Diamonds Will Leave Her Speechless

Or as Ron White the comedian says, "Diamonds: That'll shut her up." We went to see the movie Blood Diamond. Being the socially conscious fellow I am I haven't bought a diamond in fifty-five years. Blood Diamond is about the diamond trade and how it exploits Africa and is responsible for revolution and genocide. It was a great movie, four stars. Leonardo DiCapria still has to mature a little to play the rough, worldly soldier of fortune mercenary, yet he put foward a strong performance. Jennifer Conally was good as the jaded reporter. The Oscar performance goes to Dijimon Hounsou. He played the African fisherman whose village is destroyed who is then forced to be a slave in a diamond mine, and whose twelve year old son is kidnapped by the guerillas and brainwashed to become a murdering thug. The R rating comes from the indiscriminant violence and wholesale slaughter that is typical in movies concerning today's Africa. I wonder if the Christmas release of the film will have any effect on this season's jewelry sales. I never really got the whole diamond schtick. Diamonds are not rare, they should not be expensive, they are not neccessary. The price is kept high by the artificial man-made shortage. Most of the industrial uses have been replaced by other materials such as carbide. Synthetic diamonds are now available and hopefully they will do what cultured pearls did for that industry. If we just took all the diamonds worn during the Biltmore Baptist's Christmas Show we could flood the market and knock the bottom out of the futures market. I'm done ranting. It was a good movie. I would have prefered George Clooney in the lead. I still see DiCapria on the bow of the Titanic yelling "I'm king of the world".

I also went to see Apocalypto which was a Pieceofcrappo. It was actually painful to sit through this two and a half hour jungle chase scene. It was Rambo in a grass skirt. It was the Last of the Mohicans meets Hannibal Lechter. It just stunk. Save your money.