Now that the NBA season is over, I’ve been catching up on movies and TV shows that have slipped through the cracks.  A few quick opinions –

• Curb Your Enthusiasm: halfway through the last season, started kind of slow but picking up steam fast. 
• Requiem for a Dream: the visual storytelling and acting still hold up.  Some of the methods have been copied but I see why it was so big at the time.
• A History of Violence: really enjoyed this film.  Have no idea how I didn’t hear more about the various twists but I won’t talk about it if you haven’t seen it.

I like to read the reviews of some of the critics after I’ve seen the film.  Here’s how Roger Ebert opened his review of A History of Violence:

David Cronenberg says his title “A History of Violence” has three levels: It refers (1) to a suspect with a long history of violence; (2) to the historical use of violence as a means of settling disputes, and (3) to the innate violence of Darwinian evolution, in which better-adapted organisms replace those less able to cope. “I am a complete Darwinian,” says Cronenberg, whose new film is in many ways about the survival of the fittest — at all costs.

Those definitions made me think of violence in my own life; not violence as in physical violence mind you, but violence as it’s referenced in the third defintion.  I will never live it down, but those who knew me in my younger days still kid me about my ‘Michael Corleone’ phase: every decision, every move based around the singular purpose of getting what I wanted (LA or NYC).  Just an ice cold mentality (pun intended) where there was nothing and no one who couldn’t be replaced.  I remember watching the end of Godfather II and thought that was the coolest shit ever.  “I don’t feel I have to wipe everybody out Tom, just my enemies.”  And Michael won.  He was alone and didn’t trust anybody at the end, but he won.  That played to my own ‘bottom line’ mentality.

Of course, I um, matured, and wanted other things in life.  The other half of that film of course is Vito at the same age, and his rise to power.  He comes home to his young wife and Santino, content to a point.  Then the local Don (who Vito sees is not much of a tough guy) costs Vito his job and the chain reaction begins.  The day he officially becomes Don Vito Corleone, he comes home, holds his youngest son in his arms and tells him, “Michael, your father loves you very much.”  The power is the result of his ambition, intelligence, and actions, but the ‘why’ is to protect and provide for his family.

I’d like to believe I have many more years left on this rock, but as a good friend reminds me from time to time, “We’re only going to ‘go to work’ for so long.  You live life well and ‘what you did’ is part of your backstory, but not THE story.”  I blew that advice off the first time he said it to me many years ago, but he kept saying it, and now I finally understand it.  Thankfully not too late.

I guess I’ve adapted.