Last year everyone who paid attention to such things had the movie Brokeback Mountain walking away with an Academy Award for Best Picture. I had gone against the tide that year and picked Crash to win that category. I didn't see Brokeback Mountain (my daughter claims that it's because I'm homophobic. I'm not, but you can't convince her otherwise), but I did see Crash, twice. The movie hit me (figuratively speaking) on so many levels that I knew that it had to win something.

Turns out I was right, Crash won an Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Editing.

What made Crash so compelling was the way it told its story from the views of its characters who, in one way or another, wound up affecting one another in surprising and often profound ways. The carjacking scene was especially surprising in that the characters turned out to be not at all what you expected.

There's a strong similarity between one of the basic themes in Crash and Gnome, one of this week's freebies at the iTunes Store. Gnome, starring Lauren Graham (you may remember her as the school principal and love interest in Vin Diesel's The Pacifier) is a 15 minute movie that starts off heading in one direction, then, as in Crash, takes its character, and you, in an entirely different vector.

Gnome

Because the movie is so short it's tough to talk about it without giving it away, but I know that some will say that the plot is obvious and the characters are one dimensional. It is a short flick after all, so character development, by necessity, must rely on a cliche or two, however, if you can look past the cliches, I think you'll find that the little movie has a lot to offer by way of personal and social commentary.

Gnome is a nice little movie in its own right, and well worth the time.

After you are done with Gnome may I suggest that you take a listen to John Hodgman's An Almanac of Complete World Knowledge Compiled with Instructive Annotation and Arranged in Useful Order by Me, John Hodgman, A Professional Writer, in The Areas Of My Expertise Which Include: Matters Historical, Matters Literary, Matters Crytozoological, Hobo Matters, Food, Drink & Cheese (a Kind of Food), Squirrels & Lobsters & Eels, Haircuts, Utopia, What Will Happen in the Future, and Most Other Subjects.

That's The Areas of My Expertise for short.

The Area of My Expertise

What's amazing about this book, beyond the fact that Mr. Hodgman got the entire name on the cover with room left for other stuff, is that it actually does contain a lot of information. I found the tables predicting the future insightful, especially if you are a Norse God (I'm not, but have played one on TV). The discussion on crabs was also illuminating, and the complete and informative listing of the 51 states in the United States kept me glued to my headsets (or was that actual glue?).

You may have noticed that I didn't say that Mr. Hodgman's book contains any useful information. What's useful is a subjective matter; it's kind of like one man's garbage being another man's gold. In the case of The Areas of My Expertise, Mr. Hodgman's bits of wisdom and observations fall within the range I described above, and may be even described as misinformation, or, at least, a lot of hooey, but his book is pure gold.

The iTunes Store is offering the entire abridged audiobook version of The Area of My Expertise as a free download. Get it and be informed.

Other free goodies at the iTunes Store:

This week's free offerings on iTunes (With direct links)