We watched a number of movies in the last couple of weeks.  Things should calm down now, though – I think I'll pass on War Of The Worlds, because I fear there's not much left of the original story.

• Revenge Of The Sith: I spoke about that one in a previous post.
• Kingdom of Heaven: I had expected a movie like Gladiator, but I was wrong. The battles were very much understated, and the characters were much deeper and complex.  Although it's fashionable nowadays to pick on the Crusades as "Christianity's era of fundamentalism", it was refreshing to see that the movie showed that there were both honorable and fanatic persons on both sides. I can't help but ask myself the questions "Should Baylian have accepted the proposal to marry the Princess and have Reynard and his people executed?  Should he have done a little evil for the greater good?  Or would that have been the first step down the long road of darkness?  Surely a man with Baylian's intellect and practical sense could have done great evil."
  On a side note: I think that the names of Gottfrey and Baylian (Liam Neeson and Orlando Bloom) were inspired by Gotfried van Bouillon, one of the most famous knights of the first crusade, who became ruler of Jerusalem.  He sold (or at least hypothicated) his castle (in Wallonie in present day Belgium) to finance his crusade, and I like to think he was a knight like Gottfrey and Baylian, who strove for a "Kingdom of Conscience".
• The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy: incredibly cool book, cool movie.  It was entertaining, some interesting additions, ... the parts from the Guide where the coolest.  I can't begin to imagine just how politically incorrect the imagery on "Where God Went Wrong", "Some More Of God's Greatest Mistakes" and "Who Is This God Person Anyway" was, but nobody said the movie aspired to be politically correct :-)
• Batman Begins: I'm new to Batman, in the sense that I didn't read the comics, didn't watch the TV series and didn't watch any of the previous movies.  Really.  But as I developed quite a taste for the comic movies that are appearing nowadays, I decided to watch it.  The dark tone of the trailer did of course help me make that decision.  I liked the movie a lot.  It was dark, has a bombastic soundtrack, good acting (Liam Neeson surprised me positively, another suprise was that Gary Oldman did not play the bad guy) and an interesting plot.  I must admit that I didn't see how everything fit together until it was revealed just who was behind it all.  In retrospect, I can see that all cues were there, if only I'd have put them together, if only I'd have taken my reasoning that one step further.