I watched the movie “Millions” a few days ago. It’s another Danny Boyle tale (you know, “Trainspotting,” “28 Days Later.” Maybe “The Beach.”) and it shares that quirkyness and intensity with his past work. But there are some differences.
Gone are the scenes of ultraviolence, drug use, course language and debauchery. In their place are scenes of genuine heart. This is a family movie.
The story is this: A small boy named Damian is thrown (literally) a bag of money that he believes came from God. (The boy is a walking Rolodex of saints and martyrs, and he has conversations with many of them during the film.) But when it turns out the source of the money is a bit less miraculous than Damian first thought, it becomes a Pandora’s box of problems for he and his family.
It’s the kind of family film that I can watch without feeling like I’m wearing a diaper. Most “nice” movies also fall into the category of “bad” movies, but Boyle proves that’s not a hard and fast rule.
Oh…
And I saw “Walk the Line” recently, even though I completely forgot to write about it. It’s a fantastic movie, well acted, well directed and with a great subject like Cash, it’s bound to go right.
Actually, it’s not the end-all-end-all of movies. It has flaws. But I don’t really have the time to rudely point them out. It’s been done. I’ll just leave it by saying that I enjoyed it thoroughly, and I think the Man in Black would be honored.
‘Tis the season, so Make a Flake!
Serendipity led me to find UnderworldLive.com this morning at approximately 9:45 PST. Low and behold, there was scheduled a live music webcast for today at 6 p.m. UK time. For those of you without a time zone map, that means I just happened to stop by this Underworld fan site 15 minutes before an excellent mix session by people involved with the group. That’s random chance.
Oh, and I discovered that they have some new recorded material available for purchase. The thing is, it only shows the price as being 5 pounds. Anyone know what the exchange rate is these days?
I’ve been a huge Underworld fan since the days when I shrugged off much of my fine Midwestern sensibilities and found the internet to be a most remarkable place to discover music scenes that were thriving half a world away. No, I’ve never been to the UK, I’ve never seen guys on stage making music with laptops and I’ve never taken drugs while bobbing my head in a dark and smokey club while DJs spin Born Slippy Nuxx. At least I didn’t while that song was new. But I do have most of Underworld’s material, and it is dear to my heart as soundtrack from my disorienting youth.
(I even forgive them for contributing to the Batman & Robin soundtrack, as I have forgiven several other artists who contributed to that piece of whoredom.)
Michelle and I did the Pacific Northwest thing and went out into the woods on Sunday to chop down our own Christmas tree.
We were originally going to get an artificial tree (because they’re easier) but due to nice ones being multipe-hundreds of dollars, and the strange looks we got from all the locals, we decided to do it the old fashioned way. So we packed up the old front-wheel drive sleigh, drove up to where the snow is deep, and snowshoed out into the wilderness to look for the perfect Griswold Wilcox/Zeigert family Christmas tree. Everything went pretty OK, except that dragging even the modest tree that we got through the snow is a lot harder than it looks on the cartoons. We had a couple of friends helping us (I owe them a beer) so the work was distributed.
We eventually got it back to the parking lot, lashed it to the roof of the Jetta, and brought it back to the homestead. Over the next couple of days we got it mounted, trimmed, lighted and decorated. It’s a pretty good looking tree for something we found growing in the woods.
Check out some of the photos we took.
It took me damn near 2 months to do it, but I finally finished Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. To be honest, it really shouldn’t have taken me that long. I need to better my reading habits. But that’s for another entry.
The Silmarillion is the old testament to Tolkien’s better-known The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy. It’s the story of everything leading up to LOTR, from the creation of the universe to the re-re-rise of Sauron. Basically, it fills out the universe of lore that Tolkien created, and while reading it you begin to realize just what the man accomplished. He created a new mythology. And a rather extensive, if incomplete, mythology it is.
Continue reading ‘The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien’
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