War Dance, Blue State, Starting Out in the Evening

War Dance
Blue State
Starting Out in the Evening

In honor of Israel Independence Day, I watched War Dance, a documentary about Ugandan children who have been orphaned or displaced by warfare and how they use music and dance to keep their lives together. Beautiful movie. Watch the deleted scenes. It's accurately rated PG-13 for the descriptions of atrocities.

OK, Ralph Bosley Bart, how is it accurately related to Israel?

Come on, it's Uganda. The alternative homeland suggested by Theodore Herzl in the 1890's. Maybe he was joking. I don't know, but it's what gets taught in the Israeli history books. Speaking of which, we watched Blue State tonight. Very funny line half way through about what doesn't get taught in US history books.

Blue State is also about a fathead Godless Commie Liberal who moves to Canada to protest the reelection of GW Bush. He travels with Anna Paquin who, according to a line in the movie, could be a Godless Commie Lesbian. Paquin is from Canada but I think the director isn't and missed a few key points that he would have picked up if he had read the IMDb comments first which means he would have had to make the movie last. Oh, never mind. I'm confusing myself.

Speaking of Canada, Moses almost took the Israelites there but he stuttered, so when God asked him did he want Canaan or Canada, Moses tried to say Canada but couldn't so God gave up and gave him another country with formerly free health care. I might be making up that last part. It sounded funny. But Blue State is also very sweet and partially fulfilled someone's MFA requirement at Columbia so watch it and feel helpful. At least now I finally know what people mean by Blue State/Red State.

We loved Starting Out in the Evening. Well told story about a young female graduate student who wants to do her thesis on an aging writer because she loves his books. It could easily be seen as an improbable, pretentious movie or just let all that go and see it as well-crafted movie about love between people and between people and books. Two of the characters go to a movie theatre. One of the movies that's playing is Battle for Algiers which is a real movie several people have recommended to me. It's on my Blockbuster queue.

It's somewhat significant that on the IMDb message board 21 people responded very intelligently to a question about one very small scene. Also, several people said they loved the book and the movie.

Well, thanks, Ralph. You have kept it blessedly short this time.

I could go on.

No.