Guess Who Came Back Early? Blargh!

Yes, I made it back here early enough I actually feel like blogging. The first two paragraphs are recounting the weekend, but there's a movie discussed below that, if you'd prefer. While driving to Alex' on Friday, I thought of trying to set up a laptop with voice recognition, and do a liveblog where the post is me discussing what's on my mind and what I see as I go on these long drives. Probably be a lot of swearing. Somewhere around 10 Saturday night, things went awry. Alex' family was having a party for him on Sunday, so his friends threw a party Saturday night. An hour in, I got dizzy and went to lie down in my car. My brilliant plan of staring at an immobile object to convince my brain things weren't spinning backfired, as my brain instead convinced my eyes things were spinning, so my eyes kept drifting right, as if trying to follow something. But I was staring at my car's ceiling, which was distinctly not moving.

After two hours, I was still dizzy, and I needed a bathroom. I made it about five steps before my equilibrium completely vanished and I fell over. At which point I actually threw up, and I felt a little better, which is telling commentary on how bad I felt, that getting a second look at dinner constituted an improvement. I left the party at that point, returning to Alex' house for a quiet place to lie down. I don't know what caused it, whether it was my allergies progressing to a sinus infection that just wiped out my sense of balance, the sushi for lunch*, the smoke from the bonfire and cigarettes, or the gas leak present in the woods across the street from the party**. No, I hadn't been drinking. Anyway, I felt better by this morning, though I still have a persistent dull headache. Either way, Alex also felt like crap come the morn, so we didn't hit the riverboat casino as we'd planned. Bugger. We did however, watch a movie I hadn't seen previously, so I might as well discuss that, so it isn't all about me and my illnesses.

Hitman. It's one of those, "I haven't seen it, Alex has it, what the hell" things. It was either that or he was probably going to try and encourage me to watch Cloverfield, and I'm generally disinterested in that. When the movie began, Alex said something very heartening, followed by something rather disconcerting. He was commenting on the opening credits being interspersed with shots of Agent 47's training from childhood (which reminded me of Kurt Russell's Soldier more than anything), and said that now he watches movies more to see what techniques they're using with cameras and colors, to find the meaning. OK, as someone who discovered some joy for that in a couple of film classes, I'm glad to hear that. Then he says that's why he likes Michael Bay movies so much. Uh-huh. I haven't really pegged Michael Bay movies on being big on meaning, at least not meaning you needed to pick apart from camera angles. Oh well.

If you require a plot synopsis, a top-flight hitman finds himself caught up in a larger game, and meets a woman of difficult circumstances who helps him to find live outside killing. Or tries to anyway. I found myself dissatisfied with the movie. Part of it was that I kept looking at Timothy Olyphant (Agent 47), and seeing him as his villainous character from Live Free or Die Hard. Unfortunately, I didn't have the same reaction to that villain I did to Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber (where even though he was evil, he was awesome, so I count his playing a villain as a cool point in future roles, and a reason to root for him), so I found myself not particularly inclined to root for Agent 47. Plus, the guy just kept killing cops and bodyguards***. I know, he's a hitman, but that seems to be an awful lot of collateral damage for the "best killer the Organization produced", which is what he's supposed to be. I suppose he felt time was of the essence, and he didn't have the luxury of doing things more gracefully. Still, it doesn't help. Also, I felt dissatisfied with the ending, where I felt he really needed to either die, or wind up in prison. As you might imagine from my dissatisfaction, neither occurs. Really, I think I was feeling let down by the Interpol agent who had worked so hard to chase this guy, only to accept an offer to let some other dead killer take the rap. So he knows the guy he pursued for years is still out there, and that's OK? After all the trouble he went to trying to catch him?! After the whole mess where 47 played him to escape the Russans, and used the CIA to escape Interpol? Ugh. I didn't have high hopes, and it didn't match those that I had. I suppose it's a difference in what I was looking for, versus what the director wanted to do, but for me at least, I think the time would have been better spent sleeping.

My comics came in on Friday, so I'll get to those tomorrow. Now, it's time for sleep. We'll see how work goes tomorrow.

* I'm not suggesting the sushi was poorly prepared, just that my stomach had never encountered it before, and might have reacted poorly. More likely it was the sausages in some sort of sauce Alex' mother had made for dinner, on top of the sushi.

** Seriously, the words "gas leak" were spray painted on the road, with an arrow pointing into the woods, and you could smell it. Given other people reported feeling ill, I think that had to be part of it.

*** Or appearing to. Perhaps some of his shots didn't actually kill them, but he was shooting an awful lot of them in the head.