Now Showing: Spontaneity, The Movie

"Why not seize the pleasure at once?

How often is happiness destroyed by preparation,

foolish preparation!"

-- Jane Austen, Emma

Movie box office 7-4-14

"Say yes and you'll figure it out afterwards."

-- Tina Fey

I'm not very spontaneous.

I like to know what's happening and when, well in advance, so that I can prepare myself for whatever's coming down the line. 

Sudden change throws me off balance and makes me terribly anxious, so I tend to not do things on a whim. I like a set schedule. I like a set plan. I like a set routine. 

Phrases like "play it by ear," "roll with the punches" and "devil may care" are not in my lexicon.

I don't "throw caution to the wind." I don't like things coming "out of left field."

You can't schedule or plan or prepare for spontaneity, or it would cease being spontaneous. Hence my timidity when it comes to being spontaneous.

But every once in a very blue moon I follow an impulse to go out on a whim (I know the phrase is "out on a limb." I'm making a play on words. Get it? Except if you say it out loud it sounds like Elmer Fudd is saying "out on a limb.") 

I digress.

This is all by way of saying that Sam and I went out to see a late-night movie last night -- just decided right on the spot to bust out of the house and go. Sam is only marginally more spontaneous than me, and equally cautious and rigid about schedules and routines. Here's how the conversation usually goes:

[Sam working on his laptop. Me working on my laptop.]

Sam: We should go see (insert name of movie here).

Me: We should.

Sam: Wanna watch the trailer?

Me: Sure?

[We watch the trailer.]

Me: What time does it start?

Sam: 10:00.

Me: We should totally go.

Sam: We should.

Me: What time is it now?

Sam: It starts in 15 minutes.

Me: We probably can't make it.

Sam: Yeah. And I don't want to be up too late. I have to get up early.

Me: I want to get this done for tomorrow.

Sam: OK. See you in the morning.

Me: See you in the morning.

[Sam closes laptop and goes to bed. I continue working. We don't go see the movie.]

We are very good at talking ourselves out of spontaneity.

But last night, we defied our typical, cautious predictability and followed the impulse to see a late night showing of the new Melissa McCarthy comedy, Tammy. 

We didn't think about it. We didn't talk ourselves out of it. We just up and went. 

It felt wild and crazy going someplace and doing something during the part of the day when we're usually winding down for the night. 

Sure, it wasn't as wildly, crazily impulsive as, say, cliff diving, or drag racing on the turnpike, or unprotected sex with strangers. There was no risk involved. But our unplanned act of spontaneity did feel a teensy bit dangerous nonetheless. I mean, we weren't exactly Thelma and Louise on a roadtrip, but it did feel good to do something out of the ordinary for a change.

Maybe we'll do it again.

Maybe we won't.

Who knows.

You can't plan these things.

I guess we'll just play it by ear.

Silent Films

"Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo."

-- Mary Pickford

Self portrait 5-15-14

"The silent film has a lot of meanings.

The first part of the film is comic. 

It represents the burlesque feel of those silent films.

But I think that the second part of the film is full of tenderness and emotion."

-- Pedro Almodovar

I have this yellow Post It on my desk that says, simply, "Blancanieves -- watch this movie."

My friend Jill wrote it and stuck it there months ago.

When Netflix finally got their shit together and offered the film, I downloaded it, and then it sat there in my queue, unwatched, for weeks and weeks. Yesterday, when nobody else was home and I had an afternoon all to myself, I finally watched it.

It's a silent film, black and white with music, set in 1920s Seville, and is the story of a girl named Carmen, who happens to be the daughter of  the once great matador Antonia Villalta. The film is essentially a retelling of the Snow White tale, complete with evil stepmother, poison apple, and a merry band of bullfighting dwarfs who find the girl nearly drowned -- and amnesic -- by a riverside after a failed attempt on her life engineered by the stepmother. The dwarfs name her Blancanieves, or "Snow White", after the famed fairy tale, and she joins their bullfighting act. And the girl's got skillz, which she learned from her father, even though she doesn't really remember it.

This movie was thoroughly imaginative and captivating and charming but also haunting and tragic. And there's this rooster that is pretty fucking terrific.

Don't be dissuaded by the fact that this film is silent, and black and white, and foreign. You won't miss the talking, I promise. Plus, all of the inter-titles are in English, so it's OK if you don't know Spanish.

I don't want to say a whole lot more about the film, because I don't want to spoil it for you.

All I have to say is that it's such a good thing and I am so glad Jill told me about it. 

Oh, and this --

"Blancanieves -- watch this movie."

Just The Two Of Us

"We didn't talk about anything heavy or light. 

We were just there together. 

And that was enough."

-- Steven Chbosky, The Perks of Being A Wallflower

u and i,  4-29-14

"We go together,

Like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong

Remembered forever

As shoobop sha wadda wadda yippity boom de boom

Chang chang changitty chang shoobop

That's the way it should be, wha ooohhhh, yeah."

