Small Survey. Movie Update.

First, the survey: what are the coolest features on websites that you've ever seen?

This weekend, I saw three movies. Forthwith, my notes.

Crash. Dir. by Paul Haggis, writer of Million Dollar Baby. Can you guess? It has a dark world view. Set in L.A., focused on race. Some reviews I've read suggest that the race-saturated social world the movie describes is overstated, but to them, I say, you've never talked to many conservative white folks in L.A., then. I thought the movie was worth seeing, if flawed. Some very good performances, but nearly all of them felt a little too elliptical--truncated--as if someone was trying for spare, but did too much editing and ended up with scrawny. It had a Magnolia-like structure, but it didn't unfold the relationships with as much density as in that film.

Kicking and Screaming. Anyone who says I'm undiscriminating (a) may be right, and (b) so what? This movie addresses fills many categories that I tend to like: sports movie, Will Ferrell movie, kids sports movie, soccer movie. It made me laugh. For anyone who cares, Mike Ditka is hi-larious--all the scenes with him are worth seeing. Plus, I saw it with my sixteen-year-old son, so how bad could that be? We both agreed that it was a satisfactory movie-going experience.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. If you've already read the book, you probably don't need to go. But it helped me put the big picture together. Rather disturbing if you give it more than about two seconds' thought.

Beautiful weekend, no? Mowed the lawn for the first time (implying that I did it would be a lie, however). The purple iris are about to bloom, the Scottish broom is flowering like crazy. Time to scout out some tomato plants.