But I digress. [And this is where I accidentally hit Apple+Q instead of F11 and I lost a big paragraph of actual review.] This movie doesn't function as a documentary, or even as a particularly artful piece of cinema. It's a standard Hollywood story that just happens to be set during one of the greatest atrocities of the past 20 years. Yes, Don Cheadle does well. Yes, the story is suspenseful and of course you'd have to be made of stone not to be moved by it. (Though the five-hanky parts of the movie stem more from maudlin, interpersonal drama than from the overarching theme of hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered overnight, which screams Hollywood conceit.) I could've done without the romance subplot, and I really could've done without Nick Nolte's salty UN commander. (Glad to see Nick's getting work, though. Good for you, buddy!)

Hotel Rwanda was done with the most noble intentions, and overall it succeeded in presenting a subject of such great enormity without dunning or desensitizing the audience. Perhaps the director and writers used such a conventional storyline in order to draw in unsuspecting midwestern housewives ("Oh, a romance during wartime! I just loved that Don Cheadle in Men in Black.") and their ilk--a foolhardy attempt to get Americans to care about the Rwandan genocide. (This review at BlogCritics sums up my feelings about the movie nicely. Just go there instead of reading the last two paragraphs. [SIKE!])

One interesting sidestory to my evening involves the wanton slaughter of CBS executives instead: I was sitting in front of some high-up at CBS who was insisting that the whole Bush memos debacle was actually an excuse to fire a bunch of women executives, including herself. Interesting. She wasn't one of the three women asked to resign last week. Rather, she's part of the next wave of layoffs, and seems to believe that they're culling every last female from the CBS ranks. Of course, they told her not to talk about this to anyone.

Whoopsie! You can't take me anywhere, can you.