What better day to watch a Mel Gibson movie than Good Friday. So off I went with Captain Arrrgh, who will probably blog in more detail about it, to watch The Passion of the Christ since Amber doesn’t like movies with such blood, gore and torture. It is a powerful movie and works pretty well as a movie, except that the devil is just a comedic release. I didn’t understand his role except for the scene in the garden near the start of the movie. Pontius Pilate also seemed like too much of an empathetic character. I won’t comment about the fidelity to scripture since I haven’t exactly read the Bible and am not a Christian to boot. It was also interesting that I could pick up a few words in Aramaic that sounded quite like their Arabic counterparts.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a very different movie from the Passion. It is about love and memories. Since it was written by Charlie Kaufman, it has some nifty tricks in there too. Also, good acting by Jim Carrey after a long time.
It took some effort to find a theater in Jersey where Dogville was running, but we found it in a single screen theater in Chatham. The effort was definitely worth it as this is a very good movie. The plot was absorbing and the artistic choices were interesting. Nicole Kidman performed very well and is probably one of the better actresses around at this time.
We also went to a Jagjit Singh concert in Elizabeth, NJ. The ghazals and Jagjit’s singing were good, but the acoustics of the hall or the sound equipment was not up to par.
