Movie update:

We finally watched Apocalypto this week. Having read some fairly scathing reviews of it online and being fairly reluctant to watch it at all, I was not expecting much, and that’s what I got. The language (Yucatec Maya) was pretty bad, the script was obviously written in English and then translated, and the speakers, well what can you say, the protagonist is from Oklahoma or some crap so all in all his Maya wasn’t that terrible, though Paul’s is WAY better.

The blood and gore was over the top enough that it was pretty funny to watch.

The landscape was what really got to me. Yucatec Maya is only spoken in the Yucatan. The Yucatan has very distinct geographical features such as the fact that there are no rivers, only cenotes (sinkholes but not really). That said, when the river/waterfall scene occurred I was like, wow, that’s great that Veracruz has dramatic rivers and waterfalls but Yucatan doesn’t. What Veracruz does have that Yucatan doesn’t (excluding Cancun of course) are big luxury resorts for your Mel Gibson types to hold up in while filming a movie about a people who never lived in the part of the world your filming in, but let’s not get me started…

Besides some other anachronistic stuff like the hammocks (which were brought from the Caribbean by the Spanish) and just plain dumb stuff like the sleeping in the kitchen structure (kooben) instead of the home structure and the absolute stupidity of the ravaged village not to have some “look outs,” just seemed to me a little irresponsible. The temples referenced in the film were weird too, unidentifiable yet Tikal-Chichen-looking, which is funny b/c Chichen is primarily Toltec, but whatever, no one will notice.

The ending is totally laughable but not surprising because the whole time you’re thinking, how is this going to end? How can it resolve itself, and you think, “they couldn’t use the worst, most obvious conclusion could they?” could they? oh yeah! barrel of laughs.

But don’t take my word for it. Wait until you are super bored and then go for it.

In other movie news we saw The Holiday. Paul was disappointed because he thought there should have been more Jack Black scenes, on which he is totally right. The funniest part of the movie is the boob graze but we’ve all seen that from the previews so that was a little disappointing There was an inordinate amount of footage of the “beautiful” Cameron Diaz and what’s his name? that guy who cheated on what’s her name? oh yeah, Jude Law, him. I agree but the movie is ok and actually pretty funny at times. And, I was totally jealous of all the cold weather England scenes with snow dusted fields and a hot chocolate by the fire… alas…

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention why we are back on a movie kick. The cable is out. Grrrr! So we are off to spend WAY too much money at a sports bar to watch football that is totally on TV but we can’t get reception. More on this little annoyance as it happens…

That’s my two cents. Hope global warming is treating you well. It was 93º here today!

M