2008-01-06

The Sabbath is such a wonderful day of rest for Mick and me, now that we have moved our weekly study and meditation meetings to Saturday nights! This day was no exception – except that for me, the emphasis was more than usually on rest.

I woke fairly early and so decided, after my Holly and Camelot Journal entries were written for the day, to work again on editing the personal session for Gary which we had last summer. It was great to finish that and send it on. There was a good feeling of “no loose ends”.

I am still too puny to go to church, so spent my morning doing puzzles and reading. Meanwhile, Saint James cleaned the house, using more primitive means than usual – a broom – as the vacuum cleaner is still held hostage by the repairman.

At lunch time, we settled down to our first movie of the triple feature, another try at seeing Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Chow Yun-Fat and Geoffrey Rush in the third Pirates movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. What I saw of it was disappointing. The light touch was notably missing. The pace was slow and the sea battles were unending. While I appreciated the production values, the piece was top-heavy and way too long – almost three hours. This may not be a fair evaluation as I kept dozing off, probably missing two-thirds of the film.

We saw The Last Legion next, a remarkably good film aimed at children but interesting to me as well. Colin Firth, Ben Kingsley, Aishwarya Rai and Thomas Sangster did a fine job of portraying the main characters in this adventure of the last Caesar before the Goths took Rome down. The device of using the sword of Arthur, Ex Caliber, to hold the story together was excellent. What great costumes and what fine ensemble work. I loved this film.

The third film, which we watched over dinner, may well have been good, but I dozed off as soon as my last bite was taken and remained somnolent throughout. Stardust, starring Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert DeNiro, also had superb production values and fine ensemble –this I gleaned while still awake – but I must trust Mick for an evaluation of the whole. He liked the film, and especially did he like DeNiro’s work.

Mick offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.