Road Work

 Looks like I'm trapped in the house for the day today as they are paving the road and it's the only road in and out of this place. A brief inconvenience, I suppose, and the end result should be preferable to the the obstacle course of pits and hills we have had up to this time. 

I've been able to catch one more Oscar nominee, Judas and the Black Messiah, but cannot seem to find a viewable option for The Father or Sound of Metal. Regarding the latter of those two, I can't say that I really care or would be inclined to watch it anyway, as I cannot bear the idea of listening to two hours or even two minutes of heavy metal music. 

I found Judas and the Black Messiah quite good, at least among those movies offered up this year. It is essentially about the rise of the Black Panther movement in the late 60s/early 70s--another blast from the past for me, as I remember those times very well. I thought the movie was particularly well acted, and of course meaningful for its relation to events of the present day. 

Coincidentally, I also saw a movie called Welcome to Marwen, and this I liked very much indeed. Set in the late 50s, this is the story of a World War II veteran, an army air force pilot, who was beaten to a coma by a neo-nazi-like group of young men for mentioning that he occasionally liked to wear women's high-heels. When the victim awoke from the coma, he could not remember most of his past and he had lost his ability to perform the mechanical skills of an artist, which had previously been his employment. Nonetheless, he retains an artist's temperament and need to create and so ends up fashioning and photographing dramatic scenes using dolls and other miniatures along with a miniature town he has constructed and called Marwen. It is his way of dealing with the trauma he has experienced, the brain damage he suffered, and to fashion a stable and bearable world in which to live, albeit a pretend world.  

It is an offbeat movie about an offbeat story, at times hilarious and at times heartbreaking, with a job well done by Steve Carell, who, as you will know, is not usually associated with dramatic roles.