Five movies and three rowing expeditions, one of them major.

“Hell or High Water” is a caper movie of a sort. The trailers are grim, but the movie is actually a bit more fun and significantly less depressing than advertised. I saw it by Hobson’s Choice, and liked it well enough.

“The Neverending Story” is a German-made English language film based on a very popular (but pretentious and depressing) German children’s novel. We saw it on original release, and were thoroughly unimpressed; I saw it to see if my opinion had changed in the intervening 32 years, and it hadn’t.

“Mechanic: Resurrection” is a Jason Statham movie. It is neither the best or the worst of the breed, but since we are generally fond of most of them, that was fine.

“Labyrinth” is another mid-80s children’s epic Dementia and I saw separately (since I was incarcerated in Oklahoma that summer), but loved. 30 years later, it is still flawed but wonderful. It’s a bit horrifying to know that it was a failure on original release.

“Sully” gives us Clint Eastwood directing Tom Hanks to tell the story of the US Airways Flight 1549, which swallowed a flock of Canada Geese and did and emergency landing in the Hudson River in January of 2009. Given that the envent itself lasted less than half an hour, a great deal of craft is necessary to create a movie that is adequately dramatic while remaining true to the source material. It works very well, and we enjoyed the film a great deal.

On the 8th I did a short rowing recon trip of the facilities (or lack thereof) in Burlington, WI, and then on the 9th I did a short rowing expedition on Sterling Lake. And then on the 12th…

On the 12th I accomplished another major expedition, 24 miles on the Fox River from Burlington to Grass Lake. Details and photos soonish.

Uncle Hyena