It was a weekend of watching movies and learning how they were made.

The former was on Saturday as I saw "Ray." It’s one of the best biopics I’ve seen in recent years. Jaime Foxx is amazing as Ray Charles and is certainly headed for a Best Actor nomination. The film shows moving flashbacks of Ray’s childhood when his brother tragically drowns in a washtub and how he first learns to cope with blindness at the age of 7. The movie then concentrates on the time period of the late 1940s to the early 1960s. Over the span of two and half hours, the years slowly crawl by, to the point that Sarah was wondering how many hours later it would be until we got to the present day! But the last 40 years of Ray’s life are glossed over in the film’s final minutes. The music was great – "I’ve Got a Woman", "Night Time is the Right Time", "Georgia", "Hit the Road Jack"... all mimed by Jaime Foxx while Ray Charles’ real voice plays in the background. And was Ray ever a player! The film shows his marriage and his two mistresses, one of whom he had a child with. In actuality, he had multiple wives, divorced the one shown in the film in the 1980s and had about 9 children out of wedlock! All in all, a very good film that I’ll put on my year-end Top 10 list. Or as I said to Sarah when it was over "It’s too bad Ray didn’t live to see the completed film." Get it? SEE the film? Ha!

Then on Sunday I visited the Museum of Moving Image in Astoria with Ben, Tracy and Lisa. Or as Brad calls it, the MoMI. I enjoyed the old presidential campaign commercials, the Loews theater exhibit, the Star Trek action figure display, the costumes from Chicago, the merchandising items made for older films, and the displays on older technologies including BETA videotapes! I also liked the videogame exhibit even though the Ms. Pac Man machine ate my tokens. Instead I played Space Invaders and that Dance Mania game. Upon leaving I bought all the scripts from "The Office" in the gift shop. Now I’m ready to finally write that mockumentary!