So, last Thursday I started a really strict diet. I haven't really talked about it here, because I don't really like talking about anything having to do with my body, but most of what was important about today has to do with that, so now I am talking about it. It's called Medifast, and it's one of those "buy a bunch of food from us" plans, although it actually works out to be significantly cheaper than what I have been spending on food since I became unemployed. You get a package of Medifast meals, which are small, roughly 100 calories each, easy to make, and nutritionally interchangeable. You eat five of those per day, and one meal you prepare yourself, each two to three hours apart. The self-made meal is lean protein and green vegetables with low starch. The combination of the decreased calories and whatever is in the Medifast meals is designed to put your body in a mild but constant fat-burning state. It takes three to five days to reach this state, and until you do, you feel like crap, but then you start to feel normal as long as you don't exert yourself too much the first few weeks.

Anyway, as you've probably noticed, I haven't had energy for much more than watching movies lately. Today, I was feeling restless, and I started looking at the calendar with my trips, and planning out my various goals, and I started to think that maybe starting this before the Vegas trip was a bad idea. While on the diet, it means I can't do the restaurants the way I want to, and it also means I won't have the energy to do any more hill walks before my trip. I'd probably lose a good ten or twelve pounds before Vegas, and then gain it right back because it's physically, morally, financially, and spiritually impossible to go to Vegas without eating in buffets. Then I'd be right back where I started and still having to go through the five days of feeling like crap when I jump back on the diet. It seemed like it might be a better idea to put the diet off until after the trip. Of course, then I started doubting my logic, and figuring it was just because I was craving tastier food. I asked a couple people for advice, and then went straight to the person who encouraged me to try the diet.

princess_proton is a great friend of mine, and the person I am going to Las Vegas with. She is also the person who lost a ridiculous amount of weight on this diet, to the point where I barely recognized her at the airport during her last visit. We talked at great length, and I explained the pros and cons of my various options, and she decided that I was correct in deciding to delay the hardcore dieting until after the trip. The only good reason to stay on it now would be if I planned to stay with it during the Vegas trip as well. With enough determination, we could both do this, but it is contrary to the spirit of our trip, which is to have the Vegas vacation we have always wanted to take together. We are going to not worry about it, and be chubby and stress-free together. Then, the day we get back from our trip, we will start the diet together, and be each others' support system.

One good thing about the dieting I have already done is that it has got me in the habit of eating more than one meal per day. Way too often, I just don't get around to eating in the evening, and by then I am starving and I eat way too much. Now I am hungry right when I wake up, which is something my body has never really got the hang of before. I am going to try to transition straight into eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I am going to try to eat only things I make myself, unless I am trying a new restaurant or going out with a friend. I mean, I do have a freezer full of chicken and veggies, and I am getting very good at grilling the chicken and steaming the veggies!

Today, to sort of shock my body out of ketosis, I ate some Chinese food. I have eaten a lot of Chinese food since I became unemployed, and lately all of my fortunes have had a weirdly unpleasant or passive-aggressive tone. "Try to be content with what you have." "Nobody can succeed in everything they do." There were a lot more, but I haven't been saving them because they have been annoying me. Today, the meal I got came with two fortunes, and both of them are the first positive fortunes I have seen in two and a half months. "Nothing can keep you from reaching your goals. Do it!" and "You will never need to worry about a steady income."

So, yeah, I bought season two of Sherlock on Amazon Instant Video. I don't know why I thought I would just be able to watch one episode and go to bed. Ha! Binge-watched all three ninety minute episodes, back to back. All three were absolutely fantastic. Better than season one, even. I am spraining my brain trying to figure out the twists and turns of the final act of the third episode. Season three can't get here soon enough!

I also watched the rest of my AFI 100 stack today. First was Stagecoach, which should probably be considered the start of the classic Western era. From what I hear, Westerns were never taken seriously before this movie. It does have everything going for it. I mean, it has John Wayne, but it also pioneers a lot of archetypes and tropes that went on to become the standard trappings of the genre. You've got the whole prisoner being escorted thing, you've got the woman of questionable morals and upbringing who has a heart of gold, you've got the drunk doctor who is a good doctor when he isn't drunk, you've got the shady gambler who turns out to have a bit of hero in him, and plenty of others. It all makes for a compelling movie, even so many decades later, and even though the entire story can be summed up in three words. "Dangerous stagecoach journey."

Next up was Easy Rider, which didn't do a whole lot for me. It's a relatively early incarnation of the road trip movie. This one is about a couple of Los Angeles hippies who score a massive cocaine deal and head east with their illicit earnings. They are heading for New Orleans, hoping to arrive in time for Mardi Gras. The movie is really more of a string of sketches as the hippies find themselves in different situations. I wasn't emotionally invested in anything that was happening, and even the shockingly abrupt ending came as more of a relief than anything else.

I also watched Annie Hall, which is a classic Woody Allen movie. It's probably the Woody Allen movie. It perfectly illustrates his style, for good or for ill. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I've liked most of his movies, although there was a pretty tiresome streak recently that was finally broken by the absolutely sublime Midnight In Paris. As a Woody Allen movie, you won't be surprised to learn that it contains Woody Allen being neurotic, talking to the audience, and falling in love with various people. The dialog is surreal and hilarious, often to the point where I almost feel like I need to pause the movie to absorb what was just said. Also, there are quite a few cameos from people who would go on to become really famous.

Only managed two of the AFI 100 today. First was Double Indemnity, which is a noir classic I was sure I had seen before, but I may have been wrong. At any rate, watching it today, not a frame seemed familiar. It's about an insurance salesman and a disgruntled wife who cook up a plot to kill the husband and get away with the insurance money. This is the quintessential noir flick. It's got moody lighting, a femme fatale, numerous hats, gritty narration, betrayal of friends, and an ending in which nobody gets what they want. Quite a ripping yarn, although I admit I found it very distracting trying to figure out exactly what sort of device the protagonist was using to record his narration.

I also watched Psycho for the first time. Now there is a movie it's very hard to not know anything about. Almost every aspect of it has been referenced or parodied so many times that every scene felt familiar, even though I am absolutely sure I've never seen it before. It's so weird to think that a director as respected as Alfred Hitchcock is basically the one responsible for starting the whole slasher flick genre of cinema. I mean, the Production Code had recently been abolished, so I'm sure somebody would have taken the gore and nudity baton and run with it, but it's interesting that it was Hitchcock. It really is amazing how effective the infamous shower scene is, even knowing exactly what is going to happen.

I watched a fairly big chunk of Supernatural and Burn Notice today. I'm in the second half of the third season for both of these shows, and both of them seem to be really hitting their stride. Supernatural had its first episode that was really played for laughs up until the finale. It was a sort of riff on Groundhog Day, with a similarly macabre sense of humor and impeccable comedic timing. Burn Notice is still a pretty effective chaser, although it is getting more intense. Mainly, the character-building moments are getting much more emotional. I'm really wondering how long it will keep up before a beloved character gets killed. Season finale of three, or mid season break of four, if I had to guess. I'm trying to watch it slower than Supernatural, because the seasons aren't as long, but it's not easy. That show is so addicting.

And now it's time for the Netflix Report.

An American In Paris - What a truly bizarre movie. It's a musical about an American WWII veteran who has fallen in love with Paris, and is trying to make a living as a painter there. The movie is about a sort of love rhombus between the painter, a wealthy patron who wants to be more, a French singer, and the girl the painter and the singer are both in love with. Gene Kelly plays the lead. I always forget what an exuberant dancer he is. There really is something magical about the way he moves, and I'm not sure anybody has quite managed to replicate it since. What makes the movie really weird, though, is the finale. It's a fifteen minute long ballet/dance number with the main leads dancing around in a variety of interesting sets, some of them pretty damned abstract. It's probably the only musical I've seen where I didn't like the music all that much but was impressed by the dancing.

The Philadelphia Story - My second Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant movie of this project, and they play two very different roles here, so I can't complain about typecasting. Hepburn plays a divorced socialite on the eve of her second wedding. Grant is the ex-husband. A tabloid publisher enlists the aid of her ex-husband to get the dirt on the marriage. The ex shows up at the wedding, introducing a tabloid reporter and photographer as family friends. From there, it gets a little confusing. (As these movies tend to!) It's tremendously entertaining, and I have to say I did not see the ending coming at all, which is always a nice surprise. Romantic comedies from this era are fast becoming one of my favorite genres. These are the only type of AFI 100 flicks that have had no misses for me. The most random thing about this one is that I think the bride's little sister in this movie might have been part of the inspiration for Dot from Animaniacs.

The Jazz Singer - And we're back to the difficult-to-watch movies. This movie is important because it was basically the beginning of the end of the silent film era. I believe it was the first feature length film to attempt any kind of sound synchronization featuring dialog or singing, so it was kind of a huge deal at the time. I didn't know any of this going in. I just knew that the box art usually showed Al Jolson in blackface. Blackface is something I don't think I can ever get used to seeing, and I still have a hard time believing that it was a real thing, and that it lasted as long as it did. The actual story of the movie, which I didn't know about either, is about a kid from a traditional Jewish family, whose father disowns him when he finds out he wants to be a jazz singer. The kid runs away from home, grows up, gets his big break, and then has to decide whether family or art is more important to him. If it sounds familiar, it may be because the Simpsons parodied the entire story with the episode about Krusty the Clown and his estranged father.

I probably could have squeezed another movie or two in. The ones I have left are all pretty short, but I am trying to pace myself. I've got two days left to see five DVDs.

We had a pretty tremendous storm earlier this evening! Blue skies all day, and then I looked out the window and the sky was almost brown, and the thunder was shaking my window. Glad I decided not to go hiking after all today!

Today I was feeling just a little bit overloaded with old movies, so I ventured out to the theater and saw a new movie. I saw Men In Black 3. It's a lot better than the second one. Not that the second one was terrible, but it was ill-conceived. It completely negates the ending of the first one. Sequels are supposed to move the story forward, but this one moved it backward, undoing all the character development that happened in the first movie. This third installment avoids all the mistakes of the second one. It tells a different kind of story, and it furthers the evolution of the main characters. It does use time travel, but it doesn't use it to cheat. Agent J wakes up one morning to find that Agent K has been dead for forty years, and jumps back into the past to repair the broken timeline. This means teaming up with a much younger version of K, played by Josh Brolin, who is having so much fun impersonating Tommy Lee Jones, he should probably be a little ashamed of himself. If you liked the first one, definitely see this one, even if you hated the second one.

After the movie, I was feeling strangely exhausted, so I came back home. I still didn't feel like diving back into the AFI 100, so I gave some attention to my sadly neglected Xbox. I spent a lot of today playing Kingdoms of Amalur. It's still really fun, and I'd be playing it a lot more if I didn't have so many other time-consuming goals. The game seems pretty freaking huge. As thoroughly as I play RPGs, I'll be amazed if I finish this one by the end of the summer. And it has already has two downloadable content add-ons, which supposedly increase the content of the game by about 30%. I'm not sure I believe that, but I do intend to find out at some point.

Of course, the downside of playing RPGs is that I tend to forget to look at the clock while I am playing, which can result in me posting my journal after four in the morning. Whoops. I was doing pretty good this week, too! For some reason, watching movies all day seems to make me more tired than playing video games all day. You'd think it would be the other way around, because movies are a much more passive type of entertainment. Well, the rest of this weekend is going to be AFI 100 all day, just because I have to return all of the library DVDs on Tuesday, so hopefully I can adjust my sleep schedule back to where it should be.

Whew! What a dense day of AFI 100ing. I'm about halfway through the library pile, and I'm running out of rainy days as well, so hopefully I will shortly be back to my hiking and doing other things ways. Anyway, today I managed two library movies and two Netflix.

The first movie I watched was The Wild Bunch, which is a Western I didn't know anything about. It's a brutal one about a gang of aging outlaws whose One Last Job goes horribly wrong and necessitates One More Last Job. This is another one of those "Wow, I see why this is a big deal!" movies. It was made in 1969, and it pioneered a ton of things that have become second nature in action films. For one thing, it was gory enough to really shock people when it came out. For another, it was one of the first mainstream movies to use quick editing during action sequences. It was also one of the first to film things at more than one speed to allow for speeding up or slowing down the action. All things that are taken for granted as action movie tropes these days. Out of all the classic Westerns I have seen for this project, I think this one is my favorite so far.

Next up was From Here to Eternity, which I might have already seen but was unsure enough to watch it again. Everybody's seen that scene where the couple is kissing on the beach and the wave breaks over them. That's another classic moment that has been referenced or parodied so often that people who have never heard of it know that scene. Anyway, for those of you who haven't seen it, it's a tragedy/drama set on a Hawaiian military base in the days leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. It focuses on a few particular soldiers; a private who used to be a boxing champ but quit for personal reasons, the commanding officer who is trying to strong-arm into joining his new division's boxing team, the sergeant who works under him and does all the real work, and the private's best friend. It's all just as riveting as it was back then, and the finale is as gut-wrenching as any war drama Hollywood has churned out since.

My next movie is the first one that I have come close to hating as much as I hated Birth of a Nation, which is surprising for a musical. It's called My Fair Lady, and this one, I hadn't actually heard any of the songs from, although I feel like it is at least as famous as The Sound of Music. It's about a linguistic expert who makes a bet that he can take a Cockney flower vendor off the street and, within six months of vocal coaching, pass her off as an aristocrat. This story has been remade more times than I can count, but what makes it truly odious to me is how utterly vile Henry Higgins is. He is seriously one of the least appealing characters in the history of film. I can't understand why people find this film charming and romantic. It's about a misogynist asshole who meticulously dismantles a young woman's psyche, rebuilds it to his own specifications and for his own amusement, then casts her aside when she has served his purpose.

Fortunately, my last AFI 100 episode was much more satisfactory. I saw The Apartment, which is actually one of the few AFI 100 I hadn't heard of beforehand. The main character is a young guy who has hatched a great scheme to climb the ladder in the company where he works. As one of the few single men in the company, the privacy of his apartment is a valuable commodity, so he starts loaning out his key so his superiors can use his place for their extramarital trysts. It's a funny and touching movie, and I enjoyed the heck out of it. I particularly enjoyed Jack Lemmon's performance in the lead role. It's the first of his older movies I have seen. The whole time I was watching it, I was trying to think of who his character reminded me of, and I finally realized he reminds me of Chandler from Friends. Baxter is a more handsome, higher-functioning version of Chandler. Whenever I watch a classic like this, I always wonder how many performances I've enjoyed were directly inspired by such films. Anyway, out of all the AFI 100 I have watched recently, this is one of my favorites.

Knocked out another three of the AFI 100 today! I started with The Sound of Music, which is probably the most adorable movie ever to feature Nazis. I'm a little embarrassed about not having seen this one before today. I mean, I wrote a freaking Kingdom of Loathing parody of one of the songs! Interestingly enough, while watching the movie, I realized I had somehow heard every single one of the songs before. I'm not sure how. Anyway, it's a fantastically perky movie about a would-be-nun who is hired as a governess for seven unruly children. You should watch it because Julie Andrews is one of the most awesome ladies who ever lived. Last year, she appeared on Craig Ferguson's show shortly after his birthday. She was promoting a series of kiddie books written with her daughter, and this particular one came with a pair of pajamas to make it even better as a bedtime story. For Craig's birthday, she had the only adult pair of those pajamas made for him, and he actually put them on and wore them for the rest of the show. It's a bit long, but both clips are absolutely worth watching if you want to fall in love a bit with Julie and Craig. ♥ Part 1 and Part 2

Shifting gears a bit, I watched The Godfather next. This movie pretty much reinvented the gangster film and I don't know that anything has quite managed to top it yet, although many have come damned close. It was odd seeing Marlon Brando in a movie again. Most recently, I saw him in On the Waterfront, which is one of his older movies. Actually, looking at his cinematography, I've got a bunch more of his movies coming up in the AFI 100. His performance in The Godfather really is as hypnotic as everyone says, in spite of him being difficult to understand due to the prosthetics in his cheeks. It's an amazing movie, and I had a lot of fun discovering the sources of so many references used in things I have seen.

Finally, I just finished watching Goodfellas, which is another of the best gangster movies ever made. It takes a very different path than The Godfather, which was operatic and stylish, almost to the point of feeling Shakespearean. Goodfellas is pretty much the exact opposite. It's grubby, down-to-earth, and foul-mouthed. The people really come off as everyday schmoes whose lifestyle makes them dangerous. Interestingly, both films deal primarily with Sicilian gangs. I have a feeling that all the gangsta wannabes who have been inspired by gangster movies are shooting for The Godfather, but are ending up in Goodfellas territory. Still, it's another great movie, if far more violent and course than its more elegant predecessor.

Portland's week of spring rains continues! I'm itching to try out my new leveled monopod, but this weather is not conducive to hiking photography. The only hiking I did today was up to the library to check their DVD selection. I signed up for a new library card, and then promptly check out all the AFI 100 movies they had in stock. There were thirteen, total. Well, there were fifteen, but two of them were ones that should already have been mailed out from Netflix, so I didn't pick those up. Anyway, having these to watch while I wait for Netflix to arrive will definitely speed up the process, and I can certainly complete this goal on time now!

