3620

Saturday, Saturn Day! Will the willies go away? Who's to say, anyway? What the hey! Right away!

It was a movie day! Watched two battle films--Casualties of War and The Battle in Seattle. The first is about a platoon in Vietnam and the craziness the soldiers encounter as their humanity is stripped away by fear and death. It's also about the bravery of one soldier who says "no" to being a participant in some wanton butchery, but has to live with the consequences. As usual, the story is based on some real events, but that are fictionalized in the telling. The film starred Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn. Fox was starting to show his PD symptoms but wasn't formally diagnosed until a few years after the film. In an interview track, he was exhibiting some dyskinesia but nothing all that noticeable unless you looked closely. He did a good job in the film--Sean Penn was a little over the top but scary.

The second film was about the WTO riots in Seattle in 1999. The film is a fictionalized take of what happened during the confrontation that uses some actual footage intermixed with created scenes. As the film points out, the viewer doesn't learn much about the WTO--the focus is on the demonstrators and the police actions in response. The whole film tilts a bit toward making the demonstrators look sympathetic. That's also somewhat so with regards to the police. The "real" boogie men, the WTO, is not examined except tangentially. The role of the media is also looked at a bit, but only in a glancing way. The film gets your attention if you happen to come across it. It never got very wide distribution and didn't break even at the box office.

Sun Day tomorrow! Still cooling off but with some rays on the haze.