Single Payer National Health Care Now

What you do you think? I’m going with it for now. It’s not perfect but I don’t think I can wait any longer. With the Congress playing “duck and cover” both literally and figuratively it seems when they have town hall meetings on health care, this is not the time to wait for the perfect national health care banner for my blog. I’m still open to suggestions though. I’m also still open to inspiration but I see to be dry in that area so I’m rooting for the suggestions.

Movie Monday - The Incredible Hulk, Tropic Thunder, home vs. movie “theaters” and some of Appaloosa.

I think I came to this conclusion late: movie house movies and living room movies are not the same; even when they are the same.

I’ve been spending an awful lot of time on CGI movies which my 6 viewings of the Pirates 3 brought home to me. I’ve watching movies I would never look at in a movie house even if the tickets were free and so was the transportation, even if they carried me to my seat and then went out and got me pop corn.

But have these movies playing in my cable movie package during the day and I might willingly plop myself down in front of these semi-dogs (no offense to dogs I hope) and watch them.

The operative phrase, of course, is “during the day” for when these movies appear in the middle of the night, when my eyes are too tired for knitting and my arm is too weary to reach up for the lamp all I do is lament the miserable assortment of movies available to me.

So I guess that saying: “life happens when you’re doing something else" can be tweaked here to mean: lousy movies are bearable when they are shared with desirable activities.

For me, of course, it’s knitting. At the end of the day, or rather the movie, if I knit, I have accomplished something worthwhile. So, I sat through The Incredible Hulk (I like Ed Norton and I’ll always root for Liv Tyler after her heartfelt portrayal of Arwen. Plus after his turn in A History of Violence I love the quirkiness William Hurt brings to his roles.) So I sat in my home and enjoyed this CGI behemoth with it's sorry ending. (But let’s be honest: do you know of a movie where the hero gets transformed into a mutant form that ends happily? Even X-Men had a lot of casualties.) When you watch this type of movie you know it’s a roller coaster ride to disaster. However, I’m beginning to find it easier to take this ride than movies like Atonement. I’m finding it more difficult to sit through sadness which could be real.

When brings me to Tropic Thunder. This is a bawdy comic satire which will not stay with you. I doubt there’s a coffee house discussion in this movie. The real gem is this movie is its biting, caustic cutting edge which it almost keeps throughout. (An exception was the cute toddler who turned into a vicious killer. The satire got softened when you saw that he came to no harm after Stiller gave him a deadly but necessary toss into the air.) Jack Black spews lines to make the most jaded school marm blush; Robert Downey Jr. got the Oscar nod through some of this dialogue was unintelligible, and Tom Cruise..... Well, Tom Cruse was there but yet he wasn’t. It wasn’t until just before the credits that I realized that actor I was watching ham and curse throughout was Cruise. Great acting, though I don’t think it helped his next movie’s box office gross. (Note: One movie topic I plan to tackle [promise] is the actor’s performance vs. the actor’s personal antics.)

And now: Appaloosa. I knew that the wee hours of the morning was not a good time to view this movie. Especially with a house full of guests so I couldn’t move in another room and put up the sound. So there I was, only being able to watch and pick up 7 words out of 10. And that’s not mentioning the fact that I awakened and turned on the TV about 20 minutes past the beginning. But the movie lived up to my positive movie trailer review (remember them?) I gave it. I guess I would call it an atypical Western with metaphors. A lot happens within a slim storyline. Physically, Zellweger is not my image of Allison French. I find her face distracting but she played the role well. Mortensen and Harris play the quintessential Western sidekicks taking the meaning of laconic to a new height, with Mortensen making the ultimate sacrifice for a friend at the end but with a twist. I don’t like the Western genre but this one I’m going to watch again; this time with full sound.

OK, that’s it for today. All my guests are awake with stomachs growling. It’s chow time.