-- "We Go Together," Grease

My husband and I went on a movie date last night. 

Just the two of us.

We were eating dinner, just the two of us, and he said he didn't bring home a movie rental.

The baseball game wasn't coming on until later.

Leo was out for the evening.

So I was like, "We could go out to a movie."

So that's what we did. We went to the movies.

Just the two of us.

The movie itself was "eh."

But being there together felt like old times, back when we did stuff together just because we could, for the simple reason that we had each other to do stuff with. 

I mean, we watch movies all the time. And we do stuff together, but lots of times we have one or both of our kids along with us, or sometimes friends.

But this time it was just us two. 

Two is good.

A Pretty Good Sequel

"Better we show them, we chose to die on our feet, rather than live on our knees!"

-- Themistocles, 300: Rise of an Empire

Legonidas 3-8-14

Queen Gorgo:

"Leonidas is dead ..."

Themistocles:

"Then avenge him!"

-- 300: Rise of an Empire

I love the movie 300, the story of how Spartan warrior Leonidas led an army of only 300 soldiers to take on hordes of Persians and their narcissistic, golden god-king, Xerxes.

When trailers for the sequel, 300: Rise of an Empire began running in theaters several months ago, I marked March 7th on my calendar and eagerly awaited opening day. I wanted to see it while it was still hot and fresh.

We chose a 4 p.m. matinee and got there plenty early to beat the Friday crowds, but as it turned out, we had the theater almost blissfully to ourselves. I love it when that happens.

This sequel takes a unique approach. Instead of telling what happened after the first film, it is the story of what happened during it -- the events that took place simultaneously on the Greek side of things as they battled the Persians at sea, fighting for democracy and freedom. You also get to find out how Xerxes became Xerxes. 

Even though I missed Gerard Butler as Leonidas, everyone else is back along with some new faces, particularly Eva Green as an uber angry, uber sexy Greek-turned-Persian naval commander Artemisia, whose sole purpose in life is to kill every Greek male on the planet in revenge for how her former countrymen mistreated her as a child. Nothing makes a better villain than a justifiably pissed off hot girl with a huge chip on her shoulder and an entire Persian navy at her command. 

Expect more of the highly stylized bloodshed and graphic novel-esque violence as the first film, but with blue capes, and ships!

I'm usually leery of sequels. They rarely measure up to their originals. I definitely liked the original 300 better, but as sequels go, this one was pretty darned entertaining. (Plus, we went out for Vietnamese food after the show and I had one of the best bowls of vegetable soup I've ever eaten).

Soup and a movie. Weird, I know. But good.

Shooting! Explosions! Crashes! Snacks!

"Don't you go to the movies?"

"Mostly just to eat popcorn in the dark."

-- Charles Bukowski, 

Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories

Lego movie popcorn 2-24-14

"Theatrical is fantastic.

I don't think anything will ever replace the big dark room,

the screen and the popcorn."

-- Mel Gibson 

Going to the movies is like pizza.

Even when it's not that great, it's still pretty good.

We caught a late afternoon matinee yesterday. No, not The Lego Movie, although I have it on pretty good authority that it's darn entertaining. But I really hate going to movies where there are lots of children.

We opted for RoboCop. 

It was a popcorn movie, which by my definition means it's loud enough that you can crunch popcorn with abandon and rattle candy wrappers all you want without pissing off everyone else in the theater.

So yeah, it was loud. There was shooting. Explosions. Car crashes. A motorcycle chase sequence. The usual suspects.

The special effect of the RoboCop guy as just a torso and a head was weirdly fascinating and worth the price of a ticket all by itself.

Besides, it killed a couple of hours on a slow Sunday, and there were snacks.

Was it great? Meh.

Was it good?

Good enough.

A Double Feature

"People who LIKE movies have a favorite.

People who LOVE movies couldn't possibly choose."

--Nicole Yatsonsky

Looks Can Kill 3 movie poster with Lego Medusa and Lego clown, 1-18-14

"A good movie can take you out of your dull funk

and the hopelessness that so often goes with slipping into a theater ..."

-- Pauline Kael, For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies

Give them pleasure. 

The same pleasure they have 

when they wake up from a nightmare."

-- Alfred Hitchcock

If one movie is a good thing, two movies is one day is an even better thing.

And two movies wrapped around dinner at Chipotle is like a double-wrapped good thing burrito.

New fangled movie theaters don't do old fashioned double features anymore. So we had to create our own from the multiple offerings at our local cineplex.

We found two movies spaced just far enough apart to allow for a quick dinner in between films.

It felt super indulgent and extravagant, because it was. We didn't have to choose which movie we wanted to see. We just saw them both.

I was excited about it all week. It was our way of celebrating the end of Leo's final exams, and the perfect start to a long weekend. 

It was also the perfect excuse to create this pretend movie poster for a movie that doesn't exist, but which I hope someone will make some day so that I can go see it. 

Twice. 

Cuz I bet it's really good.