With Netflix, I was doing them in reverse order, counting up from the bottom of the AFI 100. With the library movies, I've decided to do them in order of longest to shortest. That means I was only able to watch two today, and that took up pretty much the entire day. Did you know Gone With the Wind is four hours long? I probably knew that at one time, but I'd forgotten. It's a pretty impressive achievement. I can't think of the last time I was so engrossed by a movie with such an unlikeable protagonist. Scarlett O'Hara comes off as petty, immature, cruel, greedy, or manipulative for most of the film, but it works because she's also extremely interesting. I was startled at how many famous quotes from the movie I'd heard re-worked before without realizing it. I mean, everybody knows "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." I mean, that's one of the greatest exit lines in the history of cinema, but there are plenty more lines that were equally influential.

Next, I watched Ben-Hur. Just now finished it, actually. It's over three and a half hours itself! Really, the only thing I knew about this one was that there is a very famous chariot race. I had no idea how much religious content was in the movie. I mean, Jesus is a pretty major subplot in this thing. The main story is about Judah Ben-Hur, who is a wealthy and important Jew who is unjustly accused of treason and forced into slave labor on a Roman warship. He bides his time and eventually his fortunes change, and he makes his way back home to find what's left of his family. It's pretty freaking epic, even by today's standards. And I'm glad I've been watching so many old movies lately, because it really gave me an appreciation for how much of a game-changer that chariot race was. It was one of the most ambitious and expensive stunts ever filmed, and it left me awestruck in 2012. I can only imagine how it must have blown the minds of the people who saw it in theaters.

Fizzbin and I went on a quest for breakfast today. We got a later start than we wanted, so it was more of a lunchtime breakfast, but we succeeded in finding the much-lauded Broder, which is a Swedish restaurant known for its comforting, delicious breakfasts. Broder is restaurant twenty-six! Only eight more to go! Here is their sign!



Not a very large menu. Well, this is just the breakfast side. So many things I wanted to try, and so many things I will go back for. Our waiter was very friendly, silly, and unshaven.



What is breakfast without coffee, I ask you? Still breakfast, but not as good for rainy days like today! This coffee has two odd things about it, as compared to my experience. 1) It is in a clear glass mug. 2) They warm the cream up for you before bringing it to the table so it doesn't cool off the coffee when you pour it in. Is this standard Swedish breakfast practice? This was a difficult picture. I think the blackness of the table, the whiteness of the cream, and the clearness of the mug conspired for some difficult lighting.



Because everything on the menu was so new to me, I wanted to try several different things. This seemed like a good way. Cheese, salami, a small bowl of fruit, some pieces of smoked trout, rye crisps, orange, grapefruit, two slices of a very dense and hearty bread, and a cup of yogurt and oats and nuts. Not pictured: There is a slice of some kind of coffee cake hidden behind the crisps. It was less sweet than I am used to, and tasted faintly of... cardamom, maybe? Whatever it was, everything was delicious. Except the rye crisps, which did become delicious when meat or cheese was placed on them.



When your Swedish friend tells you to order the pytt i panna, you order the pytt i panna. Of course, when there is a house special version with smoked trout that maybe isn't as traditional but everybody says is amazing, you order that! This is an absolutely fantastic dish. One of the finest breakfast dishes I've ever had. It's a hash of finely cubed potatoes, onions, and peppers, mixed with smoked trout, topped with baked eggs and a sprinkle of pickled beets. Despite tasting like no breakfast I have had before, I found it intensely familiar and comforting.



This is what my friend ordered. It's Danish, not Swedish, but we won't hold that against it. They may look like doughnut holes or cream puffs, but they are rich, spherical pancakes. They come with two sauces. She chose lemon curd and house made apple sauce. A delicious pancake mutation!



After lunch, we went to see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which is a movie about a diverse group of old people who travel to India to retire in a "luxury resort" that is slightly idealized in the brochure. Naturally, nothing ends up like they expect it to. The cast is phenomenal, with Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Maggie Smith, and Bill Nighy, among others. If you've seen the trailer, you have a very good idea what kind of movie this is, and it certainly does not disappoint. Sad and funny and touching. According to Fizzbin, who lived in India for several months, there are a few blatant inaccuracies, but nothing that ruined the movie for her. Mostly, the movie is a duel between Bill Nighy and Dev Patel to see who can be the most charming. Man, there is just something ridiculously endearing about that kid. I want him to be in twice as many movies.

