2008-05-25

I played hooky from church today and spent the morning with my roommate from MacDuffie, who was in town until noon, when she took off to fly home to Massachusetts. We had a great time catching up, shaded from the abundant sunshine under an umbrella at a table near her motel’s pool and letting the sweet breezes blow while we chatted. We topped our morning off with a hot dog lunch and said our good-byes.

Jim had kindly dropped me off at her inn and had spent the morning cleaning the house. He fetched me and we went home to Camelot and laughed our way through the first of our three films, one we had seen before but decided to watch again, Rush Hour 3, with Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker. We enjoy the many movie spoofs which this film contains and always get a kick out of Chan’s well choreographed action scenes.

Armed with a bowl of popcorn, we watched Stargate: The Ark of Truth, starring everyone in the television cast except Richard Dean Anderson, whose presence was missed. It contained an astounding number of special effects, told a good story and felt like a long TV episode, which is no bad thing. The writers continue to fracture mythological details. I imagine they have to do so for convenience in running the story lines, but it is a shame what they do to the myths of Egypt and Scandinavia! Ah well! Most folks do not know the difference.

Our third film was a crackerjack of a movie! Wow! Boy Howdy! Go rent The Great Debaters! Denzel Washington was the director as well as the star of this film. He got hold of an outstanding screenplay by Robert Eisele and cast the piece with Forrest Whitaker and a superb ensemble of young players headed by Nate Parker, Jurnee Smollett, Denzel Whitaker and Hamilton Burgess. John Heard was spectacularly sleazy as the long arm of unjust law.

The true story concerned a black college’s debate team’s victory over the Harvard debate team. It brought the ghastly ugliness of racial hatred into sharp focus and told the tale of tenant farmers attempting to organize in the 1930s. I loved this film! Why were there no Oscar nominations? The film was awarded many prizes, but mostly by organizations focused on black history. It should have been mainstream and Washington should have garnered an Oscar nomination for direction.

I offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.