I wanted to see King Kong for my birthday--which is tomorrow--and so we went today. What a great movie! Peter Jackson is a movie making genius, sort of like Stephen Spielberg and Norman Jewison (I didn't realize who he was until today) and Ron Howard. I don't want to give any of it away. The special effects and the acting was just amazing...and King Kong, well, I could believe he was real! Jack Black really reminded me very strongly of Orson Welles, it was almost eerie. Anyway, I enjoyed the movie very much! You need to see it in the theater to really appreciate it, but I have to say that sitting in those seats for 3 hours was very uncomfortable!
I finished reading We Were The Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates the other day. This was another story about a dysfunctional family but with a difference. You didn't see the dysfunction until something really bad happened to one of the family members. Again, I don't want to spoil it. The Mulvaneys seemed to be one of those close knit, well-to-do, very happy and successful families people secretly envy. Then comes this tragedy...and the family just totally falls apart. Why? If they were so happy and close knit it shouldn't have happened, should it? Well, now we see that the communication doesn't seem to be there and unconditional love doesn't seem to be quite there. The victim in the family is totally ostracized and that bugged me the most about the story. How can you treat an innocent member of the family like that? Joyce Carol Oates is not easy to read--I found myself either re-reading or just skipping stuff entirely. Supposedly the story will hurt and heal, well, I didn't feel any healing. I guess I was just too ticked off at the "parental units". I just didn't enjoy it that much after that certain breaking point. Oh well...
I say...and you think...