Need to rest up

As usual, I played basketball on Saturday morning. I played pretty well–I had several good plays on offense, some good passes, nice shots, some good defensive plays and such–but I also played “flat”. It’s hard to describe, but I basically just felt like I never really got out of second gear. I could do everything I wanted and everything I did do felt slow and forced. As I thought about it, I realized I may be pushing my body too hard with conditioning, weight lifting and playing basketball. I think I just haven’t given my body enough time to recover lately. So, this week, I’m going to seriously limit how hard I work out. Mostly, I’ll cut the shootarounds from my pre-workout routine and I won’t do any specific cardio. I’ll just go in, warm up on the bike for ten minutes or so and then hit the weights. It’s not exactly taking a week off, but it’s definitely toning things down a bit. I’ll try that and see how I feel next Saturday. I’m guessing I’ll feel looser and more energetic.

Watched 4 movies this week

I only saw one in the theatre and the other three were on DVD:

Troy

I had been careful not to get my hopes up because I’m not a big fan of epic war films and I’d also heard some mediocre reviews. Turns out the reviews were a reflection of the movie itself and I was better off not having gotten my hopes up. It was a good movie, but that’s about it. I certainly didn’t feel that the producers were justified in spending hundreds of millions on dollars producing it. Mostly, I just felt it was pretty lackluster in most aspects. Two scenes that stood out were Achilles’ fight with Hector and the Trojan king’s conversation with Achilles in his tent. These scenes were well written, shot and directed, but the rest of the movie felt pretty ho hum.

Chasing Liberty

Yeah, got this one by accident. Apparently, Netflix mistook Lawrence of Arabia for a 2003 chick flick. I figured I had it, so why not give it a shot. I got about half through and just couldn’t take it any more. I thought the acting was fine–a little over the top, but I got the sense that the actors were directed that way–but the writing just wasn’t holding my attention. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but this movie was asking way too much of me in that department.

Seven Samurai

This here was quite an experience. An old Japanese film, black and white, subtitles and three and a half hours of character development with the occasional battle scene to change things up a bit. Yes, it was a good movie. Yes, there were some great ideas and pieces of philosophy. Yes, I thought it was well written, directed, shot and acted. No, my American attention span would not ever allow me to try and watch it again. As it was, I had to watch it in four separate sittings, each one spent mostly watching the timer on my DVD player count closer to “03:28:00”, when I knew it would end. This was a good movie and I could see why it’s critically acclaimed, but it just ain’t for the regular person wanting to see a good movie. It should definitely be watched more as an intellectual pursuit than as entertainment.

Stuck on You

Another one I just couldn’t quite finish. I thought the premise was kind of funny, but it just didn’t play out very well on screen. I could see this story being written well by somebody like John Irving who has a knack for writing strange characters in strange situations, but this movie just didn’t get my attention. I tried and tried to finish watching it, but I didn’t even make it an hour into the movie before I had to call it quits. The jokes got old after the fifth telling and the gags were worn out just a few minutes into the movie. Thumbs down.