February 22, 2010
Saw a couple of excellent movies this weekend. Instead of driving into the wet Beast to see Saint John of Las Vegas, Kathy brought home District Nine and The Hurt Locker from Blockbuster Video. Enjoyed them both.

The Hurt Locker is especially excellent. I had put off seeing it because of the tension buzz (I got enough tension in my life without paying ten bucks to watch it), but I'm happy to report it isn't all defusing bombs. In fact there is a very cool fire fight at 500 meters, set out in the Iraqi desert (actually shot in Jordan) where a modern day style battle takes place and at first the U.S. troops (half army and half contractors) don't even know where the bullets are coming from. There are no rifle reports because the enemy is firing from a mile away. As they finally get their bearings and begin to fire back with a fifty caliber rifle we watch the bullets hit through a telephoto lens, silently, as it would be in a real fight like that. allegedly real combat soldiers who have been in Iraq have been responding to a subtle part of the sequence: Sergeant James asks for juice boxes and they sip from inserted straws as they wait for the enemy to make their next move. According to the writer, who was embedded in 2004, Iraq vets are saying, "Hey, you got the juice box part right." Very cool set piece and I watched it twice: the second time with the commentary track with the director Kathryn Bigelow and the writer Mark Boal. For my money, this movie is much more satisfying than Kathryn Bigelow's ex-husband's flick. You know, the one with the blue Na'vi. The funny thing is, I read somewhere a month or so ago, that Hurt Locker had made a total of $200 million, and that Avatar was making that every day!

And, by the way, when you adjust for inflation, Avatar is somewhere down around 32 on the all-time box office gross, behind Pinnochio. As it should be.

Went home for lunch and grabbed a bowl of green chile and two flour tortillas and bailed into another True West Moment scene for the Arizona Republic. This is the one for the Martha Summerhays tidbit where she meets the army wives coming out of the Arizona theatre of war in 1874 and shudders in horror at how out of date their fashions are:



Need to add a steamer (The Gila) and I think it's done.


Also, worked on a midnight cloud scene:



I regret having started to do these landscapes so late in life. Gee, I wonder what ol' Sydney has to say about this?

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."
—Sydney J. Harris