After a detour to CostCo to pick up some necessities, I came home and watched some Netflix. I watched Bringing Up Baby, which is one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. The "Zany Romantic Comedy" as an art form is practically dead, and that makes me sad, because there is really no reason this kind of movie can't still work. Down With Love proved that not so long ago. I could explain the plot of the movie, but there really isn't any need to. All you need to know is that Katharine Hepburn is a bored heiress who decides straight-laced paleontologist Cary Grant is just too adorable for words and sort of absorbs him into her insane life through sheer tenacity. A lot of it has to do with a leopard. Watching this movie, I did come to a startling realization. Katharine Hepburn may actually have been the first Manic Pixie Dream Girl! Don't believe me? Let's go to the clip!

I also watched John Wayne in The Searchers, but I don't really have any interest in talking about that. I found all the characters extremely unpleasant, and the movie was a real chore to get through because I couldn't manage to care about anybody in it. On the technical side, I recognize the quality, but I just didn't find anybody in the movie likeable or interesting, and most everybody in a movie really needs to be one or the other.

Today was warm and rainy, which is a type of weather I am still getting used to. Pretty icky weather for hiking. I don't mind hiking when it's rainy if I'm not trying to take pictures, but it at least needs to be cold. Perfect weather for movies, though! I saw three of them today, and didn't think too highly of any of them.

Dark Shadows, I have been dreading for a bit. I tend to give Tim Burton a lot more leeway than most people do, but the trailer just looked bad. It's based on the classic TV show, which I admittedly have never watched. I don't actually know very many people who have watched it, so I can't speak to whether an affinity for the show will increase or decrease your enjoyment. It's about Barnabas Collins, the head of a wealthy family in New England, who runs afoul of a witch and is cursed to become a vampire, then locked in a coffin for two hundred years or so. When he is discovered, he discovers his descendants have fallen on hard times, and he does what he can to restore the family to its former glory. That's pretty much it. There is a bit too much fish-out-of-water junk, and if you cough too hard, the plot might blow away. Still, I was sort of on board with the whole thing as a bit of harmless fluff, and then the last few minutes happened, which annoyed the crap out of me. Not recommended, although I certainly don't think this is anywhere near the worst thing I have seen or will see this year.

Next up, Battleship. Wow. I admit I was not exactly unbiased going in. I've hated all the Transformers movies, and this movie looked very much to be aping Michael Bay's style. Plus, I kept giggling every time I see the big trailer card that says "From HASBRO, the company that brought you TRANSFORMERS!" So, it was probably a given that this movie wasn't going to win me over, but I was not expecting it to be quite as thunderously stupid. I mean, it goes beyond stupid. It's anti-intellectual. The movie makes science the villain, and scientists are the butt of most of the movie's sad attempts at humor. Idiocy and arrogance are celebrated. Sure, the movie is full of laughs, but none of them are from things that are supposed to be funny. This movie wants you to turn your brain off, grab a beer, and then join the Navy. Somewhere, Michael Bay is jerking off to this movie, and panting "Take that, science!" I've got more to say, but it's spoilery so it's going under a cut.

( Wait, what? )

Rounding out my disappointment trifecta, I saw The Dictator, which is the latest madness from Sacha Baron Cohen. Like all of his movies, it's deliberately offensive. Unlike his other movies, it isn't clever, funny, or shocking. Here, he plays a mad dictator who is stripped of his beard and stranded in New York, trying to get back to the embassy before his double is manipulated into making his country a democracy. The movie starts off as a mediocre Saturday Night Live sketch. Then it becomes a really awkward and unpleasant fish-out-of-water story. Then it flirts with sentimentality. Then, briefly, it attempts to actually criticize American society. Then it just becomes a Saturday Night Live sketch again. This was probably my biggest disappointment of the day, because you never know what you are going to get with Cohen, and there was a chance it could have been brilliant. Sadly, the biggest laugh in the entire movie came in the first five seconds, and I'm going to spoil it. The opening frame of the movie is a dedication card that says In Loving Memory: Kim Jong Il.