Valentine's Day

I was going to have a whole discussion about how I feel about Valentine's Day, but I remembered that all the other single women with blogs or journals are going to cover all the ways single women feel about Valentine's Day. Since I don't feel particularly strongly about Valentine's Day anyway, I'll skip that part and you can read someone else's discussion. Let's talk about Black Hawk Down.

I watch Black Hawk Down every Valentine's Day. I started doing it because a) it had Ewan McGregor in it; and b) it was the most inappropriate movie I could think of. I suppose there's no particular reason to watch it anymore, because Ewan McGregor no longer interests me and I'm sure I could dig up an even more inappropriate movie from somewhere, but I'm going to keep doing it anyway because there are two more reasons why I still find it endlessly amusing. (Yes, yes, very serious movie, very serious issues. I know, okay? Jeez. Back to my point.)

First, there's the British Actors thing. This movie is crawling with British actors, and I have no earthly idea why. Were they running low on Americans? Seriously? I can forgive the odd Canadian (I know they have at least one in there) but why are there so many British actors? I'm not kidding. Go to IMDB and run down the list. It's absurd. I counted eight. I mean, I suppose there's no reason why they can't be in it if they can do an American accent, which most of them can, but why so many?

And then there's the Orlando Bloom thing. This is the main reason why I love this movie. See, Black Hawk Down came out on January 18th, 2002, and Fellowship of the Ring came out on December 19, 2001, a month before. And before Lord of the Rings, Orlando Bloom was an unknown. So when he was cast in Black Hawk Down, he was cast as the idiot rookie, because he was an unknown, but by the time the movie came out, he was...not. And so basically he appears, and is patronized, and then falls out of a helicopter about 20 minutes in and is unconscious for the rest of the movie and the other guys have to haul him around. It's amazing. It never fails to delight me.

So I'll be watching that again this year. Alas, there will be no wine or chocolate because I am still having trouble with food, but there will be orange juice and chips and I'm sure it will not detract from the experience.