2008-09-07

It was a beautiful Sabbath day, cool and crisp, and Mick and I spent our respective mornings with our halves of the “cleanliness is next to Godliness” routine. The St. Luke's choir sang “Thy Spirit’s Tether” and a small ensemble offered an original piece by Brench Boden.

Before Mick and I were ten minutes into the first of our two movies in the afternoon, I began falling asleep, so we decided to pause the film and take a nap. An hour and a half later, we viewed The Art of War II: Betrayal, with Wesley Snipes leading the cast as a government agent.

The director had so thoroughly splintered the film into flash-forwards, flash-backs and savage fights in shadows too dark for viewers’ eyes to plumb that I never quite got a handle on the plot. Snipes was eye-catching in excellent costumes and athletic and deft as a martial-arts fighter, and the production values were very good, but the film does not hold together well due to the arty and somewhat pretentious direction.

We popped some corn and viewed our second film, Married Life, starring Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson and Rachel McAdams. As the title suggests, the film was a cynical look at the relationships of these four people. Though the ensemble was effective and the acting excellent throughout, it was a slight script that trivialized the love between men and women even as it sought to explicate it. I felt slightly soiled after viewing it.

We called Mick’s Mom after supper, and I offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation.