8.06.2007

Exhibit 1.11

Saw The Bourne Ultimatum, and it was fun and exciting and a little ridiculous and super awesome all at once. A few thoughts:

Can we rethink this whole Julia Stiles thing? She's like somebody's wooden step-sister. I was openly rooting for Desh. There's a scene very much like one in the first movie where she dyes and cuts her hair while Matt Damon watches her. Instead of sexual tension, however, there is the undeniable sense that Jason Bourne is thinking Yeah, right. My last girlfriend was Franke Potente. I can do better.

Speaking of Desh, at one point in the film he and Matt Damon engage in a race to see who can be more awkward on a scooter. Who won? The audience, that's who.

My favorite thing about the Bourne movies--outside of the aforementioned awesomeness--is what they say about our government's intelligence community in its fictional world. Apparently they are capable of training one agent to be an unthinkable badass but decided the rest of their team of assassins only had to be kind-of tough. Even Desh fights like he dropped out three weeks into a month long fighting course, never getting to the lesson about battering your opponent with the textbook. I wonder if after training Bourne Albert Finney, Chris Cooper, Scott Glen, David Strathairn, and Tom Skerritt (who isn't in the movies but would surely be at that meeting) all got together and decided that Since we have Bourne, we really only need a bunch of chumps with messenger bags and designer jackets. We'll be good as long as the chumps never have to face Bourne.

Bourne is like the Dan Marino of super soldier assassins. If statistics were kept on number of arms bent at awkward angles to momentarily debilitate an Eastern European police officer, he'd be in the Hall of Fame.

Hearing David Strathairn say, "Give me a standard kill order." is like hearing Jesus sing. I wonder what other kill order options there were. King size?

At one point in the movie Matt Damon does one of my favorite ridiculous movie things. While driving a pilfered police car and needing to go faster, he shifts the car into another gear and steps on the gas so that the car speeds away. Except here, the car is an automatic Monte Carlo circa 2000. The lever is on the steering wheel for god's sake. Really, Bourne, did going from D3 to D4 really do much for you or was it more a gas mileage thing? (Ed note: I'm not ruling out Matt Damon can conjure a manual transmission just by thinking about it).

There are plenty more great moments like these, but I feel I already rehashed them in hurried exclamations after the show. That probably says all you need.

UPDATE: I have since gotten several hits by people who found this blog by googling Julia Stiles's name, and now I feel awful. I didn't want to start a blog just to be one of those guys. Seriously, she's great. I loved her in Finding Forrester.

4 comments:

Dusty said...

Yesterday was Simpsons movie, today is grocery and antique stores, Wednesday is the Bourne movie, Thursday is driving back up to NoVA. I'd comment on the movie on Wednesday, but by then you'll probably have moved on to, oh, some more Royals analysis, or maybe an after-the-fact bit about the whole Vick & Dogs thing, and my comment will go unread, unwanted.

A. Peterson said...

Oh, Dusty, that's not how my wildly erratic blog works. We're all about comments here. I'm still waiting for someone else to comment on the attorney general's uncanny resemblence to a local sportscaster. Anyone? No?

Seriously though, let me know. As I think only you and Heather read this, I like to think of it as a conversation between the three of us. Oh, and tell Neal.

A. Peterson said...

Oh, no, I don't think I can fix my spelling error in the above post. That's it, this blog is done.

Thanks for reading.

Dusty said...

Here's why Bourne Ultimatum is so good, and why most international-intrigue spy movies in general are good:

Dodging surveillance and other forms of tracking is a dance. It's like Busby Berkeley but on streets with guns.

I know. Even I'm calling myself a fag right now.