Shut your hole and watch

Movies have a quality that bombard the senses, like a heavyweight pummeling his opponent in the 11th round without remorse.  You can put a novel down, get outside of the verbiage, and have your senses soak in the words. Your criticism will be impacted by your memories, innate biases and current obssession (e.g. scratching that itch behind your ear or finishing the last of the sangria).  With movies, you're at the mercy of the film-maker at the cinema, strapped down to your seat as the images flash onscreen.  In the realm of propoganda, instant and often one-note, movies are much more effective.

BTW - has anyone listened to the new Oasis record?  Due to the internet restrictions here, I can't download any music – but the snippets that I caught sounds promising. I especially like 'Live Forever'.  Chalk not getting new music to another knock against traveling.

Music has that wonderful sense of knocking you loose and pushing you down into the rabbit hole of dreams, utter longing and the essence of humaness. Music is to movies as poetry is to prose, or sun-drops as to sun-rays.

In the next couple of blogs, I'll note take on a couple of Oscar contenders. And to take this opportunity – I want to thank all the guys who I've seen movies with in the past year. You guys rock, especially when you listen to me pontificate like so.