome struggle Emperor Penguins go
through to mate); Smilla’s Sense of Snow (B-, I saw it when originally
released, and the vast spaces of snow are much more impressive on the big
screen).
And now for a special
feature, which I promised last month – the list of the 100 movies I enjoy
watching over and over. Some of these
can only like to watch once or twice a year, others I could probably enjoy
every two months! Of course, time
constraints prevent me from watching as many movies as I’d like to, but that
doesn’t stop me from making dumb lists like this. I’d love to hear your feedback, and if you
want to email me your own list (Top 5, 10, 20, 100, whatever) I would be
interested in seeing it. Remember, these
are not necessarily the 100 movies I most enjoyed in my life, or the 100 best
movies, just the 100 I am able to enjoy again and again.
The Eternal Sunshine
List of 100 Movies I Enjoy Watching Again and Again – In Alphabetical Order
(Ranking Them Would Be Too Hard)
