Recent Viewing

Over the past few weeks I/we have watched a few movies, all of them good...

Firstly "The Kingdom". This is about a team of FBI agents who go to Saudi Arabia to investigate a terrorist attack on a western living compound in the country. I guess part of me found this interesting as I worked with a consultant who was at one of these compounds when a quite noteworthy attack happened. Hearing him describe being trapped on the floor of his apartment, under the stairs, while gunmen were driving through the streets strafing all of the buildings was quite chilling. He mentioned seeing the bullet holes appearing in the wall above him. To make matters worse, his wife and two children were trapped in another building so he had no idea if they were OK. It was quite chilling stuff. The next day they flew out of the country, leaving their stuff behind, never to return...so anyway, back to the movie. The sequence of the terrorist attack was very well shot and certainly compelling viewing. The rest of the movie was I guess somewhat of a cliche with the interplay between the Americans and the Saudis however I did find it all quite engrossing. I guess much of it was realistic, OK...except for the ending sequence where a couple of FBI Agents and one Saudi officer, all lightly armed, drove into a well defended, terrorist stronghold and shot them all up. The ending was an attempt to show the difficulty of the current situation which I guess it achieved...but kind of an obvious point I thought. In any case, if you are after a couple of hours of suspense, action etc, you could do worse than this.

Next was "The Bourne Ultimatum". Talk about non-stop action. There was no wasted time at all in this film. It was exhausting to watch as every scene seemed to be constant action and running, following Bourne with a hand-held camera...while always flashing back to a room full of dudes watching stuff on TV...flashing to bad guys doing stuff...back to Bourne...etc . Mindy came in about 1/2 way through (she had said she was not really that interested in watching it) and was glued to the screen for the rest of the movie. The highlight of the film was the long sequence in Waterloo Station - for sustained suspense and intrigue, this really cannot be beaten. The three movies in this series are all amazing action films so if you have not seen them yet, make sure you fix this!

Finally I purchased the DVD for "Into The Wild". I normally don't do this, but I guess since we have the book and the CD already, it makes sense to round out the collection. I was interested to see how this movie was made. In short, it is the story of Chris McCandless who walked away from society to wander the country. His journey ended in Alaska where he lived off the land for a few months. Unfortunately he passed away in Alaska, either simply from starvation or from some kind of poison/fungus, depending who you ask (the details are unclear). Much of the book is concerned with his travels before he gets to Alaska and all that is known of his time in Alaska is a few journal entries that he kept. I was curious to see the movie and what I had expected was an account of his time in Alaska, filling in the blanks as a fictional movie can...where a factual book could not. However, the movie also stuck to the facts that are known and primarily dealt with his dealings with those he met before going to Alaska. I guess that I had not really thought about it too much but endless scenes of him lying around and hunting would not have made an entertaining movie, one of the reasons I am working at Colgate and not in Hollywood, I suppose!The highlight for me was the performance of Hal Holbrook as Ron Franz, an elderly man who befriended Chris. In real life, Ron Franz stated that he was incredibly religious and when he said goodbye to Chris, he prayed that God would look after him. After finding that he starved to death in Alaska, he proclaimed himself to being an atheist, stating that if God would not look out for Chris, then he wanted no part of it. Quite an amazing impact that he had. Overall the movie was quite good, although perhaps a little long. Sean Penn really enjoyed making this film and felt a connection with the characters involved. Worth a look but perhaps read the book first. It is hard to say but I think that a lot of the people involved would make more sense getting this background first.

Also, we finished the latest season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" on DVD. This is one of the best things on TV and I hope Larry David makes another season. Certainly check this out if you have not done so...but also, give yourself a few episodes to get the feel of the show. It is certainly worth the effort (and at times watching him go through his life, it truly feels like an effort!).