Technically, this is a book blog

but I wanted to write about the movie Half Nelson, which I saw last night.

Wow.

What a freaking amazing movie, seriously. It's about this white inner-city teacher, which sounds like it's going to be one of those inspiring Teachers who Make a Difference in the Lives of Poor Black Kids movies until you hear the kicker, which is that he is also addicted to cocaine. The cinematography alone was just mind-blowingly good. The scenes where he was high on crack (which was pretty much all the time) were shot with weird angles and strange lighting and felt like some kind of neverending fever dream (or nightmare, really). And Ryan Gosling was just absolutely outstanding. I hated him in The Notebook because honestly, what a crappy sentimental poorly written movie that was, but in this one, he was incredible. His character was funny and intelligent and passionate but also desperate, lost, and hopeless in a really powerful and tragic way. He definitely deserved the nomination for best actor. OH and how could I forget to mention the soundtrack! It was written by Broken Social Scene and lends this weird surreal quality to the whole movie. God, it was just really good.

I'm a third of the way through Emma and I am just not enjoying it yet. That style of language/writing takes a while to get used to, but in Pride & Prejudice I was just zipping through it by the time I was 20 pages in. Now, though, I find myself checking to see how many pages are left. I guess I'm just not as interested in this story. Plus Emma as a character is not exactly the most loveable, although she has her moments. I'm just going to hazard a guess: Mr. Elton actually wants to marry her, not Harriet, and ultimately, Emma ends up marrying Mr. Knightley. Macky, am I right?