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	07 October 2004 MOVIE: WIMBLEDON (2004). An Englishman wins the Wimbledon championship. Yes, one nation's wet dream comes true in this film fantasy, and for Nicki as well: a tennis-themed rom com? We crept cautiously into the theater, like squirrels following a suspicious trail of breadcrumbs. And lo, the movie was bad. Kirsten Dunst? An embarassingly amateurish performance. Chemistry? Absent. Cinematography? As glowingly produced as a travel commercial. Witty banter? There, but completely bogged down by its own horribly timed delivery. Snapple commercials are more fun than this. Even the tennis action was awful, with obvious CG tennis balls that ricocheted at unnatural angles, or winning points that unsatisfyingly occurred off-screen. Maybe it's a testament to the difficulty of filming convincing tennis play, which might be why no tennis movies exist. Witness the climactic championship match, in which our hero and his opponent cartoonishly smash-volley at each other three feet from the net, all the while sliding about the grass court like a couple of fighting Boris Becker robots. Otherwise, Wimbledon is absolutely cookie cutter as far as rom coms go. The charming, bumbling English bloke. The spunky, ever-twirling American girl. The slightly pervy but lovable brother. And, as always, the heartfelt confessions conveniently broadcast on national television. Not even Johnny Mac could save this one. I've never had two men fight for my honor. I kinda like it!   Back to main 06 October 2004 MOVIE: YOUNG ADAM (2003). A man working on a barge discovers a very familiar-looking corpse in the water. Ewan McGregor plays Joe, a young, failed beat writer who, frustrated with life, breaks up with his girlfriend, flings his manual typewriter into the canals of Glasgow, and takes a job on a miserable little boat delivering coal to Edinburgh and back. The film, set in 1950's Scotland, is shot with a quietly darting impressionism that gives it an impressive tone of confidence: steaming hillsides in the morning, canal water like glass, rising cigarette smoke. Joe wanders through the story, first finding the dead girl, then usurping his bargemaster by banging his wife, then leaving her after banging her cousin in an alleyway, then leaving both of them to take a room in the city with a new husband and wife, whom he bangs. I say "bangs" because the film is very intentionally un-sexy in its sexyness, presenting brilliantly acted scenes so fraught with repression and unwillingness that they take on genuine tones of betrayal, or self-disgust, or even rape. And Joe, however conflicted he might be about his sexual transgressions (or the unsettling familiarity of dead girl in the water), quickly shakes himself out of his moral daze to succumb yet again to the base desires of his id. This kind of unflinching matter-of-factness, along with the rambling, Picaresque story, reminded me of the nihilistic heroes of Barry Lyndon or The Man Who Wasn't There. Unlike the characters in those films, however, Joe experiences no moment of karmic irony, much less epiphany, about his chronic negligence. In fact, he rejects the world altogether by tossing dead girl's only memento into the water: a mirror etched with a heartfelt inscription. And that's really, really unsatisfying, no matter how well-crafted the movie is. The only clue to the story's empty significance lies in its title, which alludes to a time when Adam, freshly created by God, had the world to himself. Beholden to no one, he could do whatever he wanted without fear of consequence. And then Eve came along, forcing him to make a choice: humanity, or oblivion. Here we see the world of the latter choice, in the form of a young woman drifting in the filthy canal, dead but with her eyes still open. Think of me when you look at yourself with undying love, C.   Back to main 04 October 2004 PHOTO DIARY. Me and my brother went to the store in Pomona to have lunch with Dad for Chusok (Korean August moon festival). 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