February 28, 2005
Movie Weekend
Michelle, Adam, and I settled in for a long weekend of movies. I think we all realized that an eventful weekend, tromping around Chicago, was not in the cards for us. So we rented three movies, and we watched them all. Understand that I have a bunch of borrowed movies that I need to return to folks that I have yet to see. Still, our family felt like we deserved a weekend of movie time, watching movies that we wanted to see.
Adam’s choice was Napoleon Dynamite. Michelle was dreading having to watch it. In the end, it was delightfully quirky movie about a nerdy kid, who somehow finds love among the smiley faces of a town somewhere in Idaho. Even if you have not heard of this movie, chances are you have heard some of its sound bytes coming out of the mouths of our youth. It is really a fun movie. I enjoyed it. How can you not like a movie with this line in it?: (Napoleon to his new friend Pedro) “You know, there's like a butt-load of gangs at this school. This one gang kept wanting me to join because I'm pretty good with a bow staff.” Or Napoleon’s great line about what girls want…a guy with skills: “You know, like nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills... Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.” Yesssssssss!
My choice was Riding Giants, which was documentary on big wave surfing. The film actually opened this year’s Sundance Film Festival and was well received. It is one of the better surf documentaries that I have seen. There is some amazing footage. The best scene in the movie showed Laird Hamilton, today’s best big wave rider, tackling a wave in Tahiti, at a spot called Teahopu’u. The wave itself is fairly large, but the lip on this wave is seriously about 10-15 feet thick.
The best part of the movie, however, was the stories that the big wave riders told. This is a great movie for surfer and non-surfer alike.
The last movie that we watched (Michelle didn’t go to Blockbuster as you can probably tell), was Shaolin Soccer. This movie is a combination of Enter the Dragon, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and Victory (or Bend it Like Beckham if you prefer). It combines great martial arts special effects, a corny story line, and great soccer action. This would be great for a movie party, especially if you like to have folks over for a non-serious, fun, and entertaining movie. It was all these things. The dubbed English version is even done in the over-the-top voice characterizations that are common to martial arts B movies. I loved it.