Quick sports post before I go to bed, to note three things:

1. Like the Bruce I've been pulling for Calgary, with it now being official that the Flyers are out (with apologies to Rosenberg). I think it goes back to their Atlanta days and when they had Jim Craig - I didn't follow the team, but it did make some connection. I just wish Chris Drury still played there.

2. The only part of tonight's Indiana-Detroit NBA playoff game I saw was Reggie Miller's 3. Timing is everything.

OK, only two things.

I will mention the two movies we rented this weekend, though.

First, Lost in Translation, which I don't think I fully comprehended. I liked it, but have a feeling that there's some sort of context I'm missing. I know I missed some of the dialogue when there was a lot of background noise - it's not my best hearing environment. I'll probably have to watch it again.

The other movie was The Runaway Jury, which follows the Grisham trend of changing the book around and making various characters more noble than they come off in the book. Not that it matters greatly, but it does confuse me given that the books are written at a level where they could be pretty easily converted into movies without too much monkeying around.

It was also unfortunate in that you had John Cusack, Gene Hackman, and Dustin Hoffman all vying for screen time. I think the film would have been better served if they gave more focus to the machinations with the jury, which would have removed Hoffman from the equation (nothing personal, just one too many big names).

Another problem was that for a movie about a jury, you don't get to connect with any of the jurors (even Cusack's character, really). They're dealt with in a pro forma manner, odder still given that a few of them are played by pretty well known folks (Nora Dunn, Jennifer Beals, Luis Guzman).

Given that you can read the book in pretty short order, do that rather than watch the film.