Well, Jennifer told me I would find Montreal boring. Not so. There's clearly not a lot of high end shopping... but the downtown is cute, and I'm looking forward to exploring a bit.
The train ride was... long, and even the cute French boy (from Montpelier) pointed out that European trains and border crossings go more smoothly. That's the dilemma of the new security age, though, isn't it - either we're careful and deliberate about reviewing everyone's documents or... we're lax. I may be liberal about many things, but frankly, I'll live with increased border security.
So Ray and I passed the time with three movies (and I agree with the older lady who marveled at our watching movies via computer - it is an amazing age in which we live), which I will encapsulate here:
- Return of the Jedi - Ray had the new, "expanded" version, which had updated computer graphics (which didn't seem to make a lot of difference as far as I could tell), and a shot of Anakin at the end with Obi-Wan and Yoda, that kind of made sense... but kind of didn't. The Ewoks are just too darn cutesy and undermine the effectiveness of the story... but I'd forgotten that the story is quite powerful at times. And sometimes I think it's a shame that Carrie Fisher gave up acting - she was really something.
- Oldboy - I brought along this film, a Korean film that is an adaptation of one of those dark comic novels - and better (visually) than anything I've seen Westerners try to do. The story concerns a man who is imprisoned for 15 years against his will in a mysterious room, and when he is let out, tries to find who did this to him and why. It's a dark, convoluted tale - much darker, and much more convoluted than I anticipated from the reviews. Kind of a Memento meets Chinatown kind of thing, but even darker. Ray said, politely, that perhaps I need to "get help" for my issues. If this was the best example of my film tastes, I'd have to agree with him.
- Wedding Crashers - As a change of pace, I threw in Ray's copy of Wedding Crashers, easily one of my favorite comedies of the past 5 years. Ray had never seen it, and thought it was great. Put Owen Wilson's blond Cali-laid-back-surfer persona in the right context and he really shines. And I don't think I've seen Vince Vaughan's 90-mile-an-hour stream of consciousness put to better use. And that's not even mentioning the two winning ingenues - Isla Fisher and Rachel McAdams. Or Christopher Walken and Jane Seymour(!) as the brilliant, dotty parents. If I had to choose, I'd say skip Old Boy and rent Wedding Crashers. But I'd still say buy both. I did.
More to come. Have a great day.
Recent Comments