Back in Scottsdale just in time for a gorgeous film.

Back in Scottsdale now. Had a lovely visit with Jessica and her fantastic urban family, but just missed my Eric too much to stay away. I made the drive back in record time.

On Thursday, Diane took Eric and I to see"The Namesake", the newest Mira Nair movie. (She also directed the beautiful "Monsoon Wedding".) It was indescribably good and I cried through the whole entire thing. It was the best kind of film making, Nair uses the medium of film to show us things instead of telling them with dialog or narration. Little visual cues offer profound and intimate character development. The young newlywed woman just arrived in New York from Bangladesh sprinkles her Rice Crispies with curry powder and peanuts and crunches it all down without milk. Later, her daughter grows up slowly and in a totally peripheral way. She is not the main character, but we see how her clothes and hair change; her red permed hair turns shiny, sleek and black, her ratty jeans and t-shirts replaced by business-like suits. We understand completely that she has become a woman. And many of the scenes called up old family photos, the day they spend at the beach, the mother with a red scarf on her head, the father with his black plastic frames and the little boy bundled up in a wool coat near the freezing Atlantic surf.

I don't want to give away the story, it was so beautiful, I just hope everyone I know goes out to see this lovely little jewel of a movie. It was all about love and how it can take a long long time to build and how loving someone doesn't mean that you understand them or that they understand you. (As an added bonus, one of the main characters is played by Kal Penn who you might remember as Kumar from the not-without-its-charm "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle".)