Went to the Belcourt Saturday night with Stephen, Suzie, Art, Daniel and James. It was a rather late screening 9:30 but we were determined to see it. Or at least Me Stephen and Suzie were. I’m not sure how the others felt. I think we had all seen the trailers on the web so we knew that Jean Claude was kind of stretching a little bit the question on my mind at least was could he pull it off.
The movie starts with the action sequence from the trailer but it’s expanded and hilarious, It’s all one long take, there are missed cues, bungled stunts, several times Jean Claude has to take a second or two to capture his breath. Then your in the courtroom where the one thing that Jean Claude has managed to do with any success if thrown right back into his face. With a few economic scenes we are shown a man near the end of his tether.
Then Jean Claude stops his taxi to run into a post office/bank, and then suddenly it appears that he’s robbing the bank and possible holding hostages. Was Jean Claude that desperate? The movie then goes back and fills in the story around the corners, filling in just a few more details here and there. Now we see a man not only at the end of his tether but he’s fingering the release.
You’ve simply got to go see this movie. It’s wonderful. Jean Claude with the right material can actually act. The story is great and the cinematography is wonderful.it looks absolutely gorgeous.
Man I hate to gripe about this, I feel like I’m about to do a stand up routine about how bad airline service is but this is ridiculous. Amazon’s got a 12 Days of Holiday special going on. What the hell is 12 days of holiday? Is it Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday? Or maybe it’s the 23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th. Which Holiday, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving, Pearl Harbor Day, Hanukkah, Christmas, Boxing Day, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, New Years Eve, New Years Day, Ground Hog’s Day, Valentine’s Day, wait that’s twelve holidays maybe that’s what they are referring to. I love Amazon and I don’t believe that when somebody tells you to have a “happy holiday” that they are denying the role of Christ in Christmas, and even if they were that’s there business, at least they aren’t telling you to go to hell. After all this is the Holiday Season. It stretches from Thanksgiving to New Years Day. There are several different holidays in there some religious some secular. If you want to wish me Happy Holidays, thank you. If you want to wish me Merry Christmas, that’s fine. It you want to wish me Happy Hanukkah (I’m not sure that’s appropriate and I’m too lazy to look it up), I’ll take it. If you want to wish me well for any reason I wish nothing but the same for you. But everything has it’s limits.
12 Days of Holiday
Like I said before, what the hell does it mean? Of course it means 12 Days of Christmas. It’s an as obvious as you can get reference to the Christmas carol 12 Days of Christmas. That’s the first thing that everyone is going to think when they see it. It’s a straight substitution of Holiday for Christmas. If there actually exists someone out there that is actually offended at the word Christmas is this really going to mollify them? If they are so sensitive that the mere realization that other people are celebrating this day is 12 Days of “Holiday” really going to ease there consciences? Wouldn’t if have to be more along the lines of 12 Days of Introspection and Reflection on the Oppression and Destruction Visited on the World by Western Civilization? Actually that’s got a bit of a ring to it. Merry Day of Introspection and Reflection on the Oppression and Destruction Visited on the World by Western Civilization, okay maybe it doesn’t.
I enjoy a good euphemism and nice turn of phrase as well as anybody else, but when you start to screw around with the meanings of words you start to piss me off. I’m not talking about the natural evolution of language. Because by the definition of “natural” and “evolution” it’s something a body can keep a handle on. It improves communications, but this arbitrary substitution of one word for another just ends up making understanding one another even more difficult.
— Update —
Wow, I put up post about Amazon’s 12 Days of Holiday promotion and the next thing you know it’s Amazon’s 12 Days of Christmas promotion. Coincidence?
Art’s birthday was Thursday so we all went over to Art’s Friday night for some birthday cake and other assorted revelries, by other assorted revelries I mean conversation and video games. “Other assorted revelries” sounds like some sly euphemism employed to mask illicit but extra cool activities. All of my illicit activities are licitly boring and I have no illusions about my coolness deficit. Anyway Friday night was a lot of fun as is every night i can spend with friends.
I did try something new Friday night. I don’t know if it was Rock Band or Guitar Hero, but I played it Friday night. I sang. It was fun. Singing has got to be the easiest part to play. I don’t know how anybody can do the guitar or drum parts. Like I said it’s fun but it kind of bugs me a bit too. How much harder would it be to actually create music instead of pretending to create music. Sure it’s not going to sound as good as what you hear in the game, but surely the fact that it’s actually you doing it would make up for that. Still I would play again given the opportunity.
Spent most of Saturday reading the Watchmen and watching Stephen, Daniel and James play Magic. More notes on Watchman in a separate post. That night we went to see JCVD, which again I will discuss in more detail in a separate post, but I will say it was great, see it if you get the chance.
Went to see Billy on Sunday, It’s been forever since I was out his way. Discussed possibilities of another Wyoming trip. Need to work up a load for my AR so we can start reloading.
There is a corridor in the library in downtown Nashville that has murals of the Centennial Fair in Nashville in 1886. There are also some murals of the Fair along a staircase in Opryland Hotel. It took place in the aptly named Centennial Park, or I guess it’s more accurate to say that Centennial Park is the bones of the fair. While we still have the Parthenon, most of the other structures are gone. Any images I’ve managed to glimpse of the Centennial Fair have always interested me. I don’t know why. In 1982 I went with my parents and some aunts and uncles to the Knoxville World Fair. That was interesting but disappointing. The only really amazing thing about it was the crowds, but at least we comforted ourselves with the fact that we could say we had been. Which is funny because I could probably count on one hand the times I had an opportunity to tell someone that I attended the Knoxville Worlds Fair. Do they even have Worlds Fairs anymore?
Anyway I’m rambling, the Devil in the White City is about the Colombian Exposition in Chicago during the last decade of the nineteenth century. A literally world changing exposition to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus landing in America. Reading about the size and grandeur of the Exposition grounds It’s hard to believe such an undertaking could be accomplished now, but a talented group of people pulled it off over a hundred years ago.
Intertwined with this story of what the combined might of an industrial America could pull off was the story of a very sick indivudual. A serial killer who over the years refined his habits and treated the Columbian Exposition like a buffet.
And it’s all true. Larson backs it all up. The last fifth of the book are footnotes and bilbliagraphies.
I suppose there is a lot of material to compare and contrast and deep meanings to extract from the book and if I wasn’t so tired a few my float into my frontal lobes but even with out examining the book in any depth it is a facinating and thorughly entertaining glimpse at a by gone age.
This was one of my Dad’s favorite series when he was a young man. It tells the story of the first settlers in Kentucky and one very talented outdoorsman. I couldn’t put this one or the next one down. Now I’ve got to find the others in the series.
