My review of End of Watch by Stephen King appears at Cemetery Dance Online today.
My kidney stone and I are remaining close pals. I’ve named her Petra. I wish she’d leave. For the most part, she is a cooperative visitor but every now and then (like for about eight hours yesterday), she raises an unholy ruckus. In the meantime, I’m drinking water like it’s going out of style.
We watched a few movies this weekend. First, we saw Rising Sun with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes. I’ve seen it a couple of times before, but I always enjoy it, even if it is somewhat West-centric and a little dated. The tech is very dated, but so are the hairstyles.
Then we saw Tokyo Fiance, the tagline for which could be Amelie in Japan. In fact, the main character’s name is Amelie. She’s a Belgian woman who was born in Japan and lived there until she was five. Now she’s twenty and returning to Japan as a French teacher. One of her students (her only student, it seems) is a Japanese man of her age who is fou pour francais. As they explore Tokyo and its environs, she teaches him French and they fall in love. The ending was a little bit rushed, I thought, but it was a charming little film, good for an outsider’s view of modern Japan.
Then we watched Ali, starring Will Smith. It covers about a decade of the boxer’s life, from the early sixties until the Rumble in the Jungle, the boxing match with George Forman in Zaire that returned him to heavyweight champion after several years lost due to his political convictions and legal issues. I didn’t find the movie terribly coherent. It skipped along the surface of most events, and if you didn’t know the history, you might not be able to orient yourself to what was happening. It spends a lot of time with Malcolm X, but there is only a brief and confusing moment showing Martin Luther King’s assassination through the eyes of a secondary character. And while the other actors immersed themselves in their roles, I could never shake the notion that I was watching Will Smith. I tried to see Ali. I tried hard. Just couldn’t make it happen.
