Zero Dark Thirty
Good morning, y’all. Windy and blustery with the promise of freezing temperatures tonight. I shouldn’t complain too much, folks to the North of us got up to five inches of snow. I bet their sinuses are doing flip flops with the dry seventy degree temps followed by snowfall. I don’t know if I can live in the sameness of temperature like on a tropical island, but it would be fun to give it a shot for a while.
Imagining life on a tropical island is a good way to pass the time as we head to the Walmart in Blairsville for our weekly re-provisioning. Now, this is not the first time this week Mulva has been to the Walmart, it might be her sixth or seventh. I just have to attend on the Saturday visit. I make good use of my time there by picking out our weekly Date night movie and reviewing the latest in toys and video games. Our grandson, Trey, is too young for video games now, but I want to be up to date on what the industry has to offer for when Trey is ready to be a gamer. Most of the games I can easily pass over as not suitable for Trey. Some I have to play on the in-store setup to check their future worthiness. I must admit that some games require purchasing to further investigate at home. I want Trey to know that any game he might encounter has the Grandpa Lite seal of approval.
I was surprised to find a real quality movie in the $3.99 discount movie bin this week. It was “Zero Dark Thirty” . I don’t have a clue why such a highly acclaimed movie about war and terror and intrigue would have been discounted so. My only clue is that the “folks running things” don’t value too highly one of the Obama administration’s highest accomplishments. Truth be told, if they didn’t want the message to get out they should price the movie at $399.00. Nobody in this area would pay that much for a movie, even if it was documentary footage of “The Second Coming”. We’d just wait long enough for the footage to come out on regular TV.
Anyway, the movie was a corker. I think Mulva really identified with Jessica Chastain’s character, Maya. Maya dealt routinely with pig headed men who knew everything, and weren’t willing to hear one word of advice, no matter how sound that advice might be. Mulva identified so strongly with the character that she’d be pumping her fists and pounding the arm of the sofa to drive home the character’s point. I’m not sure exactly why Mulva empathized so strongly with the character, it must be Mulva’s church work.
In case you don’t know the story, the plot is about how the Obama administration doggedly pursued any and every lead to find Ossama Bin Laden, the supposed mastermind behind 9-11. Jessica Chastain’s character, Maya, is a CIA agent tasked with tracking every scrap of intelligence she can to find the hiding place of the world’s number one criminal. Maya fights every one of her superiors, and generally becomes a pain in the rear to all of them. Maya is a woman on a mission and she is not going to let social protocol or office politics get in her way. Finally, she finds someone to listen to her, and eventually Seal Team Six is sent in to do the job. The great “Mastermind of 9-11” is laid to rest in the Indian Ocean and life returns to normal. For her reward, the real life Maya is transferred to obscurity to where she can never irritate her co-workers again. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.
The movie received five Academy Award nominations and won the award for Best Sound Editing. Jessica Chastain lost the Best Actress award to Jennifer Lawrence, and we just can’t explain the politics of Hollywood. Mulva and I are sure who gave the best performance. Check out “Zero Dark Thirty”, it’s got something for everyone, and it’s a historical fact. You can’t beat that.