Thursday, July 07, 2005

Visitors, Invaders, and Poachers

Gary and J'aime visited here the last couple days. They got full Texas treatment since the temperature floated around 100 degrees. While I imagine it made the beer taste better, I also imagine this was one of the few things that could make someone feel happy to return to New Jersey.

While here we saw War of the Worlds. I had read that it started well then ended poorly so was pleasantly surprised when I liked it all the way through. While very different in subject it reminded me of Jaws in some key ways. It has this big, epic story in the background but the entire film focuses in tight on the Tom Cruise character and his family. We are never given any explanations for what's going on and the character is just pushed around from suspense scene to suspense scene -- and I liked the purity of that, almost a mere chronicle of what it would be like if this were to actually happen. Like in Jaws, where it's just about getting the shark, War of the Worlds is just about this guy protecting his family -- and that works quite well given that we'll likely see a far more complex Spielberg film this Christmas.

Jaru and I have also moved into our new apartment. That meant a whole, maniacal, blood-stained week without internet access from our apartment. By last Friday I was on page 56 of my "All work and no internet makes Steve a dull boy" post and Jaru was hiding with the cat and a Hattori Hanzo sword in the other room, but then we had a brief spell of being able to poach high speed internet from some nearby wireless network so I was able to hold out until today.

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