So a group of friends and I go last night to the premiere of the new M. Knight Shyamalan movie, The Happening.  In my mind, each of his movies has been successively less worthy than the last, but I figured he hit rock bottom with Lady in the Water, so how bad could it be, right?  Plus, the trailers looked pretty cool.

At last the trailers end, but the projectionist has cued up the wrong movie.  Empire State Building, sure, the movie starts in New York, but instead of the suspenseful music we’re expecting, we’re greeted by a familiar, stylized Latin rhythm…

They’re playing the Sex and the City movie instead.  Normally, no big deal, they fix the movie and order is restored, and all I’ve lost is ten minutes of my life.  Hell, I can make ten minutes go away surfing back and forth between a few informercials.  However, I don’t want to see the Sex and the City movie, because I haven’t watched the series yet.  And what is the first ten minutes of the movie?  Backstory from the series!  My best la-la-la-la fingers-in-ears couldn’t sufficiently keep the dolby surround from revealing that someone decided to be Jewish and marry a bald guy, and somebody has the man she’s been chasing show up in a limo.  Booooo.

By the way, The Happening was weak.  It’s time for M. Knight to focus on his directing, because his writing is going to ruin his chances of making any more movies.

Watching the political campaign over the past few months, I’ve been disappointed to see Barack Obama occasionally falter in his effort to elevate this year’s political campaigning.  As he put it, “You get elbowed enough, eventually you start throwing some back.”

I can’t help comparing Barack’s struggle to that of Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars trilogy.  Among the things George Lucas got right in creating his masterwork was a cogent examination of how much more difficult it can be to take the high road.  As the Pennsylvania primary unfolded, I realized that the Obama campaign needs no strategy more complicated than resisting the dark side of the force.

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If there is any truth to these rumors, it would be the coolest news since Barack took Iowa.

I finally just saw the movie Once. Critics and bloggers I trusted wrote that it is one of the best films to come along in a years. They weren’t lying.

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