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i saw the last king of scotland the other day. i’m not really a reviewer but i think you should see it. forest whitaker will win the oscar for leading actor, and for the most part it’s often worth watching oscar-winning movies.

the last king of scotland is historical fiction about idi amin and his rule over uganda in the 1970’s. a lot (most? all?) of it was shot in uganda and it was totally a thrill to see kampala and the countryside. i wanted to brag to everyone in the theatre that i live there. i heard an interview with forest on NPR, and he told an interesting story about shooting scenes of amin giving a political speech to villagers out in the country. apparantly there were some villagers who were wondering why amin was giving the same speech over and over (answer: multiple shoots of the same scene). they were extras who had been paid to be in the crowd. they thought forest was really amin. getting paid to show up to a political speech back in the day wasn’t out of the ordinary, and they didn’t know that amin was dead. when told that amin was really an actor from LA, they said no, that is really amin. forest is that good. his accent is ridiculous.

anway. the scottish doctor who is the other starring role was a little annoying. i liked his character better in the book. and they put more sex in than i think there needed to be, but what are you going to do with hollywood?
101phil
watching the movie made me really miss uganda. it has an attraction to me that i can’t really explain. it took no time at all for me to think of it as home. on paper, nothing about uganda really matches who i am or what i’ve done with my life up to this point. but there it is; it just feels right. this is sort of random, but i have a similar relationship to sailing. i am totally happy riding the rail and staring at the water for hours and i’m not sure why. both my brothers have sailed and raced internationally, extensively, at times fanatically. i have sailed minimally, but i know that i could be totally content setting off around the world. uganda seems to have that same unexplainable pull.