This weekend we rented Zhang Yimou's newest movie "House of Flying Daggers" which is an unexpected and poignant love story. Who is that beautiful actor playing, Jin? None other than Takeshi Kaneshiro (doesn't he by the way resemble a young Andrew McCarthy circa "Pretty in Pink"?), born of Japanese/Taiwanese ancestry, and who I last saw in Wang Kar Wai's classic "Chungking Express". That's Takeshi in the first section of Chungking Express buying cans of pineapple and running until all the moisture has left his body so that the body can no longer make tears. Sigh.

I suppose it's worth mentioning that we saw "Sideways" several weeks ago - I liked Thomas Haden Church from his days on "Wings" and heard rave reviews of Paul Giamatti in "American Splendor". I have to say, I really hated this movie which seemed to me to be about 2 men, Miles and Jack, with 2 different addictions, alcohol and sex, and how they enabled each other's addictions in a very dysfunctional friendship. It was also awful to see Sandra Oh pimped out by her husband the director/filmmaker in her role as Jack's paramour, but it was rewarding to see her beat the shit out of Jack's philandering character.