Click images for desktop size: "Black Lab" by Jack P About 80% recovered from the cold.
Odd to think of it that way. Measuring recovery from something as commonplace as a head cold . . . I can still feel some congestion in my lungs, but lighter each day.
I was perplexed because it appears I've given contradictory information about where I was born. This bothers me some.
Like when they are checking you for being concussed or stark raving mad don't they ask you things like, "What year is this? What day is this? Where were you born?"
The info isn't on my drivers license.
Part of the problem is that I spent a long time having to answer the question with a quick, "USA".
Back in the US, that answer doesn't cut it.
I'm looking for my passport for a definitive answer. I don't care, really, just concerned that the mind is going. Mind follows body. Doesn't it?
Pretty soon I'll only remember the distant past, but I still won't remember where I was born.
Like Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) I have to believe that they eradicated my memory from the age of 2 backwards, probably because I knew too much . . . or not enough.
My puppy is exploiting my memory by constantly insisting that I haven't fed her or given her the treats she's earned.

I can finally say I've seen all the best pictures nominated for the Oscars this year.
Sadly I was stunningly unimpressed.
Its much different not being in LA now. Then the Oscar season is totally fun - billboards, massive ads, DVD's floating around. Anyone old enough to remember the Z Channel will also remember all the films being blasted over the cable for Nominations and all the Best Picture nominees being played in time for the voters. And then on the times when a friend got nominated it was excitement of the highest order.
It was better than a game of football.
Still this is a paltry group of films. They seem remarkable unambitious. Remarkable short of the mark.
The way I watch movies is confusing in terms of being eligible for Oscar voting. But I have a neat passion for lists. So the five best films I've seen in 2006 are:

The King And The Clowns - A Korean film that is highly astonishing, funny, brutal and ribaldry real. Its also a movie dealing with gay themes that shows "Brokeback Mountain" up as the pretentious sham it was. In fact it makes "Brokeback Mountain" look like a movie made by the guy who made "The Incredible Hulk".
The film opens with the staid pronouncement that Korea has had a King for over 500 years, the longest run in world history, and then goes on to explain how records of the kings were kept.
This was in the first 90 seconds and had me prepared to squirm and run out, but then the next shot is of a man in costume telling a ribald joke while balancing and bouncing on a tightrope. And then the magic starts. The acting is superb throughout. The ancient characters seem real, concise and cogent. It becomes a great story that anyone can identify with.
The clowns, the traveling troubadours end up deciding they can make money by parodying the king. They do. They also get arrested and face execution. They dare the Cabinet Minister to let the king see their skit. They wager, he will laugh or they will die. And it rolls on gathering constant momentum until it explodes in beauty and catharsis.
I think its the best film of the year and at least one the top 25 films ever made. It is art and it is entertaining. We forget that they are supposed to be the same thing.


Click images for desktop size: "Untitled" by Yoshitaka Amano The Gridiron Gang - Yeah. A movie starring the Rock. I think he's cool but I've seen enough of him to realize he's learned how to act. This is a movie based on a brilliant little documentary. One of the oddest things about it is when they duplicate a shot and dialogue from the original film.
Both films are about one man's determination and the reality that one man cannot change the world alone, but sometimes he has help when he doesn't expect it. Its a movie about the community and young people's and our place in it. It has football, good acting and a premise that uplifts, excites and instructs.
Thats good enough for me.

Sympathy For Lady Vengeance Not as straight ahead and exciting as "Old Boy" the third part of the Vengeance Trilogy focuses on beauty and meditation as well as the cruelty we inflict on each other and the cruelty society inflicts in its quest for revenge.
The heroine confesses to the brutal abduction of murder of a child. She is sent to prison where she is considered a buddha, a person so good and beautiful she glides through prison. Soon its discovered that she is not a buddha, merely patient and cunning. She is also innocent of the crime she confessed to. She is released from prison and begins an existential quest to regain the life she sacrificed and to get revenge against the person who cost her that life.
In seeking that revenge she learns about community, and the cycle and the unrequited lust for vengeance that resides in too many people. Butterflies in the snow.

V for Vendetta - Yeah, its based on a comic book. It has glitzy special effects, a macguffin of a plot and the most potent political statement made in an American film since King Vidor's "Our Daily Bread". And oh yeah, ITS FUN!

The Guy Was Cool A light little love story about the toughest guy in town accidentally kissing a girl he was planning to beat up. She's not very cute but he is. Being so tough he is also popular with the right and the wrong people. They don't pursue each other but somehow they fall in love, a real love that sees their difference as complimenting each others strengths and weaknesses. This is a movie that proves being true to yourself is the way to be true to others and that love is an inevitability, not a biological recourse.
I've also been reminded that along with all the insightful melodrama this is also one of the sweetest and funniest films ever. Its easy to forget that. There's no real jokes. Just people learning about each other and themselves.

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