I Heart Huckabees

I'm a big fan of "quirky" movies, but this one didn't tickle my funnybone. Nor did it make me pause and think. By all rights it should have, given the wonderful cast. I mean, Isabelle Huppert and Tippi Hedren in the same film -- what could be more sublime?

Akira Kurosawa's “HIGH AND LOW”

There is a scene in Kurosawa’s High and Low where police emerge from the house of a man, played by Toshiro Mifune (Red Beard), whose lost kidnapping ransom, paid to recover the son of his chauffeur, has caused his total financial ruin. Yet there he is, calmly mowing his lawn with his power mower, while his life collapses around him. He seems to be enjoying himself. Life goes on.
The theme of this movie is religious intolerance. What starts out as “forbidden love” between a small-town Hindu boy and Muslim girl becomes a horror story as they take their “forbidden love” to the big city, Bombay. There they land right in the middle of the vicious religious cultural riots of 1992-1993.

Ray

I remember a couple of years ago Diana Krall came to the DC area, headlining for Ray Charles. I didn't go to the concert, I was only interested in Krall. Paying so much to see what I considered to be a "vintage" act just didn't seem like a good idea.