At the Movies . . . Again

I had this blog written the other day and when I went to cut and paste it into a word document so I could spell check it, I cut and deleted it. So here I go again. Maybe they'll fix the fucking spell checking on this thing some day.

I watch a lot of movies -- maybe 30-35 a month. I watch DVD's faster than Netflix can send them to me, so I have to hit Blockbuster or the local video rental place once a week. Here's a hint: when you go to Blockbuster, start at the beginning of the alphabet. There are more watchable movies in the numeric's, A's, B's and C's than in the rest of the alphabet. I always seem to find something like Angel-A (or Angela) that I have never heard of which is really good.

In the past 6 days I have seen 6 movies, three of which were really good. Morgan Freeman was in two of them, but even he couldn't save the one that should have been really good. I'll start with the best.

The Namesake. I loved it. Not only was it beautiful to look at, it was smartly written. It's a story of contrasts -- New York and Calcutta; old world values and modern American kids. It's the story of an Indian couple who move to New York and have two kids. Their son, Gogol, is the namesake -- for the Russian writer Nicholi Gogol. Since the boy's name is Gogol Ganguli, he is embarrassed by it and wants to go by his "good name" Nicholas. As the movie progresses, he comes to learn the significance of the name Gogol in his father's life.

The cast is terrific. Kal Penn of Harold and Kumar fame is sincere and believable as Gogol. The mother Ashima is played by an Indian actress named Tatu and she is beautiful and strong and unflappable. I particularly liked the scene where the family visits Calcutta and the kids are seeing India for the first time. It was very realistic and fascinating. Rather than describe it further I recommend you see it.

10 Items or Less. I loved it. This is a little film, that was shot in 15 days, that I knew nothing about and was totally taken with. Morgan Freeman plays a has-been actor "doing research for a project" he might consider at a market in Southern California. Paz Vega is the Spanish immigrant who is the checker at the 10 Items or Less Lane. The movie is the story of their unlikely collaboration and friendship. They are both wonderful and the script is smart and very clever. From the moment Scarlet (Paz Vega) appears on screen I was totally taken by her strength, smarts and weariness. I immediately wanted to know this woman. And Freeman's character, called Him, is charming and disarming (are they the same thing?) and completely likable.

Scarlet is trapped with an idiot husband from whom she is separated and a dead end job. "Him" coaches her through a transformation to get ready for a job as interview as an office manager. You may have to suspend disbelief a little, but it's so well written you don't care. The final scene is the perfect ending. I also recommend it.

Adrift in Manhattan. I liked it. It’s the story of three lonely people whose lives intersect in Manhattan. Tommaso, played by Dominic Chianese who is best known as Junior Soprano, stole the show with is portrayal of an aging painter who earns a living working in a corporate mailroom and is losing his sight. He meets Isabel, played by Elizabeth Peńa, at work and a romance begins. Both characters have smart dialogue to deliver and play a mature couple falling in love with grace and supreme dignity. I loved them. Heather Graham plays Rose an eye doctor who is treating Tommaso and trying to cope with the death of her two-year old son. Billy Baldwin plays her estranged husband. Finally there is Simon a socially retarded teenager with an overbearing mother who begins to follow and photograph Rose after being attracted by her scarf.
The movie was unknown to me be fore I saw it and turned out to be a real find in the “A’s” at Blockbuster.

A Feast of Love. I didn’t like it. With Morgan Freeman, Jane Alexander, Greg Kinnear, Rahda Mitchell and Alexa Davalos, and a big name director, this should have been a better movie than Adrift in Manhattan. It's not. The plots of these two films have some similarities -- there’s a tarot reading in each of them – in that they involve the intersection of several lives. Freeman and Alexander are a college professor on leave and his wife who have lost their grown son to a heroin overdose; all the while unaware of his addiction. Kinnear is a sap with a heart of gold who gets dumped twice – his first wife leaves him for a woman and his second (Mitchell) for her long time lover. Alexa Davalos as Chloe is the heart of the movie and has more inner strength than any of characters around her.
I couldn’t buy the script and Kinnear seems way too goofy to attract Diane (Mitchell).

Payback: Straight Up – The Director’s Cut. Great movie. If you have seen the 1999 theatrical version of this Mel Gibson gritty hardboiled thriller, you know it a really good movie. The Director’s Cut is very different and is much closer to the novel The Hunter by Donald E. Westlake writing as Richard Stark. Gibson’s character Porter was double crossed by his wife and his partner in crime – gunned down and left for dead. His cut of the take was $70,000 and he wants it back – and not a penny more. Porter is without redeeming qualities – he’s a killer – but his doggedness and ferocity make him interesting. Lucy Lui and Maria Bello make their first appearances in a major film and both are good. Mario Bello, thanks to A History of Violence, is my current Hollywood queen. This version is so much darker and gritty than the theatrical version that I preferred it.

