Amy’s making me watch March of the Penguins.  So far, it’s been about these totally bizarre looking birds that can’t fly and have chosen to live in the Antarctic.  It’s cold, windy, dark, cold, cold, dark, cold, and windy.  There’s lots of walking to the same place to get food – oh – it’s 70 miles away, they don’t have cars, and they don’t walk especially well.  There’s been a short romantic section that’s cute, followed by more cold, eventually some eggs, which occasionally break when they are transferred from mom to dad (since mom has to go get food again – yes – 70 miles away).  Eventually the eggs hatch and the babies are born, but the mom’s are away getting food (and some of them are getting eaten by seals.)  Did I say that it’s cold? The moms get back minutes before the babies starve, feed them, but then send the starving dads away to go get food (yup – 70 miles away.)  Oh – some of the babies freeze to death (it’s cold), the mom’s get devastated (especially since they have to tell the dad, assuming the dad survives the seals), and try to kidnap other babies (unsuccessfully.)  Seagulls make a special guest appearance and eat some of the babies.  Over the next few months, the moms and dads keep alternating going to the grocery store (70 miles away) to get food, although the grocery store (the ocean) gets closer as winter draws to a close and the ice melts.  Once summer arrives (in November!) and the babies turn into teenagers, the parents get divorced and the cycle begins again.

Morgan Freeman is magnificent as the narrator.  Lots of death.  Some happiness.  Beautiful photos.  And – according to Amy, “the babies are really cute.”

Think back to 1992.  “It’s the economy, stupid!”  Amy and I watched The War Room tonight, the brilliant documentary of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign and the organization behind it, spearheaded by James Carville and George Stephanopoulos.  Carville’s quote was actually “the economy, stupid” and was part of a haiku that Carville came up with.

Change vs. more of the same
The economy, stupid
Don’t forget health care.

Carville is an absolute genius and unbelievably entertaining as a special bonus feature.  I’d team up with that dude any day just for the laughs.  Stephanopoulos reminded me of Sam Seaborn which – it turns out – was intentional.

Amy and I saw Serenity yesterday, along with $10m worth of other people.  We loved it.  This morning, while I was running over the Brooklyn Bridge with Matt Blumberg, I asked him what he thought of it (he saw it yesterday also).  He was unambiguous – he didn’t like it.  I probed a little, found out he hadn’t seen the TV series (amazing show, but cancelled after a dozen episodes or so) and it was clear that he didn’t understand a lot of the movie.

It’s a fantastic movie.  However, I’m going to guess that you have to at least be familiar with the backstory to get it.  And – like other movies that evolved out of TV shows (e.g. The X-Files) I’ll bet that you have to love and have befriended the characters already to understand all the jokes, bantering, and double entredres.  If you haven’t seen the TV show, but want to see the movie, spend some time on the Firefly Wiki getting up to speed (c’mon – you’ve got to love a TV show that has its own wiki.)  Or – try the fan blog if you want to keep up real time with the chatter.  Or – go hardcore and watch the TV show Firefly on DVD in four days like Amy and I did.

Yes – Joss Whedon is a genius.  Jayne caused me to fall out of my chair when he said – referring to River – “she’s starting to damage my calm.”

Ah – we’re back in the land of 24 screen movie theaters so our Friday night movie is no longer limited to two choices.  However, almost all the movies out right now are crap (you know you are in trouble when the #1 movie last weekend was The 40–Year-Old Virgin) so we decided to give Transporter 2 a try. 

We loved the original Transporter – it was definitely a sleeper and Jason Statham was – well – the British Vin Diesel.  Frank (Jason) and his rules are back, the evil bad girl is super hot (although a horrifyingly bad shot), and the eastern European villain-scientists are bad news, but doofuses.  The action / adventure / car chases / shoot–em-ups are great and – with the exception of a few scenes – I managed to suspend my disbelief for the better part of 90 minutes. 

It’s not as good as the first one, but it took my mind off cancer, New Orleans, and other bad things for a couple of hours.

It’s Friday and our new movie choices appeared this morning at our little theater down the block.  Tonight we went to the 8:30 showing of Wedding Crashers – remarkably the theater was completely full for the first time this summer (we were the oldest people there – I think all the teenagers in town showed up.)

Now – I’ll basically do anything I can to avoid going to a wedding (Amy and I eloped), even ones I’m invited to – so it was with some trepidation that I agreed to go to a movie with the word wedding in the title.  Amy tricked me into seeing it by saying that there were venture capitalists in the movie so I had to go see it (yes – Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn pose as VCs in one scene – very very scary.)

Wilson was – as usual – cute, cuddly, warm, funny, and confused.  Vaughn was hilarious.  I’ve always loved this 6’5” dude, but he was absolutely at the top of his game in this movie.  Maple syrup has several good moments, as do eye drops, sappy pickup lines, a very twisted virgin / first time / psycho girl theme that sucks in Vaughn, stage 5 clingers, “a little place on the shore,” plaid pants, the “touch” football game, a quail hunt (and other assorted WASP icons), and the uncontested scariest man in film – Christopher Walken – as dad.  Will Ferrell – who nauseates me – had a few funny moments with his mother (and – if I treated my mom that way – she’d simply kill me.)

Well worth two hours of your life.