A Zero Dark Thirty Day

If you happened to watch the national news, then you know how cold we had it in California today. I could tell it was cold outside when I woke up, but I really didn't think too much about it.  I had a shower, a cup of coffee, a container of Greek God's yogurt, and I settled in to watch the Sunday morning news shows and spent a nice hour online with T.R., during which I ordered a pair of books for my Kindle - Tenth of December (a collection of short stories) and Sky Above, Great Wind (a collection of zen poetry).

From there, I headed out to meet Tony for breakfast, a few errands, some box shuffling, and then we went to see Kate Bigelow's new movie, the controversial Zero Dark Thirty, starring the immensely talented Jessica Chastain. Now, I will tell you, I think there is a great movie in the hunt for UBL, but, unfortunately, this wasn't it.  There were two problems - first, there was a lack of narrative structure - the movie felt like a series of vignettes strung together.  Then, second, it would have benefited from a far more aggressive hand on the editing machine - it simply ran on too long in many scenes.

I think that is a risk that happens with directors and authors when they become very successful.  They get the ability to successfully resist or disregard the advise of their editors - and we, as the reading or watching public, suffer.  All of that said, I did enjoy the movie, it was good - it just wasn't great.  (I was a huge fan of The Hurt Locker.)

From there, I came home, took a hot soaking bath, and then a short nap and now I've settled in to watch the Golden Globes.  Which I can do while multitasking.

I did watch a surprisingly good little piece of film last night - the SyFy Channel's mini-series "Riverworld".  I'd watched it when it originally aired, but I was not terribly impressed at the time.  Last night I watched it on DVD and I basically watched all three hours continuously.  It was pretty good in that format and I would recommend it as a nice, user friendly, bit of Science Fiction - though of course, the classic novel is a source of constant amazement,