Happy New Year! (And a Movie Review!)

Being unplugged from the internet can be great every once in a while. I'm still too lazy to have internet set up at my apartment yet, and so while Saddam was getting himself hanged I was busy trying to enjoy my seven days of paid holiday while trying to find a nice way to get my parents to go home.

That sounds terrible, doesn't it?

I love my parents. I enjoy spending time with them. But a few days is enough. They stayed from the Thursday before Christmas to the day before New Year's. How was I supposed to get anything done? I had no time or space to myself really. By the time they left I had enough time to decompress slightly before work started up again, and no time to do any of the things I needed to get done.

I should be thankful I have parents who want to visit their daughter in a strange city and unintentionally drive her crazy, causing her to visit the gym at 4:00 AM because she can't sleep.

I went to a coworker's New Year's party, which ended up being my friend, his wife, one of their friends, and myself. We played a couple games of Scrabble and drank lots of champange and sparkling wine. The first game of Scrabble I did poorly, but we were on our third bottle of wine when I won the second game so I think the alcohol did something to my creativity levels (everyone else was playing the same). I was putting down words like "fairy" and "vixen". Usually when I play Scrabble I have a hard time coming up with something beyond "it" and "an".

I went to The Good Shepherd yesterday. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't the movie it should have been. Then again, I went to the movie expecting it to be disappointing.

I didn't learn anything more about spying than I already knew, so the movie was uneducational. I picked up the code lines before the "knowing looks" that would act as the giveaway. It was fairly cliche, however, especially the tailor. (At the time and place it must have been brilliant) Matt Damon plays his role fairly flat (and coldly I might add), and the viewer can figure out what he's going to do before he does it. His character's predictability was more frustrating than anything else I found "wrong" with the film. I expect that CIA agents at least attempt to be good spouses, even when work does eat up time and energy. There was no sense of sacrifice (except that he didn't get to be with the woman he truly loved, but he does get to meet her later in life and have sex with her, which is the silver screen equivalent).

I was pleasantly surprised with Angelina Jolie in this film. While I already enjoy watching her act, I assumed she would always be one of those "personality actors" who you watch because you want to see them do something they're famous for. Jack Nicholson and Jim Carrey are two good examples. In The Good Shepherd you see her play a coy, brazen (if naive) socialite who marries Damon's character Edward and becomes, through his neglect of the relationship, a broken-hearted, lonely housewife. She was amazing to watch, especially in the scene when she discovers Edward was unfaithful. (What geeky idiot would dare cheat on Angelina Jolie?) I sense her character was more upset over Edward not telling her about the infidelity rather than the infidelity itself.

Overall I would say the movie is OK. Rent it, or go see it in the theater if you must, but I'd like to think there are better spy and espionage movies out there.