good night, and good luck was an okay movie, but not as good as critics would have you believe. it's a movie about the showdown between edward r. murrow (david strathairn) versus senator joseph mccarthy (played by himself from archival footage), the set of events that led to the eventual senate investigation of mccarthy himself and his red scare tactics. murrow, a man of words, speaks in a style and cadence that nobody today would talk in, long articulate sentences that i had a hard time following with my short attention span. noteworthy item: cameo by robert "t-bag" knepper (of prison break fame) as an agent of mccarthy trying to smear murrow's reputation. george clooney not only co-wrote the screenplay, not only directed the movie, but also plays producer fred friendly. to tell you the truth, instead of watching this movie, i'd rather see a documentary about murrow-mccarthy, or even (gasp) read a book. movies of historical events always leave me wanting more or questioning the validity of the film.

instead of going home, i played it cool at the loews harvard square theatre, buying myself a regular popcorn ($5), and sneaking into my second movie of the day for free, syriana. shot in that disjuncted style reminiscent of traffic and crash (but ultimately the pieces come together to form a coherent story), the movie's about the powerful oil industry and how it influences and creates geopolitical events for the sake of increasing and maintaining profit shares. clooney plays bob barnes, a CIA spook about to get shafted by the agency. although interesting, a better movie about corporate greed is the documentary the corporation. noteworthy item: when the feds start seizing computers, you can see an old lady secretary in the office mouthing the words, "WTF is going on?" there's also a really cool (and by cool i mean gory) lebanese torture scene.

by the time i finished watching those two movies, it was already dark outside. my parents were waiting for me at home and we had dinner before they left. i took a hot bath to stay warm, then spent the rest of the night watching television until i fell asleep.