Movies, Elections, and more

Today I had the privilege to visit the Sundance Cinemas. This high class theater has only 2 locations, one in the fine city of Madison, and the other in San Francisco. As soon as you walk in, you go to the box office and select where you are going to sit on a touch screen computer. You pay something in the neighborhood of $4 in royalty charges, but hey, you pay a premium price for a premium movie-going experience. The Sundance Cinemas also offers snacks and goodies to keep you happy during your viewing of whatever independent/foreign/art-house film you have chosen to see. One would expect of course to see things like popcorn and Raisinets, but no, you have a broad selection of imported beers, fine wines, scones, and several other French-sounding pastries. This is high class, people.

So, I walked into the theater and sat in my chair, which was only slightly less relaxing than a La-Z-Boy. Now then, the film. I went to see Le Scaphandre et le papillon, more commonly known as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. The film is based off the memoirs of one Jean-Dominique Bauby, the charming and vibrant editor of ELLE magazine. Bauby, who held one of the most prestigious positions in the fashion industry during the early 1990's, suffered a massive stroke on 8 December 1995 at the age of 42. The stroke debilitated his brain stem and left him with a rare condition known as "locked-in syndrome" in which a patient is fully aware of the outside world, but has little or no way of communicating their thoughts or feelings. Bauby was left with only the ability to blink his left eye, and he used a system devised by his speech therapist to dictate an entire book. Through a painstaking process of watching the therapist speak the alphabet and blinking to stop her, he was able to slowly form words and sentences. Using this system, Bauby spoke about his life, and indeed life in general in a truly poetic and engaging manner. In just over 200,000 blinks, Bauby created on of the most moving stories to be found in contemporary literature. The part of Bauby is played to perfection by Mathieu Almaric, who turns in yet another extraordinary performance in a leading role. 2007 was absolutely packed with extraordinary individual efforts, from Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood to Brad Pitt in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; indeed Mathieu Almaric certainly deserves to be mentioned in any discussion of superb performances from the past year. I cannot think of a single complaint to write about this film. It is an emotional roller coaster ride, taking the viewer through pain, depression, joy, happiness, helplessness, frustration, anger, and finally, triumph. The story is tightly crafted and expertly paced, with not a single scene botched or wasted. If you truly watch this movie with all of your being, and carefully ponder what it has to say, it may slightly alter your outlook on life. This story is a moving tale of the triumph and persistence of the human spirit, and it should not be missed.

In politics, Barack Obama continued his undefeated run, winning the great state of Wisconsin and adding 74 delegates to his total. It looks like Hillary's "eh, it's just Wisconsin" approach to campaigning here really turned out well for her... Of course, John McCain won the Republican primary, but that was kind of a foregone conclusion considering Ron Paul will never get enough votes from moderates, and Mike Huckabee is too religious to gain widespread support. I for one am a proud Christian, and I think Mike Huckabee is a great man. But, mainstream religion of any kind is no longer chic in the United States, and its not cool to try to put God back into the Constitution. I mean, the founding fathers weren't all devout Christians or anything. Right, totally. Regardless, there are not enough traditional Conservatives to get Huckabee in office, so at this point, McCain's neo-Conservative rubbish has pushed my favor into the Obama camp. I suppose I thought I'd never say this, but Obama for President in 2008, baby.

On a side note, I'd like to say that this will be my last post about HD DVD. Toshiba officially announced that they are stopping all production of HD DVD players. Paramount and Universal pulled out of the HD DVD camp, with Universal already proclaiming its commitment to Blu-ray.

It's okay HD DVD, you had a good run, but Blu-ray just fought a better fight.

Cheers.

Blu3