16x16 - the halftime show (q2)
yeah, i’m kind of slacking a bit on the logging of the project. so i’ll try to keep it moving and be real brief with the second crop. up first, at the behest of a few friends, i decided to give wanted a shot. i guess i’d have to say this was the most underwhelming of all the movies so far. there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with it, but to be honest, i kind of wish there would have been. it would have been something to remember about the movie. it just seemed like one of those movies that you’ve seen a hundred times before. no personality. interestingly (to me anyway) this unintentionally turned out to be the second movie already among the first five to feature the participation of russian filmmaker timur bekmambetov, who here directs, in addition to serving as a producer on 9. anyway, like i said, nothing really wrong with it, and if you’ve got 100 minutes to kill, go for it. but in 3 months i’ll have forgotten i ever saw this movie.
next up, tuesday brought with it this year’s cyrus, a perfectly enjoyable noah baumbach knock-off featuring solid turns by john c. reilly and, somewhat surprisingly, jonah hill. might not have made a top 10 or 15 list if i had one for the year, but it’s a win and that’s good enough. it certainly never hurts your cause when the first person on screen is catherine keener.
after a break on wednesday, thursday found the fantastic documentary collapse, a movie which basically features investigative journalist michael ruppert sitting in a chair for 90 minutes talking at the audience, and doing so to tremendous effect. ruppert here talks mostly about the economic crisis and the basic theories behind peak oil, but the genius of the movie has really very little to do with what he’s saying or whether or not you’re buying into it, but instead in capturing ruppert, a truly fascinating speaker, and the conviction that he has for what he’s discussing. if you do buy in (and there are probably several reasons why you should), this will probably be just about the scariest movie you see in, well, your whole life. either way, it gets a capital W.
closing out the first half, christmas eve brought holiday staple it’s a wonderful life. inexplicably, it took until my 32nd christmas for me to cross paths with the capra classic, and it lived up to its billing. should hardly be surprising, but chrimmas seems to fit jstew like an old glove.
after 8, we’ve weathered an oh-so-close call and stand clean without a loss at 7-0-1. time to regroup and make adjustments. the second half is sure to test our conditioning, but this is why we run all those wind sprints during two-a-days. don’t forget to hydrate.
