Don't let the Japanese scare you off, you can still play this game. Simply drag your cards on to the falling cards to create sequential runs (both backwards and forwards). It's a Speed type game, basically. Very fun!

I haven't seen the original movie upon which The Departed was based, so I can't give a comparison review, but this story about opposing cops and criminals who each have a mole within their midst was a good ride. We saw this with Brendan a couple of weeks ago with free tickets, so we didn't feel bad about the fact that it came out on DVD four days after we saw it. We actually sat in the ghetto side of the Fullerton AMC. It's been years!

Anyway, I'm not sure there is a lot to say about this movie. It's very entertaining, very well acted, obviously well directed, and the dialogue is sharp. Scorsese finally won his Oscar this past weekend, although this isn't the movie that should have done it for him. Honestly, they should have given him the Oscar in 2003 for Gangs of New York instead of Roman Polanski. GIY may not be everyone's favorite Scorsese film, but he was the best director that year, for a film that was all over the place from fights to love scenes to knife throwing scenes to riots to fires and more. In a way, I'm disappointed that Marty won this year, because it just means people felt sorry for him. He's a big man, and he can take it, and he's capable of continuing to make great movies, so I would rather have seen him lose and win later on for a more deserving picture.

That's not to say that The Departed is a bad movie. Actually, it's filled with excellent actors doing their thing well. I liked the casting choices a lot, and Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Mark Wahlberg are all awesome in their roles. The script's weakness, in my opinion, was that both moles were dating the same women. I can handle coincidences, but that one went a bit too far for my tastes. Even so, I tried suspending disbelief on that note and still enjoyed the movie. I loved that the script didn't always go where the audience expected it to, especially the way some of the characters meet their destinies. Unfortunately, Kevin and Bean had been talking about the movie a few days before I saw it, and they let out some major spoilers, so I wasn't very surprised by any of it.

In the end, good movie, well-made, not my Oscar pick for Scorsese, but I liked it quite a bit.