Tickets are purchased. Can't wait. Won't be long now. :-)

Hey everyone. Hope everyone is having a great weekend. I certainly am. Saw a couple movies (Crash, Kingdom of Heaven), both of which were surprisingly mediocre. I trully expected greatness from both, but had my expectations dashed with heavy handedness (Crash), and a movie that was too understated for its own good (Kingdom of Heaven).

"Crash" had some good moments, and the acting was top notch, but I just felt like it tried to address too many issues in its 1hr 40min span. It seemed to me that someone got a Sociology textbook filled with sociological reasons for racism and povery, and an "Idiot's Guide to Racial Stereotype," and designed the movie around it. I know that racism is like a societal cancer that never goes into remission, but this movie tried to fit too much into its time span.

For all its liberal good intentions, it had more stereotypes than I could shake a stick at. Whether its the black car jackers, the Iranian convenience store owner, a Chinese family that dresses and acts like every bad Chinese stereotype you can imagine, a Hispanic maid, the most stereotypical WASP wife that you can imagine, and a black woman addicted to crack, I couldn't really buy all of this in one movie. I don't know, but any ONE of those characters gives off so much potential for character work that they could each have their own movie, it becomes too much for each of those people to fill the screen in one less than 2 hour movie.

The interconnectedness of all the roles was interesting, but felt forced in the context of the above paragraphs. I didn't buy into all of these racial stereotyped characters *happening* to crash into one another (literally and figuratively speaking).

But with that being said, Don Cheadle was his usual brilliant self. There were only 3 or 4 standout performances and roles in the movie. I was disappointed. On a grading scale, it's a good solid B.