Bordering

I think my children are tag teaming me this week. Each night one or the other calls which has the corollary effect of making everything seem brighter. My Cali-daughter called last night, ably assisted by the Wingman, just in time to save me from a severe ass chewing from my Favorite Panamanian about the photo I published yesterday covering her advance packing procedures.

Approaching Critical Mass

The Californiates had just returned from their latest pre-natal doctor’s visit and all the reports are positive. The First Blog Reader has passed the six pound barrier and continues to grow apace. The latest picture from my daughter illustrates just how close to critical mass she is approaching. The future grandmother was skipping/dancing after the prolonged talk about her impending grandchild and completely forgot about continuing my counseling session.

We went to see another movie last night, taking in Sicario. I was excited about this because it featured Emily Blunt and Benicio Del Toro, two of my favorite actors. I know this movie is getting a lot of love from the critics for its gritty look at the ongoing border war with Mexican drug cartels but I left with a sense of “ehhh”. I’m a firm believer that a movie should be entertaining even its trying to make a heavy handed “message”. The director forgot about the whole entertainment part. He’s obviously fallen in love with daring camera shots and long aerial views of terrain but there was a pretty good story hidden amongst all his posturing. It suffered from his lack of attention to it.

Blunt and especially Del Toro were excellent, if he doesn’t’ get an Oscar nod for this something’s wrong. This was marketed as an action filled thriller and it is certainly not that. It’s an eloquent comment on what evil can do to good people. If the director had stayed with that instead of trying to make a simultaneous anti-government rant about the drug war this movie would deserve all the critical praise it’s receiving.  The truly outrageous and unbelievable scenario he employs savages his credibility; but at least we got long loving looks at the barren Arizona desert to compensate.