Saturday, May 10, 2008 : 8:08 PM

The better half

Lawrence of Arabia. I'd never seen it. When I saw the DVD set on the shelf at the library, I grabbed it. It had been a long work week. I put a disk in the DVD player and plopped into the recliner.

Long sequence of music at the beginning. No picture. Ah, I'd seen that done in a few other old movies...a big overture that was probably cool in the big theater. Eventually, there was transition music and the picture appeared.

Lots of action and drama. I was having trouble "getting it"--whatever I was supposed to enjoy about the movie. Okay, I was distracted with a laptop computer, too, and I replayed many scenes.

Then the movie ended. That sure felt shorter than I expected, and I could tell that the writer wanted me to think it was a profound ending, but I just found it odd. It was The End. I went to bed.

This morning, I ejected the DVD to put it back in the jacket and saw the other disk. What is this, special features? Nope. Disk 1.