I have watched two movies so far in 2009, one on DVD from 2007 and one in the theater last night. The first movie is "Blood Diamond" from 2007 which I received for Christmas from the Jones side of the family. It centers around the seldom covered civil war over the diamond minds in Sierra Leone during the late 90's and still, to an extent, going on today. Djimon Hounsou was very good as a Mende fisherman trying to recover his family and Leonaro Dicaprio was decent as a South African diamond smuggler. I was less impressed with the rest of the supporting cast, whose lines at times came off a little hokey, but not enough to ruin the movie. Violent and graphic, this is not a movie for everyone. It is a good story concerning a situation of which most of us are unfamiliar. I give it a 7 on a scale of 1-10.
Beth and I saw "Gran Torino" starring Clint Eastwood at the theater last night. This is the first time I've seen a Clint Eastwood movie in the theater and was hesitant when it first came out. Most Clint flicks the past decade have been less than stellar, but I became more curious about this movie as I heard more feedback. Eastwood was very good, and funny, as a an old, crusty, racist Korean war veteran trying to deal with his culturally changing neighborhood and his increasingly distant family . I wouldn't recommend bringing kids to the theater to see it like several people did (that is an entire post by itself), but it was surprisingly good with several scenes, I think, that may become classic years from now (the barber shop scenes especially). Another interesting dichotomy of seeing the movie in a theater was listening to the reactions from the various races of people to the different racial jokes. I give it an 8.
So far so good for 2009, but I'm sure I'll see my share of stinkers.
1 comment:
Brian and Beth, I saw that moves about the diamonds. I read a book about 2 years ago, "Let's Don't Go To The Dogs Tonight" by Alexandria Fuller a true story about an English girl growing up in Africa.
In the book it mentioned "The Rudd Concession." This took place around the area of the plunder of the land. You can imagine my let down when I found out the family was part of English government and the part they had in that history is not complimentary. Well that is what geoalogy is, the past.
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