Zero Dark Olympus

The weather is whacked. On Saturday afternoon I went for a post-prandial stroll along the artificial riverwalk with my daughter. Yesterday afternoon I was out mowing the lawn. By last night it was down near freezing again. Whacked, I say.

I got a lot of work done this weekend. Satisfying work. Things crossed off the master to-do list. On Saturday, I concentrated on responding to interview questions for something that will be published this week in conjunction with another review of The Dark Tower Companion, which comes out a week from tomorrow. Through a strange piece of unfortunate timing, I’ll be in Tokyo on publication day.

Yesterday I wrote and revised (and revised, and revised) a 2500-word afterword. That’s the first one of those I’ve ever done. My contribution to the work in question hasn’t been announced yet, so I can’t reveal more details until the editor does. He read the essay this morning and deemed it “absolutely superb,” so I guess I found the right note for the piece.

I watched Zero Dark Thirty on Friday night. I had a rough idea of what it was going to be about, and of course everyone knows how it turns out, but it’s a film worth seeing anyway. The first 30 minutes are terribly grim. Pretty much wall-to-wall torture. You can see how people end up saying absolutely anything to make it stop. They aren’t necessarily lying, especially when they don’t know the answer to the question. In those circumstances, they almost have to lie because no one believes they don’t know anything. The final 30-45 minutes are the raid on the compound in Pakistan. I have no idea how true to life the staging was, but in my mind it was a fairly straight forward operation and this shows how complicated it was for the men on the ground. How many doors they had to breech and the general chaos and uncertainty involved. The middle section is mostly Jessica Chastain’s character trying to get people to listen to her theory (every day she’d rub out a number on a glass wall and replace it with a new one: the number of days since she developed what she believes is solid intelligence about bin Laden’s location) and the way her team amasses enough credible evidence to convince others. She’s a powerful actress. When her character stands up to her superiors, you expect them to run off and hide in a corner.

On Saturday, my daughter and I saw Olympus Has Fallen. I think I saw a trailer for it a few months back, but I couldn’t have told you much about it beforehand, other than that I was fairly sure it had Morgan Freeman in it. I’d skimmed Ebert’s review to see if he liked it or not, without reading any of the details. So it was a blank slate experience. Think of Independence Day without aliens crossed with Die Hard (with Gerard Butler in the place of Bruce Willis) and you’ll have a good idea of what it’s like. It’s an intense action film. My daughter (who’s 26) watched a lot of it through her fingers. The ammunition budget must have been nuts. Thousands and thousands of rounds. And the ground battles are brutal. There are more shots to the head (and knives to the brain) than in many zombie films. The movie was a good bookend to Zero Dark Thirty as it showed a less-than-successful incursion by helicopter forces. There aren’t many opportunities to take a breather until it’s all over. If you were disappointed with the latest Die Hard, check this one out.

I was interested to see Botswana on last night’s Amazing Race. We’ve read all the #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels, which are set there, and have even “been” to Maun in a couple of them. I dream some day of going on a safari, and Botswana looks like a good destination. The tribesmen were so funny. I wonder how serious they were about being afraid of that lion. They made for the top of the tree in a hurry without seeming to care what happened to the contestants (or the camera operators). Reading the translations of their conversations in the back of the SUVs was entertaining, too.

I wonder what the tribal shakeup will do for the Fans vs. Favorites version of Survivor. It looks like the Favorites have an opportunity to pick off the Fans one by one, regardless of which tribe wins immunity on any given day, since they have the majority numbers in both. Is that something they’d want to do? Does it make sense to end up at the merge having to compete against mostly somewhat experienced players? It’ll be interesting to see how that develops.

Constable Bob was the hero of last week’s Justified. Not only did he take a major pummeling and kept his mouth shut (well, not exactly shut, but he kept his secrets), he came up with the perfect way to get Drew (aka Drewbacca) out of Harlan. As Raylan said, people under­estimate Bob at their peril. The episode was basically a Western (they’re circling the wagons), and it was chock full of great little moments. Art frustrated that no one smokes (“this is Kentucky not Sausalito”) and then the miscue over who would throw the Molotov cocktail. Shelby’s story about meeting Arlo in Vietnam, high on LSD and trying to find the culprit in a Louis L’Amour novel. Colt’s young Gerard Derpardieu line to Tim after Tim phoned him up during the standoff. I was liking Nicky Augustine until his verbal assault on Ava, but she got the upper hand with her brandy attack. Johnny’s machinations have been exposed though, so that doesn’t bode well for him. The showdown at the high school put Boyd and Raylan back into their alma mater (“a flawed redoubt”). I wonder if Boyd appreciates that Raylan saved his life again during the confrontation at the door to the principal’s office. Who would have guessed that Art was a Guns N’ Roses fan? Only two episodes to go.