This is just an obligatory headline

(10-30-07: I wrote the following a while ago, I just forgot to post it.)

Go See This Movie

Last week I saw In the Valley of Elah. It is the most memorable movie I have seen in a long time. It is baffling to me that there is not more buzz around it.

I heard a review of it on the radio and that was the only reason I knew it existed. Despite the fact that it stars Tommy Lee Jones, Susan Sarandon and Charlize Theron I never saw or heard one television, radio or print ad for this film. You would think that, with a cast like this, the company that released it would be promoting the hell out of it. But instead when we went to see it last Wednesday night, we were the only ones in the theater.

It is hard to explain what this movie is about in such a short space. In a nutshell, when his son goes missing shortly after returning from Iraq, Tommy Lee Jones heads to his army base in New Mexico to find him.

I'm not going to elaborate from here, doing so would give away huge plot lines. But where the story goes is not nearly as important as the message conveyed. This movie is about the mindset people in the military evolve just to handle the things they see and the things they have to do. It is about the aggression that is fostered by war and how separating from that newfound aggression when the war is over may be an impossible task. It is about the victimization of our troops (but not by the government as you might suspect, more by the realities and necessities of war).

Finally there is a movie about Iraq not trying force a political agenda. I have my own opinions about the war and you have yours. I don't need my opinions validated or criticized by a movie that will polarize everyone who sees it. I'm sick of being grouped into one over-generalized category or another simply based on whether I liked a particular controversial movie or not. That is one refreshing thing about this "Iraq movie" (although the movie really isn't about Iraq or the war itself), if I give my opinion I won't worry if someone is judging me only based on the fact that I enjoyed it (doing something like that is chicken-shit if you ask me, but most people do just that).

The problem is, if I did offer my opinion of In the Valley of Elah to someone, they probably wouldn't know what the hell I was talking about. This is a great movie and no one seems to know or care about it. Do yourself a favor and go see this movie.

Reception

We have a date for the wedding reception. It will be on Saturday, February 23, about a week after we get back from our honeymoon. It will be at my parents new house. I'm not going to list the address here but it will be on your invitation. If you don't get an invitation just call me and I'll give it to you (if you don't get one it doesn't mean that we don't want you there, it is really hard to remember everybody and I'm sure there will be more people than invitiations).