A Dark Knight Rises and a New York Weekend

This week, my second must see movie of the year, the Dark Knight Rises, was released. A group of us scored tickets to a midnight screening to the final chapter of perhaps the greatest superhero movie trilogy that has ever, or will ever, be made. I absolutely loved the movie (yes, it plods a teensy bit in the second half, but the ending is amazing) and the experience of seeing it with a theater full of fellow fans. While the entire case is amazing (Gary Oldman is perhaps the most under appreciated living actor), I have to give special points to Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who really is the main reason that the plot manages to hold together. Of course, Christian Bale is an amazing actor and he and Michael Cain play off each other so well, as always, but there are enough plot gaps that they needed an assist to make the movie work. I won't go into details, since this isn't a movie blog, but the quality of the acting was astounding.   Our post-film euphoria was short lived, though... while we were having fun watching a movie, a different theater in Colorado was having a very different evening. Even though we were on the far side of the country, there's a little bit of survivors guilt (why them, and not us).

Already, the newspapers are talking about how dark and violent the movies are, etc. The thing is, people all over the world have watched these movies, and loved them, and only one person stocked up on guns and gas canisters, dressed up in body armor, booby trapped his apartment and killed people. Shouldn't we all be trying to find out what caused this one person to commit mass murder, and not trying to blame it on a movie that millions watched without killing anyone? Also, why is it that someone can go out and buy multiple guns, and explosives, and gas canisters, and gas masks, and body armor and no one anywhere pauses to think maybe he might be planning something violent. I know the NRA would have kittens at the thought, but just maybe it would make sense to have a system that generates a "This looks weird" alert when a cluster of purchases like this is made. Because, not for nothing, but Mexico is in the middle of a drug war, and you're still statistically twice as likely to be shot in the US, and I think that's a problem.

On a different note, last weekend, I took a quick hop down to NYC. Not really time for a full-up trip report, but who would have guessed you'd see something like this:

in the Bronx? New York is full of contrasts. Also, is it really that unusual to cross stitch on a train? I had about seven people come up to me and comment about how strange it was to see someone not my grandmother's age sewing. I guess the hard rock, sci-fi fangirl, engineer cross stitcher demographic is a bit sparse.