Movie Monday 6/3

Another week gone by without much blog posting - so sorry for that! Things were crazy busy here last week. My oldest son came home from college (victorious after a great freshman year!), and our house was filled with college students and friends old and new all week. It's been a lot of fun....but also lots of cooking for me! Today, he started his one class for summer session (commuting to school every day for 2-3 hours of Calculus), my younger son has a hectic week of final exams, and I have my last few hours of quiet solitude until September! Friday, my younger son has his third (and hopefully, last) knee surgery. So, another busy week.

We did have time for one movie last week:

Saturday night, my sons had friends over for a movie night in the basement, so Ken and I watched Promised Land, a fairly new release starring (and written by) Matt Damon and John Krasinksi (of The Office fame) about a current hot topic, natural gas and fracking. Damon plays Steve, a guy who works for a giant natural gas corporation. His job, along with his partner, played by Frances McDormand, is to travel to small towns where there are natural gas deposits and convince all the land owners to lease portions of their land to the company so they can drill there. They travel to a rural Pennsylvania town and find they have some opposition: a high school science teacher, played by Hal Holbrook, who speaks out against the risks of fracking, and an environmentalist, played by Krasinksi, who tells the townspeople how his own family farm was ruined by polluted water caused by fracking. From this, it sounds like simple good vs. evil, with Steve respresenting the evil, greedy corporation, but he actually loves his job and believes he is helping these small farming communities to survive by bringing them some much-needed income; he saw his own farm town in Iowa die out after a local factory closed. And, there is a pretty love interest, of course, played by Rosemarie DeWitt whom both Damon's character and Krasinsksi's character are interested in. As you might imagine from this description, it is somewhat political, as this is such a hot topic right now, though the film remains fairly neutral and tries to present both sides. It was an interesting movie, with a fabulous cast that was fun to watch. Not a great movie, but good entertainment for a Saturday night.

We've also been catching up on TV shows with Jamie since he got home - he and I watched the end of the season of White Collar, he watched the finales of The Office and Grim (season finale), and the whole family has been catching up on missed episodes of Revolution.

Have you seen any good movies or TV shows lately?

(If you are also interested in what we are all reading this week, check out the Monday post on my book blog.)