Up in the sky, or deep under the ground, it's still......Skytrain! And it's actually pretty good, all things considered.

But, what's a weekend without some nuts, huh? Beware! Beware! The Black Hole's comin' ta getcha!

Last night I watched, "William Eggleston in the Real World". Go rent it.

I've loved this guy's work since the late 70s when it really first started showing up in the big world. I can still remember his shot of shoes under his bed (or somebody's bed) from an issue of "American Photographer" - people were peeeeeeeeved! Shoes under a bed?!? Funnily enough, that was about the last time I ever saw his work until recently, when I started to get interested in taking pictures again. Evidently, however, it kinda stuck with me. Either that or (except for the "talent" part), Eggleston and I are just similar in our photographic interests. Watching him working in the movie was a bit like watching myself.

The movie also has something to say to the equipment freaks out there. Throughout, he was either using what looked like an Olympus OM-1 (though it might have been a Pentax MX), or (I think) some sort of old Mamiya press camera with a 120 roll film back. O.K., at one point he was using a Contax autofocus snapshot camera, but... And he didn't do digital. He also used a hand-held meter occasionally - a very, very cheap one.

Go buy "William Eggleston's Guide". It's cheap. It's great. You'll like it.

Well, this photo has nothing to do with what I'm about to write about. At least, I don't think it does. Maybe by the time I'm done I'll be able to come up with a connection. Oops! It suddenly comes to me - train wreck!

Which would be an at least somewhat appropriate description of "Vantage Point". How were Forest Whitaker, John Hurt, Dennis Quaid and Sigourney Weaver conned into making this hunk 0' junk? Did massive (and I mean massive) quantities of money change hands? Were they given serious doses of hallucinatory medications? Something incredibly powerful had to have been administered to these poor, hapless saps to get them to utter such immortal lines as, "Are you injured, Mr. President?" "I am, but it's not important."

"Vantage Point" is a movie you should do anything in your power to avoid having to sit through. There is nothing - let me repeat that (a little trick I learned from the movie, oddly enough, except that I know when to quit) - nothing even vaguely redeeming about this movie. Not even, as some folks have tried to allow, the grand finale car chase (wow - a car chase for a finale! Who'd'a thunk o' that?!?). Dennis Quaid has spent the better part of the last - I dunno, 20 minutes? - of the movie chasing the Bad Guys (carrying POTUS in their ambulance) through the streets of, um, some city in Spain (though it's really Mexico City). They zip through intersections, up onto sidewalks, hurtle through crowds of people (fear not - not a single Spaniard is so much as grazed), bounce off cars, trucks and concrete, and all at incredibly high speeds complete with smoking tires, 4-wheel drift and a quick drive down some stairs and generally cause a lot of mayhem and, you know what? At the end of it all they've gone an entire seven (yes, that's right, seven. as in 7, as in 5+2, 6+1...whatever) blocks. Seven blocks. Just how bad is traffic in Spain anyway?

I could go on to list even more idiocies in this movie (and, believe me, I'd love to, but it's past 1:00 a.m. and I shoulda been in bed hours ago), but, to sum up - skip "Vantage Point". You know it's a bad sign when the audience spends more time laughing than gasping at a "thriller".

Who knew? Decorator trains.