Yesterday afternoon I took my book and a glass of water with some lemon juice out to the back yard. I plopped down on our outdoor furniture under one of our trees, balanced the water glass somewhat precariously on the cool grass, and began to read.
After some enjoyable reading, my eyelids grew heavy, as I knew they would. I tried to fight the sleepiness by moving around, taking a few sips of the cold water, and squinting extra hard at the page before me. But — as the Borg would say — resistance was futile. My head nods became more and more pronounced. After a few feeble attempts at staying awake, the buzz of the insects, the heaviness of the warm air, and the coolness of the sun-dappled shade finally got me, and I drifted off.
After a time the tweeting of the birds, the bark of a dog, or the cry of one of the neighborhood kids — I’m not sure which — caused me to slowly surface from my slumbers. I’m not sure how long I dozed, but when I reached for my glass it was still cool and dotted with perspiration, and a tiny shard of ice cube floated on top. I crunched the holdout ice cube with pleasure, stretched until my old bones cracked, and went back to reading.
What better way to celebrate the pleasures of summer than falling asleep in the noonday sun, stretched out in close proximity to nature, feeling the warmth on your face and the drowsiness overcoming you?
First, about IMAX: I frankly don’t think it’s worth the extra money for standard Hollywood fare. Before yesterday, the only IMAX movies I’d seen were nature-type movies about hiking on mountains or rafting through the Grand Canyon — movies where the spectacular scenery, on the huge screens, made for an overwhelmingly memorable experience. Action-movie footage of Gotham City, car chases, and hand-to-hand combat just don’t have the same impact, no matter how loud the explosions might be. IMAX gives you a bigger screen in a bigger theater, but I wasn’t able to appreciate any other material differences from your normal movie experience.
t’s a perfectly acceptable end to the Dark Knight trilogy, as characters and scenes from the prior two Dark Knight films make appearances. Christian Bale has the Batman and Bruce Wayne characters down cold, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman play their enjoyable supporting roles well, and Gary Oldman is steady and unflappable as Commissioner Gordon. My favorite characters were Anne Hathaway, as an untrustworthy cat burglar thief turned ally, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a cop trying to deal with the carnage. It’s rare that you appreciate acting — as opposed to action — in a film like this, but Hathaway’s performance broke through the explosions and fistfights. And I think Gordon-Levitt makes a very convincing, and believable, action movie hero.
