Happy birthday.

It's my birthday today.

... Kind of a bummer actually. This birthday's got me thinking and analyzing what things I have yet to accomplish in my life; all the things that others who are my age and surround me are doing and I'm not. Starting families. Traveling ... and there's that other silver screen dream that haunts me, too ...

... So my mood wasn't right this morning from the start. I was stressing about some projects and deadlines at work. And once I was in the office, I only seemed to be butting heads with people ...

Added to that, Kates is deep in classes this week and her nights are taken by homework. We're feeling strapped enough these days that tonight we decided to rule out a special dinner or a night at the movies ...

Instead, we ordered Chinese and chose to watch one of the DVDs stacked on our entertainment center ...

"Good Night and Good Luck"

eh.

... Now, I was pretty excited to watch this one, what with all the Oscar buzz that surrounded it and a storyline centered on CBS, Ed Murrow and Sen. Joseph McCarthy's crusade against communists ...

But the film was sort of a let down. I say 2 1/2 out of five stars ...



David Strathairn, George Clooney and the cast were wonderful. And there were a few hilarious comic bits ...

But the film seemed disconnected, disjointed ... With so much actual film footage of McCarthy and the Senate hearings, it almost overtook the artistic integrity of the film. At times, I felt like I was watching a documentary ... And I'm still trying to figure out exactly what roles Robert Downey Jr.'s and Patricia Clarkson's characters played in the whole story. Their marriage played an interesting side story, but it felt out-of-place. And beyond that, I never got a sense that they were major players in CBS's reporting on the McCarthy story. It wouldn't have made a difference whether they were in the film or not ...

Sigh.

It's a fascinating and bold story about how Murrow and CBS went after McCarthy. But it failed to translate on film ...