Wind - Wednesday 12/17/2006

Winds were startlingly high in Lancaster, CA on Wednesday. To the point where you had to lean into it a little just to stay upright.

This is a photo of the clouds that were being blown past the theater where we spent about half the day.

We saw Dreamgirls and Rocky Balboa yesterday. Early matinee, lunch and errands, late matinee. Oh sweet indulgence!

Both movies surprised me. I didn't realize there was so much story in Dreamgirls. And the music, though not very Motown, is used in a very interesting way. You don't really hear the songs they are singing, you hear the emotional content behind the songs and their reactions to what's going on between them. Pretty smart stuff. It got to the point where every time the amazing Jennifer Hudsdon opened her mouth to sing, I started to tear up.

If you have any affection at all for the Rocky movies, this is a great ending story for the character. This one and the first one are the best in the franchise, because they stay close to the character they don't have silly villians. I was very happily surprised. There were lines here and there that sounded so like the old Rocky, it was kind of like seeing an old friend again.

It also made me think about Stallone's contribution to film in general. Rocky was a very successful independant film five years before Sundance first launched. It probably had a lot to do with the rise of indies.

The first and last Rocky films are really about trying to reach your dreams and about self-respect for best efforts. They so captured a part of the U.S. pysche that effects from the movies recently became part of the Smithsonian's collection.

Okay, and here's the other connection between wind and Rocky, that I hadn't even thought about till I wrote this. Rocky III may have saved our lives. Hydra and I saw it together in Fort Wayne, IN. We liked it so much we stayed in the theater and saw it again. When we got back to the place we usually parked our car outside our apartment, a huge tree had fallen (due to a big wind storm) and taken out a powerline on its way down. It was very startling to see the tree where our little car would have been...but it was even more chilling when we got upstairs and found that the power had gone out at the exact time we would have arrived home if we hadn't stayed for the second showing.

Cue spooky music!