Companion piece to Letter From Iwo Jima, and like I mentioned before, interesting if watched around the same time as The Sands of Iwo Jima, Flags of Our Fathers shows us the battle for the little island from the point of view of Americans, although the majority of the story follows a few soldiers after they have returned home. I guess that would be my complaint. While Letters gave a rather thorough picture of the Japanese experience on the island, this one sort of glosses over Iwo Jima. I mean, we get some very impressive action sequences when the Americans first land on the shore, but after that, this movie actually reminds me a bit of The Best Years of Our Lives--only that movie was much better than Flags of Our Fathers, in my opinion.

Flags feels like it lacks focus, or what it does focus on is what interested me the least. The story behind the men in the famous picture at the top of Mt. Suribachi is an interesting one, definitely, and the idea that some soldiers were exploited to use the photo as propaganda for citizens to buy bail bonds was interesting as well. Unfortunately, the way the story is told is countless repetitions of Chief breaking down, Doc playing it cool, and other guy (Ira?) hamming it up for the camera. Actual war experiences are limited to a lot of flashbacks, during which we are introduced to countless characters who make a small impression before dying, and in the end it's impossible to remember who was who.

While a few of the stories hold moments that make a small emotional impact (like when Chief meets the mom of a dead soldier at a big event and hugs her while sobbing), they don't build up to a comprehensive whole that has much to say about the events at Iwo Jima, and they don't do enough to make a good story about the events after Iwo Jima. Actually, it felt like the movie went for about two hours, and then suddenly Doc's son started narrating so they could close up the storyline. It was awkward.

This isn't to say that the actors can't act or that Clint Eastwood can't direct. All of them did a very fine job. But the story itself didn't do a lot for me, and the music did even less by being so incredibly repetitive. It's worth a look, but I wouldn't say anyone needs to seek it out. What a disappointment.

The Smoking Gun has posted actual complaints filed by people regarding the Super Bowl halftime performance by Prince. Really, it's worth it to read through the 12 pages, especially for this little gem:

I don't know if it's a gag complaint or a prime example of stupidity, but it gave me teh lulz either way.

Source.

Holy cow, Griffith Observatory was awesome. If anyone reading gets a chance to go, take it. The view of the city alone is absolutely amazing. It's so quiet up there on weekday nights. I loved it. Very peaceful. We walked around the exhibits and then got tickets (yay student discount) for the planetarium show, which is all new with new comfy seats. It was really cool. On the way out there were some volunteers with telescopes set up on the front lawn. We got to see some star clusters, a dying red dwarf star, and Saturn! That was definitely the coolest thing to see. Also, this guy had an ultra powerful laser pointer that actually pointed out stars. I'm not even kidding. It was insane. For those of you who don't know, several movies were filmed at Griffith. The most famous is probably Rebel Without A Cause, but they also shot scenes there from Terminator 2 and my personal fave, The Rocketeer, among many others. So it is also a cool Hollywood landmark. Greg took some pictures, so hopefully I'll have those up soon. Have a good night, folks!