reading and viewing

Sort of an eclectic mix of reading and viewing lately – here’s an overview:

The Call. I read some criticism of this movie when it first came out. Without spoiling it for anybody, I guess it had to do with the ending. I found it to be an engaging sort of thriller. The only issue I had was with Halle Berry’s hair. Looks like she was trying to channel Whitney Houston on one of her bad hair days. I’m sure someone will take issue with this comment about her but it was my first reaction so … W.H., R.I.P.

Went with Patti to see The Heat. If I were a critic for one of the conservative family movie review sites, my f-bomb clicker/counter would have been burnt up. I’ll bet Melissa McCarthy said it a dozen times before opening credits! Once you get past that – and some folks can’t or won’t or shouldn’t even try, but if you are able to watch movies with lots of language (but not much else for its R), then this is a reasonably funny movie. A girl-buddy flick. Patti loves Melissa Mc – maybe because that’s her sister’s name; don’t know.

Reading: Still wrapping up Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and amazed again at the nuggets of wisdom in it. I can’t do justice to them in a short excerpt but here’s a paraphrase of an example:

           

            Lewis talks about how he surprised himself with his quick and wrong response to someone in a situation. He wondered how he could have done that. He likened it to having rats in the basement (glad we don’t have one or any!) and how if you quietly go down and switch on the light, rats will scurry and you’ll see and hear them. You can go down noisily and likely by the time you get there, the rats will all be in hiding and you’ll be none the wiser. But the rats are still there.

            So our bad thoughts and actions are often just below the surface. If we see a situation or person coming, we might be able to keep those feelings below the surface. But more often than not, things catch us off guard and things pop out that we didn’t intend. But whether we intended them to pop out or not, they were there all the time regardless.

Not sure why but for some reason this makes me think of Paula Dean and the whole issue of racism or prejudice. As a product of the south in the 50s, I know I still have some prejudices deep down inside. I doubt that any amount of political-correctness will purge that completely. I just have to be on-my-guard to recognize those old feelings and words that are lurking deep within.

Which takes me back to The Heat. I suppose a danger in absorbing bad language for 90 minutes while watching a movie is that those words get buried in my subconscious and are lurking, just waiting for a moment to bust out. I hope not. I mean, I hope they don’t!