I rented this movie after reading the Radical Wacko’s review. It wasn’t hard to watch in the way I was expecting - just when we thought it had lost its momentum and overdrawn it’s characters, it would come through with a little gem of wit or insight that would keep us going. In the end I see it as a promising, but very uneven directorial debut. Still, it had enough biting humor and irony to make me curious about Dylan Kidd’s next two movies due out next year.
We had planned to do a hike today, but were enticed by Oscar and Jules’ plan to get an early start on Frogland (5.8-), a seven-pitch route in Black Velvet Canyon. The morning goes well, and we have the base of the route to ourselves at 9 am. Jules follows Oscar up the first pitch, decides she can’t climb with a pack and lowers it to us. I start up feeling good. The tides of the day start to shift when Jezze starts barking, and another party approaches. They inquire about the route, and I yell down that they shouldn’t expect us to be quick because we don’t do a lot of multipitch. I can’t hear the response, but when Ann gets close to the belay I can see she’s in bad shape. She wants to bail, and I agree that six more pitches of misery aren’t worth pursuing. We wait for the next party and fix our rope to rap off, asking them to drop it when we got down. Of course we get tangled up with their ropes and nothing is easy. On our own again, Ann tells me that they were rude to her at the bottom and pressured her to be off by dark. Several times I glance up at them, three on a rope, one a complete novice, crawling up at maybe a pitch per hour. We try to ward off the bitterness and imagine returning on a longer, hot summer day when we might have the climb to ourselves. Ann takes a nap in the sun while I wander up the canyon to the awe-inspiring big walls rising up from the confines of the dry wash. Still dealing with lingering disappointment, worries, and frustrations, we head in to town where Ann has a shower, we drink tea and talk, have Sushi, shop for gear, and manage to climb into our bags feeling good again.
Some of the climbers in our party are up at 5 am to head for long multipitch climbs, but we sleep in til 7 and make breakfast. One pair, Ian and Ingrid, leave for an 11-pitch route around 8. We wish them luck. Those of us remaining head to the Flight Path wall in Pine Creek Canyon. There’s a nice little variety of climbs there. I lead two bolted routes on the wall where we start, a 5.9+ and 5.10-. Surrounding those are two nice cracks, 5.6 and 5.7+, which I follow Denton up. Ann climbs everything but the 5.6, and seems to be feeling good. All enjoyable climbs. There is a bolted 5.8 on an arete facing us with an X-rated first clip and few obvious bolts that no one attempts. Denton and I look further left at two 5.9 cracks. They look good, but we’ve already hit the parks’ 5 pm closing time, so they’re left for another day.
None of the multipitch climbers return before 9 pm, and Ian and Ingrid aren’t back until 1 am.
We’ve been planning this Thanksgiving trip to Red Rock Canyon outside of Las Vegas for a long time, but it goes anything but smoothly. We thought Las Vegas wouldn’t be a big Thanksgiving Day destination, but I-15 is crammed with crazy traffic. I try to stop at the climbing store to pick up a guidebook, but of course it’s closed for the holiday. We’re supposed to meet our friends at Moderate Mecca, but we don’t know where it is. We don’t know which group site they’re in either. We start around the 13-mile, one-way park loop where we ask some climbers about Moderate Mecca, and discover it’s not in the loop, it’s in Calico Basin. Then I drive off without figuring out where in Calico Basin it, while Ann thinks I know. And so on. We do eventually get to the crag, but of course we forget the rack. By this time we’re getting snitty with each other, in front of our new friends no less. But I run back for the rack and we climb a nice 5.6+ trad route, and that clears the air. The place is beautiful and we have nothing to do but enjoy it for four days.
After dark we follow Mary to the Bonnie Springs resort, past the mini railroad ride and the goose pond to the fire-heated lodge, where we stuff ourselves with a traditional turkey dinner and meet some of the other climbers who have come for the weekend.
Ann has been holding this movie over my head for months, saying it would be a test of my ability to reconcile my masculinity with our marriage. I was dreading it. So when it finally arrives I propose getting it over with quickly, like pulling climbing tape off when it’s stuck to your armhair. As it turns out, the movie isn’t quite what Ann remembers from sixth grade. The adults in the movie spend most of their camera time getting ripped. The boyfriend is a jerk and seems destined for a life of dumpster diving. The dad aspires to pulling his own plow on the farm to develop his mule-like stubbornness. The trainer seems to enjoy cracking down on little girls more than skating. It’s sort of a modern-day Dickens story. I ended up enjoying it, both the movie and Ann’s re-experience of it. Ok, so there were some warm fuzzies too, but I couldn’t tell if that was coming from the movie or from us.
Today Ann buys a world map jigsaw puzzle at the thrift store. We sit down at our table and put it together. There is one piece missing in the end, an empty spot in the middle east. It has a sort of chilling effect.
When I watched this I thought it was directed by Darren Aronofsky, the director of pi and Requiem for a Dream, so I was prepared for a VERY dark and disturbing movie. The actual director is Christopher Nolan, who went on to make Memento. Still dark, but more concerned with a plotline. It’s interesting to look back on this movie in that light. It is not nearly as innovative as Memento, but is definitely original and has a strong plot. The spare black-and-white style works well with it. It also suffers from the same weakness as Memento though - in the end all the characters prove fairly worthless.
What a good time of year it is to spend a day at Fossil Falls. I’m just recovering from a cold and relish the ability to be active outdoors again. There’s a chilly wind, but it feels perfect in a windbreaker. We TR some old favorites in the upper canyon, starting with the aptly named Birdshit Crack (5.7). It’s a pleasure to watch Ann’s amazement at herself as she climbs easily what once seemed an impossible climb to her. We also do the 5.9 roof to the left which Ann makes some progress on but doesn’t finish. Then I move the anchor to a short 5.9 hand crack around a corner on the right. Again, Ann surprises herself, makes it up quickly, and I enjoy every minute.
Curtis and Ted have set up in the lower canyon meanwhile and invite us to use one of their ropes. I’m in the middle of setting our rope on a nice 5.10 hand-crack-to-jug-haul route. We decide to leave our rope up and go say hello to Ted & Curtis. That we do, then I fail to repeat Ride of the Valkyries (5.10c) and Ann fails to start Eagle (5.9). It’s a downer. I say hello to Brian, a climber I run into now and then from Bakersfield, and his partner complains about our dog Jezze growling at their dog. We leave grumpy, especially Ann. It almost ends that way, but then Ann graciously offers to rap back into the upper canyon and give me a belay on the jug haul. I have fun, and her mood recovers a bit vicariously, so at least we leave feeling good again.
Also, we missed a good photo op! There was a beautiful big hairy tarantula at the base of Eagle. I don’t know why we didn’t think of getting a picture of it.
A look at the life of a Parsi bank clerk in 1971 Bombay, India during the war with Pakistan. There are some really stunning shots of the city. The story and characters are quirky in some way that prevented me from fully buying into it, though I enjoyed the movie anyway.
Russel Crowe swashes his buckles, sweeps his strings, swings his hatchet, swabs his wounds, swills his rum, swoons in his cups, swaps his weevils, swears his oaths, and swarms his enemies. Interesting looks at early 19th century naval life. Standard Hollywood storytelling.
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