Movies

I spent another weekend catching up on movies that I had not seen when shown at the local cinema. Men Who Stare at Goats, Precious, and Bright Star. I took out two others but have not been able to get into them, Conviction, and The Children of Huang Shi.

I am beginning to have difficulties with this computer and I do not need anyone editing my blogs without my express consent and permission. Telling the plot of a movie on a blog is hardly reason to erase any of it. George Clooney is amusing as a psychic with abnormal powers, and his ability to kill through mental thought is the reason for the title. He kills a goat by simply staring at it. One would think that it preposterous but in fact the military and government is experimenting with such things. I read a book through the Phoenix library system that discussed this totally. So I suspect the movie came from that book.

Voodoo rituals believe in this kind of ability and fear it so maybe the government is taking lessons from Haiti witchcraft. Who knows?

Bright Star is about the love John Keats had for his neighbor Fanny Brawne, and it is a beautiful love story, full of heartache and understanding about the pressure put to bear on John to write. I had no idea that there had been that kind of pressure upon poets in England until I saw this. All I did was study the darn poems, danged if I had to get into the poets heart and soul and head and needs. Keats is most famous for the poem Endymion. I remember that even fifty years after I studied it.

Stupid me, huh? I was not the best when I was a college student...my motivation was gone after a dissolved love affair...I was worse than Keats that way.

Precious is a preposterous story which is both horrid to sit through but fun in its fantasizing and James Thurber means of dreaming that one is something that one is not. The director and editors did a great job on that one. The plot of a fat girl abused by both her mother and father but able to get help and actually climb out of her misery was a bit of a stretch for me. It is difficult enough for average students to make it in this life, but for a girl with real educational difficulties to advance so quickly sounded very too Hollywood. The actress is great, deserved her award as she won a Golden Globe for her role, and she showed why some women would prefer to be lesbians than to have to endure the abuse that she took.

Lesbianism creeps into the story so that is why i say that. For her to have been shoved from the back to land on her face was plainly cruel and unnecessary but apparently black people fear each other more than white people know.

I enjoyed the film since it does give her a happy ending despite being sexually raped, impregnated, mother of 2 and only 16...really totally unbelievable that she can survive at that age with her difficulties.

But so it goes...won't put trailers of films on here. They are all at youtube.