Lions for Lambs

I went and saw Lions for Lambs on opening day, mostly because I was bored and had nothing else to do, but also because I thought the cast was pretty solid and it looked like it had pretty good potential for a movie. Also I thought it would make for a pretty neat blog topic :)

Lions for Lambs is a movie about the ongoing war on terror, focusing mostly on Afghanistan, but Iraq and Iran are involved as well. It's a three-pronged narrative, in that there are three stories going on at once. The first story is told from the perspective of two American soldiers in Afghanistan, the second story is told by a professor (Robert Redford) at the University of California who taught those two soldiers in undergrad, and the third is in a senator's office where the senator (Tom Cruise) is relaying/spinning a new plan for attack in Afghanistan to a reporter (Meryl Streep). The movie is about 90 minutes long.

Despite the awful reviews the movie got, I thought it was okay. Tom Cruise played the part of a super-conservative Senator, and I thought his acting was great. Meryl Streep was also very good, and Robert Redford was as well. Despite all of the good individual performances, the three-pronged narrative wasn't extremely effective, and the script itself was a bit lacking.

All of that being said, the movie was good for one thing -- If Americans haven't yet opened their eyes to what's going on and the fact that we're at war, then this is a GOOD movie for those particular people to see. It definitely had it's moments, and it may be worth three bucks at Kalamazoo 10 to see for anyone who's interested.

As for the reading for today, I'm beginning to delve into Mahfouz. I have four short novels by him to read, and I really have to start working on them soon or I'll never finish. I hope everyone's a little bit further along than I am.

Hope everyone had a great weekend! See you in class.

Dan

Edit: Class Schedule for the next couple weeks is as follows:

Wednesday November 14th - Two blogs on second book. Two people are coming into present.
Monday November 19th - Blog due on presentations made on Wednesday... 3rd paper - 3 pages rough draft due.
Wednesday November 21st - NO CLASS!!!
Monday November 26th - 3rd Paper Final Draft due.