Hi, I'm Samantha, otherwise I'm sleeping...

Spent the weekend with friends old and new, and quite by accident or whit, as much as self defense I came out with "Hi, I'm Samantha, otherwise I'm sleeping."

It was an interesting day, especially given that I was Exposed to "Kill Bill" Volumes one and two.

My friend Christianne was in town visiting with her SO and they were staying with Emma & Ruth whom I've also known for a goodly number of years now as well. It started with Christianne asking if I'd be willing to meet for lunch since we'd not yet ever been in the same state at once, let alone the same room. Might be nice to actually meet in person for once. Sounded like a good idea to me. While trying to coordinate lunch somewhere we had to factor in the impact of an ill timed snow storm. Eventually it was decided that lunch in made the most sense. Fine by me, I was more interested in the people than the food overall.

As Lori noted recently in one of her blogs, turning blog friends into real friends was much more like getting together with old friends who don't get into town often instead of meeting new people.

A number of other friends joined, some of whom are trans-gendered, so folks were introducing themselves as "{First Name} otherwise I'm {other name}" and being just one gender I had to say something to acknowledge them and not seem uncomfortable so I came out with "Hi, I'm Samantha, otherwise I'm sleeping?" My hope was folks would find it amusing and feel at ease, it seemed to work well since they laughed and on we went with the day. It's good to be able to think on my feet sometimes. This was no exception.

It was a long but wonderful day of good friends, food, wine and film. Not a bad way to spend a day especially since they were all big fans of Kill Bill and I'd never seen either one. Now I'm no movie reviewer like Christianne, she does an amazing job with that, so I'm not even going to try. What I will say is that I loved the way the movie was shot, the use of light, space and blocking to tell a powerful story and add to the over all feeling and plot. The foundation was solid and had real meat on it in terms of characters and their development, as well as plot and context devices to support the characters. Uma Thurman played the heroine well and the writing lent credibility to her ability to paint a warrior scorned. Flashbacks and foreshadowing where liberally used to set the stage for the Hero's journey in a very Joseph Campbell style of story arcs.

What I loved most was the lighting, blocking and camera work of the film. As a photographer and someone who paints with light, film is kind of the ultimate adventure in painting with light. While very much a feature, it had nods to comics and old Chinese chop-em-up movies of the past. This treatment was splendid and kept me smiling and really enjoying the unfolding of the story. In an unusual twist, there were several plot points that I simply did not see coming. An the movies get extremely high marks for that alone. As a writer, photographer and storyteller, normally I see things coming a mile off, and I find enjoyment in how they get there. In "Kill Bill" one and two there were many points of O! Pure amazement and pleasure at writing and story telling I so didn't see coming. Surprising me in a movie is nearly impossible, and yet "Kill Bill" managed it with ease more than once. I really dig that! So it was two great movies I'd never seen before but am glad now that I did.

So anyway, it was a great day, I had fun and got to spend time with old friends, and met some new ones.