Welcome to the campfire...which is mostly going to be about movies - our modern version of getting together in the dark to share stories - though other things might start to crop up too, and I'll be inviting other people into the blog too to make it a real campfire...

For my first post, Mission Impossible IV. I was talking about the movie today with Brett, while we were taking a walk in the Mt. Auburn cemetery with his daughter Georgia (my goddaughter). He'd given me the latest about his dissertation on American evangelicism and we started talking movies.

We both loved MI IV. The action sequences were actually thrilling... they were full of so many surprises, I found myself actually counting moments when there was something familiar. And the tower sequence is as amazing as people are saying - I got a full, physical rush of vertigo watching Cruise run down the face of that glass. If it's true he was actually out there, I guess it just proves that Scientology makes you invincible. Who's got tiger blood now, Charlie Sheen!

I also loved how Brad Bird openly embraced that connection between action movies and musicals - they're both about choreography. Bird is an amazing director - see The Incredibles if you haven't already - and the opening sequence is awesomely choreographed. Cruise is breaking out of a Russian prison, with the help of a remote team, and is fighting his way down a corridor jammed with fighting guards and prisoners. As he takes down one after another, fighting his way forward body by body, the remote team - for no sane reason except that it makes the scene into a musical number - starts pumping a Dean Martin song over the prison loudspeakers. So Cruise's long, sinuous, brutal chop by chop escape down the hall is all to the tune of Dean's mellow crooning...awesome.

The rest of the action sequences are all also amazing and inventive (the dust storm!) with amazing choreography - though the rest of the music is the usual invisible soundtrack. But Bird knows musicality is part of what makes a great action sequence work, and these really sing. The tower sequence is definitely the best, but they're all good.

The humor all the way through the movie is great too...Simon Pegg is the main comic relief, and the contrast of his light as air goofiness against Cruise's pounding manic focus also feels like great music. Playful riffs against a driving beat. Definitely one to see on the big screen.