Salt Movie Premiere: Life Imitates Art

The Hollywood movie premiere of Salt is today at The Graumann's Chinese Theater. The movie stars Angelina Jolie as a spy accused of being a double agent. This movie has created major buzz among fanboys at different movie sites online. Salt's trailers show a lot of action and fight scenes but they are only so-so for me as I think that the premise has been done to death. It seems a bit like LaFemme Nikita or Alias-esque or maybe Bourne Identity in drag (as the title role was initially written for a guy)(lol).

However, since the whole Russian spy ring broke, it seems like a case of "life imitating art". Now I hear that Jolie wants to meet Anna Chapman when she's in Russian for the movie's premiere there. As you recall, Chapman is the alias of the pretty young Russian spy who posed as a real estate agent and wanna be society gal in New York. FBI nabbed her and 10 others in a crack down on Russian intelligence agents who were "illegals" or sleeper agents (deep undercover without diplomatic papers) in cities like New York and Washington, DC and even in suburbia.

The spies hoped to gather info on which way the Obama white house was leaning in its relationship with Russia. I'm no relationship expert but I can tell you that spying never helps any relationship plus it's all so "cold war era" anyhow(lol). There was an upside though. The U.S. got to exchange the 11 Russians for 4 imprisoned Russian intelligence officers accused of illegal contact with or covert activities for the West. The CIA negotiated the swap, which was easy since the Russians were caught literally "red-handed". I hope this all means that the U.S. and Russia can smile and play nice for a while like well behaved children.

Wait, if Jolie meets Chapman who may have stolen important American secrets, would that be like treason or something? It doesn't matter because I plan on skipping the Salt premiere anyway and I am skipping the movie altogether. I feel the spy thing has been long over and I don't especially like Jolie's movies. I couldn't understand the hype around Tomb Raiders and the movie was absolute torture for me. Plus, she may drag along Brad Pitt with her and I have not been able to stomach him since his negative comments about God. If Salt is bad then with any luck it won't stay around too long but if it's a hit and boosts this summer movie season then that would be good all around.

I was over Salt's concept but its title did remind me of how often the Bible mentions salt, which is about 30 times. From Leviticus, Job, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Psalm 133, 2 Chronicles and the 4 Gospels in the New Testamentit's salt, salt salt(look it up it's interesting). Salt or what is most commonly called table salt is known by it's chemical name, sodium chloride (NaCl), and it is a necessary nutrient in our diets to keep our fluid balance right. In biblical times, salt was used to preserve, season and purify foods and at one point it was so important it was used as currency. All the scriptures that mention salt are profound like "salt of the earth" and "salt covenant" and are still used as idioms 'til today. In the Bible, salt is used mostly in a good connotation to mean flavor, wisdom, wages, peace and friendship.

While thinking of the whole Salt-Russian spy thing, I felt an urge to play the song "I Hope The Russian's Love Their Children, Too" by Sting and maybe watch From Russia With Love. They are both my favorite songs/videos and movies plus they are a beautiful homage to the by-gone cold war era, with its secrets of hidden missile sites and spies in trench coats exchanging brief cases and martinis shaken not stirred ala James Bond. Wait a minute(looks around)... it's 2010 right? Yeah, yeah... just checking.