Yep, another empty room. Evidently, there are a lot of these in churches in the States. The answer? Bring in the young folks with games of slaughter and mayhem. Enough of that "Love thy neighbour, turn the other cheek" nonsense. Kill! Kill! Kill! That's where it's at. Gotta love pinhead christians, don't you?

Went to see "Michael Clayton" tonight. Darn good movie. Much, much better than "In the Valley of Elah", which was good but flawed. "M.C.", on the other hand, has no glaringly obvious hooks or symbolism. It's just a straightforward tale of greed, moral slippage, nemesis. Art has always got to be bigger than life. Partly this is so that our interest will be piqued. Face it, it's a tougher sell if the folks in the movie aren't facing bigger problems than yours. And, partly it's to make us all feel safer. We'd never sell out the way the protagonists in this movie do. Well, no, not on this sort of scale (murder doesn't play a role in most of our lives), but everyone - everyone - makes compromises with their better instincts. I suspect that it's a rare individual who couldn't be kept awake nights by thoughts of the accumulation of small betrayals of personal values that they've committed over their lives. The betrayals made by Clooney's character are a tad bigger, but - and this is the scary part - they're just a tad. Tilda Swinton's character, on the other hand, goes way, way over the line. And Swinton does a great job of portraying this character. So, go see the movie, O.K.?