Does everyone have that moment, when the concrete, impossibly straight lines of our rigid lives seem too much to bear?  When we come to the realization that we've lost sight of happiness, of truth and beauty in simplest purity?  And then there's that yearning, the urge to break away with form, with the convention of our existence and just go away, pick up a rucksack, a tattered old paperback and just move.

I know that when I first came upon the story of Chris McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp in John Krakauer's incredible piece of journalism, it was at a time when I was far from that state of mind.  My son was three months old, it was the dog days of Summer, and I read sitting outside on the back porch, Jack sleeping in a tiny cradle covered with mosquito netting by my side.  Chris' story - a bright, charismatic young man who donates his savings to charity and leaves home without a word, traveling the country dealing with life on unbridled terms until he makes his way to Alaska where he vanishes for good - stuck in my head and refused to leave. It was one of those reading experiences where the time, place, and frame of mind mattered just as much as the words on the page.

Coming off the heels of LADY VENGEANCE, the final entry in the critically acclaimed Vengeance Trilogy (the other two films being SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE and the global phenomenon OLDBOY), Park Chan-wook decided to travel off the well worn path of revenge thrillers and brutal violence and move in an unexpected direction: a romantic comedy.  of course, this being a Park Chan-wook film, it's a romantic comedy filled with brutal violence and revenge.

Did you expect anything less?

I know: "No shit, Dr. Jones," most of you that know are probably mouthing to your monitors right now.  "You have a lot of problems.  That's why we tend to stay at least 50 yards away from you and carry pepper spray."

Ha ha...thanks.  Now stop talking to your monitors and let's get back to the one I'm talking about.

I've talked before about the slowly growing pile of unwatched DVDs I have at the house.  Despite being near a library, despite access to tons of films online and a Netflix subscription since 2001, I can't help the impulse to actually go to a store and buy a film.  New movies, old movies...a double-dip or two when a Special or Limited edition comes out...it's an addiction.  And it's only gotten worse since I got a Blu-Ray player over Christmas.  To save space I started buying thick leather binders and getting rid of all the plastic, space-wasting cases.

Unfortunately now I have a massive pile of thick leather binders taking up even more space than the plastic cases were.

The last ten days feel like a drug haze in the biting cold. I can barely remember getting up in the mornings, let alone the paces of the day. Part of that is the regular exhaustion that comes with staying up far too late (and getting up far too early) in order to get some private time away from everything, but another part stems from family and work revelations I can't really talk about on this blog.  They only peripherally affect me, coming in rippling waves that ebb and flow with a crystal clarity I suspect comes from the air, piercing cold and snapping you awake even as it drains the energy straight from your bones.

Sigh.  There was a time not too many years ago when I would passionately pick apart each nomination, not only weighing the chances each had of winning, but feverishly arguing the merits (for and against) and compiling my list of predictions versus hopes.  I still recall the head-scratcher of a year when THE ENGLISH PATIENT took the big prize over FARGO, my young mind bewildered (for the record, I had read and loved the novel by Michael Ondaatje, but found the movie exceedingly dull - much the same as Minghella's next film, THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY) time again in the years preceding and following: DRIVING MISS DAISY?  CHICAGO?  A BEAUTIFUL MIND?  Really?

And so now we come to 2010 (well, 2009) and the Academy, in an effort to appease the masses still distraught over the lack of a Best Picture nod in 2007 (or do you refer to 2008?  Man, the Oscars are confusing!) to THE DARK KNIGHT as well as drive up viewership have expanded the Best Picture nominations from five to a staggering ten film.  Which, instead of bestowing recognition on more films has critics everywhere pointing out the "real" Best Picture nominations - those that also have a Best Director nomination - versus the "pity" nominations.

Critics can be a prickly bunch, huh?