For those of you who are friends with Colin but haven't been receiving updates from his fiancee, Liz, Colin is scheduled to come home after having spent 5 months in Fallujah.

Also, I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but my nephew just came home safely a few weeks ago after a year of duty in Iraq, and will be stationed in TX next month. And another friend of mine came back safely a little while back and has moved on to be stationed in Hawaii.

I'm very thankful God has been taking care of our loved ones, and I'm very proud of them all for serving.

I watched this one during my lunch breaks, sporadically over the last 2 weeks. It's three and a half hours long, but well worth it.

The story is about a town that hires seven samurai to help defend their town against an attack by bandits who are planning to plunder everything they own as soon as their harvest is taken in. The story starts with one samurai and follows as six others are sought out, the townspeople are trained and prepared for battle, and then, of course comes the battle itself.

I have to admit that after spending two weeks with these characters, I was really attached to them. There's a great amount of attention on the characters and their development. The story isn't as much about the fighting as it is about the samurai and the townspeople. By the time I got to the battle I was kind of naively hoping everyone would come out alive. I really got involved with it.

Great battle sequences, characters, varied storylines, direction, acting, ... you name it. I really enjoyed it.