This weekend was full of great movies to catch up on. The Denver International Film Festival is in town and I was shut out of all the good movies because the tickets had all been scooped up for quite sometime. No sweat. I have been waiting for Babel all year. So, it wasn’t a bad alternative. This movie is that last of three movies by Alejandro González Iñárritu , director of Amores Perros and 21 Grams. All of those films are movies that have several gripping stories interwined and brought together by one heartbreaking incident. Babel is the last of the three and despite the starpower in the movie, it seems as the screenwriting by Guillermo Arriaga overcame all. I get upset watching Brad Pitt in movies because he kind of fits that mold of Keanu Reeves where they can never stop being themselves and come across the screen as douche bags. Not in this movie. It was the first time that you saw Pitt as a family guy. It suited him well. You can tell the makeup artists didn’t do a whole lot for him because his gray hair stood out and so did his face lines/wrinkles. Babel had four different storylines and tackeled many different tough subjects as immigration, US foreign policy, teenage angst/sexuality, and racism. I hope that this movie is in the running in a couple of months for several Oscars, because I spent most of the movie at the end of my chair and sweating like a pig. This was easily one of the hardest movies that I have seen in a while, and I feel that it’s good to endure this level of intensity. Especially after most of the politically/safe movies that are produced nowadays.

Will Farrell has only done in one movie in his career before Stranger than Fiction where he explored an avenue that is different from his normal slapstick larger than life character’s that he is use to playing. That movie was Winter Passing and that movie too had an indie starlett Zooey Deschanel, the other indie it girl aside from Maggie Gyllenhaal. What you would normally expect out of Will Farrell in a movie or pre-conceived notion should be thrown out the window. His character Harold is a rigid IRS auditor that leads a mundane life full of no suprises. The movie has one of the better OST from any movie this year with Spoon carrying the bulk of the movie. Gimme Fiction is not my favorite Spoon album (I like all of them but Girls Can Tell is tops) but I would take any of their music in a movie anytime. Zooey Deschanel

1. The Book I Write SPOON	Listen	Listen
2. Going Missing MAXIMO PARK	Listen	Listen
3. Whole Wide World WRECKLESS ERIC	Listen	Listen
4. Flours BRITT DANIEL/BRIAN REITZELL	Listen	Listen
5. The Way We Get By SPOON	Listen	Listen
6. Mind Your Own Business DELTA 5	Listen	Listen
7. Bottles and Bones (Shade and Sympathy) CALIFONE	Listen	Listen
8. Writers Block BRITT DANIEL/BRIAN REITZELL	Listen	Listen
9. My Mathematical Mind SPOON	Listen	Listen
10. La Petile Fille De Mer VANGELIS	Listen	Listen
11. Thats Entertainment (Demo Version) THE JAM	Listen	Listen
12. Dubbing in the Back Seat THE UPSETTERS	Listen	Listen
13. Auditor BRITT DANIEL/BRIAN REITZELL	Listen	Listen
14. In Church (Cyann and Ben Remix) M83	Listen	Listen