Apocalypto

On Adam's suggestion, I watched Apocalypto a couple days ago. I never had any interest in seeing this in the theater, and I'm not quite sure why. Maybe it was due to Mel Gibson being attached to the project. He seemed pretty full of himself after Passion of the Christ (another movie I had no desire to see). Couple that with his DUI/"Are you a Jew???" controversy, and I wasn't thinking very highly of him at the time.

My final reservation with watching the movie is that it is sub-titled. I don't actually have anything against sub-titles(one of my favorite movies of recent times is actually Pan's Labyrinth), but I only have a 25 inch television, and thought I would have a hard time reading the text. Fortunately for me, the folks that make dvds take this kind of thing into account, and the sub-titles were in fairly large, clear print.

To get back on topic, the suggestion to watch the movie was because the entire thing takes place in the Mayan jungles, similar to the places we'll be exploring on the "adventure" portion of our trip. The locations they shot the movie on are out of this world, and got me even more excited to get into the jungle. However, the movie also has barbaric/sadistic tribes performing human sacrifices, as well as random encounters with jaguars and venomous snakes. While I'm pretty sure the chances of encountering a traditional Mayan tribe that is oblivious to the last few thousand or so years of history and would want to use me as a human sacrifice are on the low side, the chances of encountering jaguars and venomous snakes in the jungle are probably a lot higher, and freaked me out a bit. Is it going to prevent me from doing any of this fun stuff once I get over there??? H E DOUBLE HOCKEY STICKS NO!!!

Overall, the movie was really good. I wish I had seen it in the theater on a huge screen with booming sound rather than in my apartment on a 25 inch television, but such is life.

Next on my agenda is to finalize my list of clothes and supplies I'll be taking with me, and purchase anything on my list that I don't already own. I also want to try and solidify all the different activities we want to do when down there, though knowing what specific day we'll be doing these things isn't so important right now. However, since tomorrow's a work day, I'll wrap this up for the time being.

As always, thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings :)

Ryan