Jen and I just celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary last weekend, so it was somewhat fitting that we also recently watched the Norman Jewison movie, Dinner With Friends. Based on the play of the same name, the story revolves around two couples who have been best friends forever but are pushed to the point of 'breaking up' when one of them ends up splitting. Loyalties are divided, friendships are strained and the whole thing is kind of an interesting meditation on marriage and living life with (or possibly without) a long-term partner.It was actually a movie that I had suggested on several previous occasions but Jen never really paid it any mind until she picked it up and read the summary on the back of the case during a recent library stop. The couple that split in the movie had been together for 12 years so she felt a certain degree of synchronicity or something, I guess. Now that I think about it, we may have watched The Seven Year Itch around our 7th, so maybe it's a numbers thing with her. Or just checking in to see whether or not we're doing better than the movie couples.
I guess it doesn't really matter what Hollywood thinks since we've outlasted most of our friends and extended families' marriages.
Either way, it was a nice, quiet and entertaining show. I'd recommend it for anyone looking for a talky couples movie without the Woddy Allenisms.
Later!
mike
Some time ago the guy who works at one of my local comic shops was talking up a little anime show called Cowboy Bebop. 'What a fantastic series', he would tell me, 'with one of the best English dubs that he's ever heard for an anime series'. Even though I was never a really big anime fan, he urged me to try it out, believing that if I only sat down and watched a few episodes it would open my eyes. 
It started off a little rocky, but by the second chapter I was pretty much hooked. I can see why Hornby and my wife like her writing so much. It's very real, very descriptive and the characters, though generally sedate in their overall natures, come alive on the page as if you were, or knew someone, just like them. It's a pretty easy read and the words just roll off the page once you get the rhythm of it. It's pretty good stuff.
Paul Reubens of Pee-Wee Herman fame 
As part of my recent struggles to piece together the herky-jerky narrative of the Matrix trilogy and actually enjoy it as one film/idea/story, I completed the Wachowski Bros. and Atari's Path of Neo game which ties all three of the films together, simultaneously trying to fill gaps in the storyline and giving players a chance to finally play Neo. Atari's earlier attempt, Enter the Matrix, was an enjoyable game and did a lot to increase my enjoyment of the second film, Reloaded, but while playing secondary characters like Niobe and Ghost I think you ultimately lost some of that Matrix buzz that you got off of watching Keanu do his wacky wire-fu moves in the films.
Regardless of this, if you're playing this game for more than a few levels you already know that it exists in a kind of parallell Matrix universe and you either have to get over it, or put the controller down, go watch the movies and sulk. A perfect example of this being the end of the game which is prefaced by a neat little video introduction by the Wachowski's themselves - or at least their residual digital self images. They explain that the martyr thing in a video game kind of sucks and they helped create a big boffo finale that fits with the game and is, ultimately, more fun to play than just letting Smith absorb you, dying and having the Matrix rebooted. There's even a new CGI ending they put together to follow-up the final battle.
Since we actually have a standing McNally Robinson in town, and they claimed to carry the book on their website, I figured the most prudent course of action would be to wait until the morning and see if they had any in stock. Then I could just pop out of work at some point, or even stop by after work, and pick up a copy. I gave them a dingle in the morning and, after some searching, they found both books in their young readers section, just where they should be.
On the entertainment front, I've purchased a new DVD set, The Ultimate Matrix Collection. I've been playing The Path of Neo so I ws in a Matrixy kind of mood and it was on sale...what can I say.
Not only has MGM's Stargate SG-1 started its record breaking 10th season on the SciFi Network (beating out The X-Files to be the longest running science-fiction series in America) but there's been some fresh news out of the San Diego Comic Con that bears repeating for fans of the original film and the show.
I honestly don't know how to feel about 
There's a 
As some of you may know I am in the process of interviewing Jeff Parker and John Hitchcock regarding the upcoming Toth sketchbook, 
Since getting home I decided, freak of nature that I am, to read the DC Comics prequels that they published just before the film's release. They didn't look like anything special on the shelf and I largely ignored them because it's pretty rare that anything of any value ever comes of these adaptations and tie-ins. Still, the buzz was strong and they were just sitting there so...
The second prequel dealt with Ma Kent - how she's coping with Clark being gone, what she does with her time now and showing us some more backstory through flashbacks to the Donner film, bits of deleted material from the new movie and stuff that I believe the writer, Marc Andreyko, made up from whole cloth. It's readable and even enjoyable in some parts, and the artwork by Kerschl is very nice to look at. While reading this story will do little to enhance your viewing experience of Superman Returns, it's a pleasant digression or sidebar that fills in a few of the gaps left by the filmmakers.
I was looking forward to seeing Luthor take the stage for the third prquel issue, especially since there's a lot of stuff that we didn't get to see in the film (like the fact that Luthor planted the info that Krypton may still be there sending Supes off on a 5 year journey), but instead we get an absolutely gastly comic book and story that loosely fits the continuity of both Donner's film and Singer's. The art by Leonardi was lacking and there wasn't really much there to latch onto as a reader. Maybe there's a Luthor fan out there who thinks the book rocks, but I have to give it a big thumbs down.
Okay. Amidst everything I'm supposed to be doing and everything that I'm actually doing, I've managed to get a bit of reading in. In the case of reading Conversations, I think I managed to do the bulk of it at work during a dry spell where the options were to either stand around and talk, throw a tennis ball into a garbage can for cans of pop or sit at my desk and read something I find really interesting. I would have dealy with customers if we had any, but alas...
The interviews cover a goodly chunk of Jones' career so you get to hear some of his thoughts on the occasional new project (somethihng you don't get too often) as well as the odd project that never made it out of the starting gate (one of the first interviews is with Jones and Bradbury who were to collaborate on a Halloween feature together), but most of the interviewers seem only interested in focusing on his Warner Bros. output. Definitely stuff I wanted to read and hear, but I was hoping for something that showed a more personal touch - an interview that dug a bit deeper than the usual "where did the Coyote come from?" question.