Friday

We decided to go see the Last King of Scotland* today just thirty minutes before show time, so even through Ballston Mall is handily located right above the metro (one stop down from us), we still opted to drive. It's a shame: for once the erratic shuttle service was actually running. The Oakwood parking lot is not fully scraped. Where they clear the accumulation from the driving areas, snow and ice is pushed up behind the parked cars in rifts by the scrapers. We didn't have much trouble getting the car out of its space, though, even starting on four inches of ice, we were able to climb the corralling ice mountain. Once out of the lot the roads were fine. I didn't like the Last King of Scotland as much as many people seem to. It seemed very much like every white fish-out-of-water story with a black African excuse; what many of these "based on true events" Oscar attempts devolve into. I never stopped being aware that the white guy was simply a device to initiate the audience to the joyous and/or savage exotica going on around him, and I was frustrated when the film diverted useful screen time to his presence. Also, I think the move irresponsibly fictionalized the events of Uganda in the seventies, creating cinematic horrors as a patch for the historical atrocities apparently deemed outside the scope of our cipher's story. All that said, every performance was extraordinarily good, even that of the white device; I was especially charmed by Gillian Anderson's haggard volunteer doctor. After the movie, we ate at the local IHOP and discussed the career of Idi Amin Dada,* and I asked why Africa must always presented in the over -exposed and -saturated warm polychrome of a seventies National Geographic. [Cavin]