Well I did it. This afternoon, with my sister and parents, I went to see the movie, "The Work and the Glory" in Hurricane at the new and impressive Coral Cliffs Cinema 8 theaters.

But first, I must digress off topic. You see, I originally wanted to link this article to the official web site of "The Work and the Glory" so I Google'd it, hopped over and visited it. Eeeeeeeeek! It's Macromedia Flash based. While some very few flash-based web sites are well done, and other well-done sites use flash in a less-substantial role that accentuates the site, the aforementioned site, however, decided to do things all-flash, nothing-but-flash. And then they did it in the most awkward and user-unfriendly way possible. The site is hideously unusable.

First, even though the flash had already loaded on my high-speed broadband connection, the designer assumed that because this was about a movie, the web site should be "cinematic" -- you know, fade in very slowly, and you can't click on any thing to get to where you want to go until the full "cinematic" and "impressive" show is over. Oy, vey! Get a clue, folks. Web users, while they do appreciate something beautiful, also want something quick and responsive, something easy to navigate, where the user can get to the information he or she wants as quickly as possible. I think the site designers were striving for "something dramatic" but all they achieved was something s..l..o..w and frustrating.

Okay, now another quick aside. Please don't read more emotion into my little side-rants like the above than there really is. I just mentioned my above pet-peeve to my brother, with my dad listening in the background. He mistook my intensity for more than it really was and told me, "Well don't let it stress you out. You'll die young."

Even though I like to be a bit melodramatic in how I express myself, both in print and in tone and inflection, I realize totally how minor something like this is, and I really am quite relaxed inside. It's easy to misread my overly-dramatic intensity for, well, real intense frustration (which it is not). I suppose I need to be more careful, so I won't encounter boy-who-cries-wolf syndrome when something truly stressful or frustrating comes up.

Now back to the movie: It was WONDERFUL! I suppose, having grown up with the story of Joseph Smith all my life, and having read and enjoyed the fictional stories by Gerald N. Lund set against the historical background of the foundational events of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, that I can't be very objective about this movie. But I can say it was well done. It was an enjoyable story, and I thought the cinematography was practically perfect. Sure, I have a few nit picks, but they are few and irrelevant to my overall impression: this is a good movie.

Oh, and I also liked the musical score, composed by the nearly always impressive Sam Cardon.

What an enjoyable late afternoon and early evening!

The setting was also very nice—much superior to the Westates theaters in St. George. Hurricane's new theaters have a lot going for them, a lot of nice little design touches that really set them apart from the Westates monopoly in St. George. I hope with this competition, the new Westates complex near my home under construction will utilize some of the ideas from these Hurricane theaters. The Coral Cliffs Cinema 8 has upped the ante in the Southern Utah movie-going experience. It's a nice enough difference to make it worth while to commute the 18 miles from St. George to go see a movie.

(The only draw-back of the new theaters: a very long and awkward-to-type web address.)

I had a blast. Now I just need to see "National Treasure", "Polar Express", "Oceans 12", and next week, "A Series of Unfortunate Events" and I'll be all caught up.