The Ten. A piece of absolute shit masquerading as a comedy. It features ten scenes which are somehow supposed to illustrate the Ten Commandments. Yuk.

Hope you enjoyed this and will see at least one of these movies.

Days 6, 7 & 8 Back in the Frozen Tundra

Day 6 -- Lovely Daytona Beach.
I hung out and recuperated. Exciting, no? It was beautiful though. The sun was bright and the temperate was in the low eighties. It felt so good lying in the sun letting the warmth sink in. You know that feeling you get when it's cold out, but sunny, and you get into your car after it's been in the sun for a while ... and it's so warm and toasty in there that the warmth just sinks right into you and it feels sooo good? Well, that's how it felt.

Trying to find a place to eat was a challenge. I was looking at the local promotional rag in the hotel room and I was amazed how few places there were to eat at (excuse the grammar) and how horrible the food looked in the ads. Ever notice that on TV or at the movies when they show an ad for a restaurant and the food looks repulsive? Who thought the pictures of the food looked good? The owner? I wish I had a scanner so I could have shown you some pictures of the haute cusine that was available. I drove about 6-7 miles to a place called Cheers because in its ad it looked like a normal franchise type place like Bennigan's or something. It was a green cinder block square beach bar -- not on the beach. I cursed, turned around and ate at Johnny Rocket's. The place where they serve ketsup with and smile and food without taste. But Daniel the counter boy was chatty as hell.

I dined at an exotic locale that was scary but interesting in that I-can't-look-away kind of way. One of the bartenders was a young woman who was plain looking but with in your face cleavage that featured some sort of tatoo in the cleavage itself and spilling out onto her boobs. Trying not to stare was and look disinterested was a challenge. She left and my bartender was a woman of indetermined age who was new and had not just returned from her Rhoades Schoralship. She had to be rescued by two owners helping her out. Since Daytona was in its lull before race week, the place was sparsely populated but could have been scary with more people. Lot's of people there looked like they had done some hard living. I survived and enjoyed the people watching and the sandwich was good.

Day 7 -- On the road from Fla. to Va.
I had expected that once I got into northern Florida and Georgia the temperature would drop considerably, but it was gorgeous the whole way. It was 82 degees in SOuth Carolina. Kind of ironic when there were terrible storms in the lower midwest going on at that time.

I have followed my Weighter Watchers regime religously and it's obvious just from the loosening of the waist of my pants that I'm loosing weight. Staying within my limts while driving all day on interstates is a challenge. The choises or eateries other than fast food are few. By dinner I was starved and eat 7/8 of a small pizza. What the hell!

Day 8 -- Survivng Lunch
Pardon me while I rant. Desperate for lunch I settled on Bob Evans in Parkersburg, West Virginia. It was up on a hill overlooking the highway and the road to the restaurant was so fucking impossible to find that my poor Tommy (Tom Tom navigation system) was totally lost. After I got there -- knowing I usually hate their food -- I told myself that the only safe thing to eat was eggs and bacon; maybe salad. So I ordered a salad and the lovely beef tips stir fry. Very bright -- ordering fake Chinese food in a homestyle American place. It was beyond awful, it made me nauseous. And I was so pissed at myslef for spending seventeenfuckingdollars on an inebilbe meal. You're asking yourself, why didn't he send it back? And get what?

Reminds me of two rules. When at a steakhouse, order steak. When at a breakfast place, order breakfast. And secondly this: When you have a bad meal or poor service what do you do? Tell them everything was fine; never come back; and tell people you know about it. So if you serve the public, don't think asking "How was everything?" will tell you anything about your service. . . That was wasn't much of a rant.

The last 120 miles of the trip were nightmarish and given my past history of being run over by a semi-truck on a freezing wintry night while driving a small car, I handled it pretty well and the beemer performed well too.

My lasting memory of this trip will be that shitty trips make for shitty blogs. I'll do better on my next adventure.
Cheers!

Days 4 & 5 -- Plan B

Day 4 -- Hollywood, FL, Westin Diplomat Resort.
As you know -- if not, you do now -- people watching is a religion to me. I've been honing my skill since I was in High School. It's only in recent years that I have moved from people critic to people watcher; both involve looking people over but how you react to the observation is the difference. In undergraduate college my gang and I were vicious about it. We declared ourselves the fashion police long before you heard that expression on cable TV. We used to issue fashion citations on the corner of South Court and Union in lovely Athens, OH. The penalty for violations was self-destruction; "kill yourself immediately" was the phrase. We didn't really do this, of course; just talked about it. Regretably my children, at least the three youngest have black belts in criticism. One of the few things their mother and I had in common.

