Tonight's movie: Syriana. Which is quite possibly one of the bleakest, most deeply cynical movies I've ever seen. Makes Three Days of the Condor look like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Of course, I quite enjoyed it. One of the things I found interesting is the way the story refuses over and over to go down the expected Hollywood route, to allow action-movie heroics to gain any traction. They definitely want to drive home the point that the real world ain't like that. Great acting from a cast including George Clooney, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper, Alexander Siddig. It seems like the plot's going to be very twisty but it's actually not that hard to follow. At least on DVD, though, I found there were several quiet scenes where I had to back up and watch again to pick up on some little point in the dialogue. Probably that wouldn't have been as much of a problem in a theater where the volume's cranked to 11.