Yeah I saw this movie. It seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it affair really, with some raving and some crying “please stop, no more,” but my current boss said it best when she left to silence most of the points and stated simply “it’s not a movie I’d watch again.”

Fair enough, and that’s about where I stand on the issue as well. It has some great cinematic moments in it, coupled together with some weak, B-movie ones with very weak transitions from one end to the other. The story is decent enough, though to me there were some things that should have gotten more attention.

More than anything, I think it’s a story of man’s wickedness. You watch the movie and you see firsthand the gruesomeness of humanity, to take from others what is not yours & leave others dead, damaged, & despaired with no concern of your own. You watch the first 30 minutes and you instantly hate all republicans – even the ones you’re good friends with – and every instance of waged war ever stricken on this earth. What I find most amusing about this is that it’s a Mel Gibson Movie. You know, that staunch right-wing christian advocate who made that film Passion of the Christ & later slandered every person of Jewish decent in a drunken stupor? Yeah, that Mel Gibson.

Well if you look at things as they are in the film and as it relates to current times, the morals of the story are that war is bad, man is wicked, and man’s organizations & societies are built upon this wickedness & the perversion of all our finer qualities, instead focusing on superficialities, and the mere appearance of being close to god and all that stands for. In other words, all that the right-wingers like he stand for and fight (read: war) to protect. The underlying message of the film is that he & the history of his belief system have been so verifiably wrong & evil that suddenly I don’t care how many whips JC took, I hate christianity in all its glory. Especially the Crusaders.

Not that they’re alone, mind you. Almost every religion is guilty in this same regard, and thus feels my ire almost as much as the protestants. Though not quite, because the protestants are the ones building the biggest soapboxes from which to profess their innocence, despite their long history of violence & subversion.

Ahem. It’s a movie worth watching I think, if only because it personifies the evil that is man’s war against himself, and in such close-knit settings of family ties, really does a good job of showing the grief of loss & suffering wrought upon the innocent, when we don’t think about the consequences of our actions beyond our own selves. If you’re of right mind, you can easily see the fallacy of having a rich elite making decisions about the paths of others’ lives, when they will not take part nor see the effects of their decisions firsthand.

If you can forgive it its few silly camera tricks & cheap cutbacks here & there, it’s a workable film with an important enough point to be made, even if that point contradicts the point-makers' views, oddly enough. It’s worth watching, though yeah, only once. I’ll give it a straight B.



Birthday treat issued this fine day
For my birthday, The Girl got me a full-body massage from a local spa/hair place. We went together & she got her hair done as I got my body rubbed down, and it was a perfect day for it as well, with an intermittent drizzle coming down. So yeah, the warm rubdown in a sauna-like room was a great idea!

The only real issue I had was the massage itself. It was good, don’t get me wrong, seeing as how back rub=like sex to me. But we started off with the masseuse asking me if I had any sore spots or anything to be cautious of, and I said that heck no, I’m really healthy so go for it, but instead I got the granny rubdown.

Maybe I should have been a bit more forthright in what I meant; Maybe I should have said something more like “please throw bricks at my body” or maybe “I am impervious to pain” or something like “family problems? Boyfriend issues? Troubles at home? Please let me be your punching bag. Feel free to take out your aggression on me.” Because the massage I got was meant for an 80 year old woman with a hunchback, not a 20-something male with a proclivity to lift heavy objects over and over again, just for the fun of it, just to see if he can, just so he can lift heavier objects next time.

I didn’t say anything during it mainly because I didn’t want to upset the help. I’ve never been there before! Maybe that’s how she works, you know? Maybe she starts soft and ends rough, maybe it’s just a warm-up, maybe she’s just lulling me into ‘ho-hum’ land before throwing the elbows in and trying to remove meat from my ribcage.

Turns out No, she’s just massaging me as if I got out of spinal surgery a few minutes ago or something. So next time? If there is a next time? See 2nd paragraph up from this one. One of those or all three or maybe a combination of those and some other fancy lines I can come up with.

On a lighter note, The Girl actually liked her haircut, though she admits she could have stood to go a few inches shorter (that’s what I keep telling her. Insert sexual innuendo here), and it only cost $35 dollars, which ain’t bad for girl’s hair. So I think she found a good place to come back to and maintain that sexy mane.



Speaking of Manes
My hair is growing so much faster up here. I think it’s the healthy new beginnings. Seriously. I used to be able to go 2-3 months between haircuts, and people considered my shag to be growing fast. Today I looked at it and thought to myself that it was getting long in the tooth (so to speak) and needed a good cutting. I looked up the last time I had it chopped. Not even a month. Damn.

Like Greased Lightning, man. And I’m italian, so that’s really not too far from the truth. The lightning’s all that’s missing.

Peace.

Tags: Entertainment