Now, I just like looking at people. Particularly couples. How did they pick each other? What did they look like on their wedding day; particularly if they have managed to be pretty rotund even in their youth. I always wonder what the men are like at work. Probably the one and only time you'll hear me admit to thinking about men.

My point is that people watching at a four star hotel (where I was staying today) is wonderful. Of course you have your basic "I wonder how she/he can afford to stay here." Or "I wonder whose paying the bill for him/her?" Older couples are always great because they seem to be at once joined at the hip and oblivious to the other at the same time. I always wonder what they looked like on there wedding day. During the brief period I was out in the sun today, I saw many orthodox jews with their families and I always want to understand what they can and cannot do with respect to acceptable dress for sunbathing and so forth. I sat next to a couple who were looking and an iPod Touch. They were in their late teens. I have no idea what their religous beliefs were. The kid had on baggy cargo shorts, like every other teen age boy, but he had about six or eight gold chains around his neck hanging down to his navel with crosses and stuff. Seemed very Mr. T'ish.

My biggest dissapointment in missing the cruise was to marvel at the eclectic mix of people in the singles group; let alone the amusement park crowd that are on lower end cruise lines.

So, Plan B? What to do after the cruise debacle. Well it's too damn expensive to stay where I am. So, here's what I decided. There's no point busting my ass to get back to Michigan to freeze my ass off. If I drive to Jacksonville or Savannah, the temps will only be in the 50's or 60's. I'm in south Florida where it's 80; how far can I go north and save a couple bucks and keep the 80 degree temps? Wouldn't you know it. My least favorite place (almost) in Florida: Daytona Beach.

Day 5 -- Daytona Beach
A beach you can drive on. NASCAR town. The world's most famous beach. Yep, that's the place. I'm in a Holiday Inn right on the beach for $108/night -- a little cheaper than West Palm or Boca. Actually I feel much more relaxed here. Maybe I'm an elitist and I like hanging out with people I believe to be inferior to me (NOT!) or I'm just a regular Joe with a little bit of sense who feels comfortable in less pretenious environments.

Daytona is my least favorite place in Florida becuase it is tacky, cheesy and it's insane to drive cars on a beach where thousands of children are playing. Years ago I let Kathy (Mrs. B II) plan and make the arrangements for a family vacation. Kathy is not wont to spend a lot of money on anything. When I heard we were booked in Daytona, I shallowed hard and kept my mouth shut. We packed up the mini van and headed south. We had a routine down pat. We would take the middle seat out of the van and make a bed for the kids there. Then we'd leave around dinner time and drive through the night while the kids slept. We would arrive around noon exhusted but satified to be there. I can remember constantly watching the cars on the beach and having multiple heart failures when kids (not mine) ran in front of cars. Haven't been back until today.

I took a short walk on the beach after I got here -- what a ghost town. The price of gas must be killing this place. I couldn't find a place that had more than two people watching the Super Bowl. I dined at the ever elegant Bubba Gump's and -- surprise, suprise -- the salmon and veggie thing I had was good. What movie runs there constantly? I guess it's obvious. And they don't turn it off for the Super Bowl.

I saw a whispy young girl (don't get ahead of me, it's nothing like that) and I had a naustalgic flashback to my days as a middle school science teacher in Centerville, Ohio in the early to mid 70's. I became a teacher because I decided that I didn't want to attend dental school, even though I had a small scholorship -- and a wife and baby boy; and so I taught to keep out of Vietnam. At that time I was 22 and my students were 14. That was tough to handle at times -- but I handled it. Later when I taught middle school I was five years older and had a Master's in Education. The point is I felt much more like a father figure/mentor than a big brother. The girl on the beach reminded me of my little fan club and how much I liked them and felt protective. We had this understanding that I expected a lot out of them -- grades and behavior -- and they expected me to fair and teach them something. Some of them had crushes on me which was flattering I guess. The girl on the beach reminded me of Chris Clark. She was very quite and demure and smart and pretty. One not-so-fine day John Swartz, the pain-in-the-ass German teacher, made Chris cry in class. Oh, my God!! I could have killed him. . . Teaching gave me the best memories of my whole career but I'm glad I left when I did before I got bitter and lazy.

You know the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell? It has to do with the amount of information the brain can process in an instant -- a blink. I can't articulate his thesis except to say that the brain has a huge capacity to process information almost instantly. He gives many examples. Well that was what happened when I saw the girl and was transported back to the 70's. I'm so nostalgic lately!

I'm still sick. Not any better; maybe worse. Tomorrow I recouperate, I hope, in Daytona and look at it with my more accepting mature eyes -- except this driving on the beach shit. After that, well see.

Please comment (not on my illness). Click on the word "comment" below to do so.

[Sorry, spell check is still down.]