post week of 1/6/06

The "write the correct year on your checks" edition

We've survived the first full week of the new year; where has the year gone (hahaha). If you made new year's resolutions I hope they haven't been broken yet. I also hope you've gotten into the habit of writing 2006 instead of 2005. I myself practiced writing 2006 during the last week of 2005 so that it would be second nature.

This past week was a relatively quiet one. We adopted two cats and they are both terrors. Perry a two year old orange and white cat with bulls-eye marks on each side of him, and Casper (whose real name was Quinton but I didn't like that name for a cat so I changed it) a buff colored one year old with eyes so brown that in contrast to his fur he reminds me of a ghost. They are adapting to the home quite nicely but torture our poor golden retriever Brewster. If there's a cat on the stairs Brewster won't come down and if he gets too close to the orange cat he gets swatted at. I'll take pics of them and put them on my blog. Other than that nothing too exciting.

Broke the Mountains Back: We went to see the movie Brokeback Mountain and I have to say I thought I was watching a two-hour commercial for cigarettes. It's one of those smoking-in-nearly-every-scene movie although Jim says that was the era and everyone smoked back then. I'm sure that not EVERYONE smoked back then just as I'm sure not EVERYONE smokes today. As for the movie itself, it was very well done. A lot of the dialogue was taken word for word from the short story and it's a very faithful adaptation. There are a few scenes that are in the movie that were not in the short story but that is to be expected. A 2-hour and 15 minute adaptation of a 55 page short story is bound to have some scenes not in the story. For the most part they work and my take is they were put in the movie to give the viewer more of a connection to previous scenes; otherwise we'd be too ignant to connect the dots (that typo is intentional). Heath Ledger gives an incredible performance and is a lock for a Best Actor nomination. If you've seen Ledger in other movies you've seen that he has range and depth (check out Monster's Ball, The Patriot, even The Brothers Grimm). Jake Gyllenhaal also turns in a good performance and ultimately the movie is a love story. To call it just a gay cowboy movie is to do the film injustice. The scenery is beautiful; the movie used the beautiful Canadian Rockies (even more beautiful up close) as the background scenery (although it's supposed to take place in Wyoming and Texas). The film is sure to be nominated for best picture and best director and possibly best supporting actor for Gyllenhaal. Jim said it was the saddest movie he's ever seen but I personally think Life Is Beautiful is sadder. It's a moving and wonderful movie and I really don't see what all of the fuss is about; there have been plenty of other movies that are more controversial than this movie. Just because it's two big name macho actors everyone gets all a-twitter (oooh, they kiss, they have sex, they love each other). Untwist your knickers already and just see the movie. One final thought about Brokeback Mountain is that the audience in the theater was very mainstream. The age range was wide and it didn't seem like an all gay or lesbian crowd. There were senior citizens, families, young couples, etc....