Match Point, A Literary Smackdown of Sorts, and an Illusory Near-Miss in the Skies Over England: Your Monday Inanity

Well, it's Monday again. Hope everyone had a super-awesome weekend.

Mine was pretty good. I saw the new Woody Allen movie, Match Point on Friday evening. Very good. Allen does a movie every year without fail, and every now and again he does a straight drama (in his movie prior to this one, Melinda and Melinda, half of the film was comedy, the other half drama). I think he does drama just as well as he does comedy. I've been skipping Woody's movies for the last few years because none of them have looked particularly appealing. The last two I saw in the theater was Deconstructing Harry (generally off-putting) and Small Time Crooks which, aside from the first 15 minutes, was a total stinker. But the critics are loving this one so Peggy and I went to the Phipps AMC and took in a showing. If you saw and enjoyed Crimes and Misdemeanors, one of Allen's best films, then I think you'll really enjoy Match Point. It's hard to get into what I liked so much about the movie without giving important aspects of the plot away, so I'll just say see it if it comes to a theater near you. And then we can talk.

A couple of quick links and then I'll get outta yo' face.

1) If you are a reader of this blog and sometimes enjoy stringing words together into sentences, and then those sentences into paragraphs, then I urge you to take a gander at Nathan Hines's new effort called Literary Smackdown. The premise is this: Hinesy will post up a topic or an idea or an image at the top of each month, and then folks can write up a lil' story based on the "topic" and send it in. Votes are taken and, each month, a victor emerges. Each month, Hinesy will send the winning writer $300 American dollars. No, wait. I mean he'll send you a dirty email filled with sweet nothings, and quite a few nasty somethings. Go ahead. Send something in.

2) Interesting item on Drudge today. Some folks at a soccer game in England took some pictures of what looks a helluva lot like a near-miss between two big airplanes. The photo (left) makes it appear as though a mid-air collision is unavoidable. Great Britain's Civil Aviation Authority, however, said the "near miss" was an optical illusion caused, in part, by blue skies, lots of sunshine, and obviously a very low-angle view of the scene. If you follow the link and click on 'next', you'll see a series of 6 pictures taken in quick succession and as you do so, the idea of a narrowly-averted mid-air disaster becomes less and less apparent with each new photo. Anyway, I thought it was interesting, and that I would pass it along.