While i was cavorting around Chicago, V tivoed and watched Brokeback Mountain. She enjoyed it, and finally got me to sit down and watch it last Saturday. Veronica had warned me that she spent the first half hour or so trying to decipher what Heath Ledger was mumbling, and i did too. Despite my difficulties in translating the first act, i quite liked the film. It's one however i wish i had seen before experiencing the pop culture it spawned. I found it difficult in parts to appreciate the well-portrayed hardships of the characters without having three Brokeback jokes pop into my head. It was a very moving story, although i thought Ang Lee didn't go into quite enough depth regarding the nature of Jack and Ennis's attraction, especially how it came about and how they rationalize it. But these are minor quibbles, it was truly a thought-provoking film.

While lounging around the house on Sunday, i stumbled across Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven on HBO. Having an interest in medieval history, i settled in to watch it while folding laundry. The Orlando Bloom crusades epic had a problem similar to that of Brokeback Mountain, although in this case it wasn't that the characters mumbled, it was that the audio level varied from muted whispers in conversation to the screeching noise of battle. So in an effort to avoid awakening the slumbering Veronica, i had to strain to pick up all the nuances of the dialog. I thought the story was reasonable, although it did bend over backwards to paint the Muslims as the valiant protagonists of the crusades. Now before you go accusing me of being brainwashed by Debbie Schlussel, i would tend to think that Saladin's recapture of the Holy Land and Jerusalem was warranted by the horrible religious near-genocide perpetrated by the Europeans in the First Crusade. However, the film certainly omits some of Saladin's nastier acts and paints some of the European characters in broad good/bad strokes to drive home its message. But these historical triffles aside, its final message as delivered by Bloom's Balian character is a good one: holy wars should not trump human life, and holy warriors should remember that they are fighting for their brethren and not a piece of wood or a hill.

As evidenced by my movie consumption, i mostly hung around the house this weekend. V and i did drive up to Bacar in SF on Sunday night for her office holiday party. She'd organized it, so there was some added stress for her in ensuring enough people showed up and the restaurant had seats for all of them. The food was quite good, although i didn't much care for the creamy sauce they doled onto the savory mesquite-grilled Mahi Mahi. We returned home to find our naughty dog had gone through the garbage and eaten a pound of old cheese. She'll be refunding that, if not last night during her bathroom trip outside then today sometime. We then played the finale of the Amazing Race from the tivo. Both V and i were pulling for the Alabama team, although we conceded that if it came down to any kind of footrace then they were screwed. Turns out they missed the early flight from Paris to NYC and were basically out of it at that point. I was thrilled that the constantly bickering Rob and Kim team didn't win, although the smarmy male model/former heroin addict team that prevailed wasn't all that better.

I bought the acclaimed Rainbow Six: Vegas for the 360 last Thursday, but haven't had a chance yet to give it a whirl. I'm curious about the feature whereby you can use the Xbox Live Vision camera to take front and side photos of yourself and map them onto the head of your RSV character. Might be a reason to buy the $40 Vision. We also picked up the three Burger King Xbox games for $4 apiece last Saturday. V played the pocket racer one on Sunday afternoon and said it was pretty hard. However, it's probably worth $4 just to see a digitized Brooke Burke wearing a red jumpsuit and squatting on a pocket bike. If only she could bust out with some Rock Star dialog too, like "We've seen twelve amazing performances by twelve outstanding rockers, but none of them can beat me on my pocket bike!" And oh man, if Dave Navarro popped up every now and then to say "you know, i didn't know if you could pull off this race, and then you started, and ... you were AWESOME!" Maybe BK can incorporate that into the $8 deluxe edition. V has ramped up her efforts to land a Wii, and we spent some of Saturday night calling the array of Targets and Toys 'R Uses in our area. No dice. However, it seems the next shipment is arriving at all these stores on December 17, meaning i may be spending next Saturday night camping outside our local Target. As much as i would like a PS3, given the absolutely ridiculous state of distribution of those systems i've given up hope until the spring.

I picked up Perfumed Lands by the Isles, thinking that comparisons to the Smiths are usually a good thing. I think the New Yorkers have gone overboard here though ... the Johnny Marr flourishes and Morrissey-esque lyrical content and delivery diverge from "inspired by" and move into "stolen from".