p e n g u i n d e v i l

This week? two Theater trips! We went out to the newest beer theater, the Academy Theater. Very nice! It looks good and has a nice feel and they serve good pizza, good popcorn, and beer!

And what did we see? the best comedy I’d seen since 40 Year Old Virgin, Thank You for Smoking! it was great. I was expecting something, I don’t know, different something sillier. In fact, to me it was one of the better comedies I’ve seen. Great subject matter, fun characters, very funny, the reference to cell phones at the end… Great!

And then, a new old classic came to town, Army of Shadows. Some say the best Melville, well, not my favorite, but still quite good, and chock full of Alain’s, but no Delon. The noir sense worked well in this WW2 resistance drama, dynamically led by the great performance of Lino Ventura and also the charming Paul Meurisse. Full of close calls and treachery, great cinematography, great characters and a top notch plot. You really can’t go wrong with Melville.

Da Vinci Code… Ok. Yeah, I’ve, of course, never cracked the book open, and I always failed to see the great controversy behind the story, I guess it’s because this is the first time these ideas have really been presented in a package for the mass media consumer, instead of a more bookish group. Regardless, though it seemed uninteresting and with some uninspired stars, a trailer for it exuded an exciting action thriller atmosphere with some intriguing secondary players so, now that it has made it’s appearance in beer theater land, we went and saw it.

Well, well, well. First off, the projector was too unfiddled with so the slight blurriness of the picture, blended with the awkwardly edited night action scenes made the first part a bit hard to watch. The over-exposition was tried true and tiring. Especially, I thought, giving the subject matter and genre, there should have been a chance for people to figure things out, instead, all of the angles were handed out on a well-lit (especially see the Star of David) platter, sadly, considering the potentially intriguing subject matter. Anyway… It all made for a very predictable movie.

The movie was quite dull, until Ian McKellen showed up. I warn you, he is the only actor who actually seemed to be really using his acting muscle for this one, and the only character who was at all interesting. The first scenes with him were also the only times when really scandalous theories were given much airtime.. Reno and Prochnow were much underused and the two leads really aren’t too great. Hanks really shined in Big but since then… I dunno.

But enough about movies!

We took to the hills again and it was even better than the last. We, um, ascended to the top of Table Mountain.. Yes, it was back to Washington again, in fact, not far from ol’ Dog Mountain… The one was very good. Some nice steepness, some great vistas and a nice reminder of the works of geology… Warning, there are lots of pictures at: Ascent of Table Mountain