Three Days Before X-Mas...

Word of the day : farrier
                                        : a man who shoes horses


Well, we're in the heart and heat of the Christmas break here, and we're having a pretty good time - no complaints. 

We've been watching and re-watching a lot of movies: The Reef and Rogue (effective Australian creature features), Magic Mike, Chernobyl Diaries, Premium Rush...

Have you seen Premium Rush (2012) yet?  It's one of the best action films - one of the most entertaining films, for that matter - of the year.  A fast-paced, ingeniously-choreographed film featuring some first-rate stunt work, the film stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt (that endlessly appealing, up-for-anything fount of charisma) as an NYC bike messenger who finds himself in possession of a Very Important piece of mail - wanted Very Badly by crooked cop Michael Shannon.  The movie has the same energetic, freewheeling, non-stop reckless sense of fun and play as Speed, and writer-director David Koepp (longtime go-to studio scripter) has a ball with the linear convolutions of the story and the obstacles inherent in the setting.  Koepp has directed some underrated films - the Ricky Gervais comedy Ghost Town, the Kevin Bacon creeper Stir of Echoes, Johnny Depp's Secret Window- but this one is his best yet; it's a modestly ambitious piece of throwaway entertainment, perfect for what it is, with Michael Shannon giving an enormously colorful supporting turn; the actor seems as pained as strained as usual (I mean that in a good way), seizing with worry, contorting his vocal inflections, and very, very funny.   

Another movie we had long been waiting to see was Chernobyl Diaries (2012), which is pretty much what you think it's going to be from the title and previews.  Six tourists are up for - some more than others, naturally - an extreme travel sidetrip to Chernobyl - site, of course, of the nuclear reactor disaster in 1986.  The characters are fascinated, enthralled by the apparently off-limits site and the abandoned city where the workers once lived.  But, of course, as night falls, complications set in and they realize they're not alone.  I suppose you can say that the film is exploitative, making light of a horrible tragedy, but why bother?  It's a movie, people!  I was creeped out throughout, and though the film follows a fairly obvious blueprint, the whole thing really hooked me and one reason for my engagement is that, though I should have, I never really knew where the film was going and who was going to die next.  Directed by Bradley Parker.