On Saturday Brenden and I visited a cousin (to be more precise: the daughter of my father's mother's brother. Got that?) who is in town getting a Cracker Barrell restaurant ready for opening at the end of this month. That's her job - she travels around the country and oversees getting these restaurants open. I can't decide if I would like that kind of job or not. Traveling is great, but that's an awful long time to be away from the family. Her children are grown up and have families of their own though.
It was a fun visit - I haven't seen her since I was a little girl and Neoma is as nice as I remember her. Brenden was about to blow a gasket - the store part of the restaurant was partially stocked so that means there were a lot of toys and candy he wasn't allowed to touch.
I finally saw a movie worth remembering last night - Inception. Christopher Nolan, most famous for his Batman movies that don't suck, also did Memento. Like Memento, I highly advise watching Inception when you can give the movie your full attention (and no beer! Trust me on this). I wish they made more summer movies like this; there's car chases, gun battles, explosions all over the place, and you have to *think* about what is going on!
I just finished a book, "The Big Picture: Who Killed Hollywood?", a series of rants essays by noted screenwriter William Goldman that were written during the 90's. It's a chronicle of the ongoing degeneration of movie quality as he writes about summer movies, Christmas movies, and the Oscars. It's a hilarious and depressing read. It's telling that one of the last things he rants about is a car chase in Micheal Bay's movie The Rock, where Sean Connery escapes from Nicholas Cage. Goldman recalls watching this and being stunned when Cage recaptures Connery, meaning there was no point at all to the car chase. Bay is NOTORIOUS for putting crap in his movies because it looks neat. (That reminds me of Ben Affleck's amusing commentary in the Criterion edition (!!!) of Armageddon - he kept pointing out all the helicopters that keep showing up in shots for no particular reason except they look cool).
So anyway I told you that to tell you this: Christopher Nolan is the anti- Micheal Bay. I'm not saying Nolan's movies are super-sophistimicated, I'm saying they are smart and they get people talking after the movie is over. And Inception made a boatload of dough, so maybe there's hope for Hollywood yet.
I wouldn't bet any money on it though.
A Word From the Boss
7 years ago
3 comments:
Well, that's the first thing I've heard/read about Inception that's made me think I might want to see it. That book sounds like fun.
Hey Nancy:
Anything by Goldman is fun. Wish that was one of the loanable Kindle books because I think you'd really get a kick out of it too.
Inception is easily the most fun I've had at an action movie since District 9. To be more specific why I liked it without discussing plot: 1) part of it is about ideas and how they can infect people. 2) The cast. Leo DiCaprio is finally looking like a man instead of an elf, but that's not important. The entire supporting cast, especially Joseph Gordon-Levitt, really work well together and with DiCaprio, and they all totally sold me on the premise. 3) The aforemetioned Gordon-Levitt in the niftiest fight sequence since something from The Matrix without imitating the Matrix. The photo I nicked to preface this blog entry is part of that sequence.
Sounds very cool!
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