Thensday
When I related the story of how I am granted every other Friday off in the summer, my friend C remarked at my great skill at having manipulated space-time to get and hold on to a regularly occurring Thensday. You know: a day suspended off of the calendar, not planned, frequently unexpected, and wholly welcome. Snow days. Days when a rolling brown-out shuts down your parent company's server in Jersey and you all get to go home, or when the transformer on your building makes with the big boom and all the computer screens go blank. Every other Friday all summer for me. What better way to spend it than with flagrant idleness, unapologetic consumption, early drinking, and an action movie?
That's what I thought you'd say.
C and S and I arrived at a new-to-me hole-in-the-wall pub in Cambridge at around 11:30 and began to consume mass quantities. And nachos. When the rains came, we retreated from the patio into the bar and said "well, that settles it" and had another round. By the time we began to be a little sensitive about having outlasted multiple rounds of other patrons, the idea came up to go see the 4:15 of the new Angie Jolie shoot 'em up, Wanted.
This is the kind of movie that, upon seeing previews, prompts my ladyfriend and I to turn to each other and start a low, slowly accelerating chant of "brew and view, Brew and View, BREW and VIEW! BREW AND VIEW!!!" The Brew and View runs nights at the Vic in Chicago when they're not hosting a show; for a solid fiver, they play you two (three on Fridays and Saturdays) movies and the bar serves a high-value double (more like triple) well drink for not a ton of cashola. There are certain movies that lend themselves so well to this concept that I want to view them at the Brew and View, even though I wouldn't see them in any other circumstance (in a regular theater, at home, on a plane, at a friend's house...). Summer dreck fares especially well paired with beers, G&Ts, and cheap popcorn swiped off the abandoned table of the couple who are not staying for the second feature.
Wanted is most certainly summer dreck. Only two (almost three) things allowed me to endure it: I love the director Timur somethingsomething (Night Watch, Day Watch), I was drunk, and I have a shameful attraction to Angelina Jolie. That last one is only about 1/2 of a thing, though, as I find her less and less enrapturing as she acquires a colonialist's menagerie of global children. A far cry from "Hack the Planet," which is how I like to remember her. Oh, pixie cut Angie Jolie, you can make it all the way into my wireless network any weekend evening. *ahem* Where was I...ah yes, "dreck." It wasn't the alco-mo-hol that killed my brain cells, it was this movie. It was the un-twist ultimate twist near the end, the non-evocative evocation to action as the final line, the deeply uncompelling characters (how in the bright hell do you make a fraternity of weaver-assassins THIS boring?), and, on top of it all, an overqualified Morgan Freeman phoning--nay, texting--it in. I wanted to say, "This is Jack's disappointment at this worst realization of what Fight Club could be said to have given us as a film legacy." At least the chase scenes were filled with chases, and the film entire had that little Russian "I don't know what" (how do they say je ne sais quoi in Russian? Maybe they don't ever not know what...) that I love from Timur what'shisname.
I feel badly that C and S suffered through it with me, but they were also real tight by this time, and we'd had some ice cream, so the synapses that weren't languid with Newcastle were hopped up on sugar and butterfat.
If that's not a recipe for a summer movie experience, I just don't know what is.
That's what I thought you'd say.
C and S and I arrived at a new-to-me hole-in-the-wall pub in Cambridge at around 11:30 and began to consume mass quantities. And nachos. When the rains came, we retreated from the patio into the bar and said "well, that settles it" and had another round. By the time we began to be a little sensitive about having outlasted multiple rounds of other patrons, the idea came up to go see the 4:15 of the new Angie Jolie shoot 'em up, Wanted.
This is the kind of movie that, upon seeing previews, prompts my ladyfriend and I to turn to each other and start a low, slowly accelerating chant of "brew and view, Brew and View, BREW and VIEW! BREW AND VIEW!!!" The Brew and View runs nights at the Vic in Chicago when they're not hosting a show; for a solid fiver, they play you two (three on Fridays and Saturdays) movies and the bar serves a high-value double (more like triple) well drink for not a ton of cashola. There are certain movies that lend themselves so well to this concept that I want to view them at the Brew and View, even though I wouldn't see them in any other circumstance (in a regular theater, at home, on a plane, at a friend's house...). Summer dreck fares especially well paired with beers, G&Ts, and cheap popcorn swiped off the abandoned table of the couple who are not staying for the second feature.
Wanted is most certainly summer dreck. Only two (almost three) things allowed me to endure it: I love the director Timur somethingsomething (Night Watch, Day Watch), I was drunk, and I have a shameful attraction to Angelina Jolie. That last one is only about 1/2 of a thing, though, as I find her less and less enrapturing as she acquires a colonialist's menagerie of global children. A far cry from "Hack the Planet," which is how I like to remember her. Oh, pixie cut Angie Jolie, you can make it all the way into my wireless network any weekend evening. *ahem* Where was I...ah yes, "dreck." It wasn't the alco-mo-hol that killed my brain cells, it was this movie. It was the un-twist ultimate twist near the end, the non-evocative evocation to action as the final line, the deeply uncompelling characters (how in the bright hell do you make a fraternity of weaver-assassins THIS boring?), and, on top of it all, an overqualified Morgan Freeman phoning--nay, texting--it in. I wanted to say, "This is Jack's disappointment at this worst realization of what Fight Club could be said to have given us as a film legacy." At least the chase scenes were filled with chases, and the film entire had that little Russian "I don't know what" (how do they say je ne sais quoi in Russian? Maybe they don't ever not know what...) that I love from Timur what'shisname.
I feel badly that C and S suffered through it with me, but they were also real tight by this time, and we'd had some ice cream, so the synapses that weren't languid with Newcastle were hopped up on sugar and butterfat.
If that's not a recipe for a summer movie experience, I just don't know what is.
Labels: drink, film, good tiiiimes, home life, summer
posted by Nora Rocket at 6:57 PM
3 Comments:
OK, "texting it in" is entering my vocabulary.
I love the recap, as it's probably far more enjoyable than seeing the actual movie. And I'm glad you're blogging regularly, 'cuz you're, like, fun.
Can't wait to see you and J for the week K and I run around and check the battening abilities of our respective hatches.
Love love love
dono
Funny, Dono - in all of my commentary about Wanted, it's the mot juste they all grab onto. That's really what it seemed like, though: a whole new level of phoning it in, like he wasn't even worried about complete, coherent thought or emotion. "OMG loom, BRB."
Looking forward to your visit too!
Ya eta ni'zhnayu (I don't know that(what)).
There's also a great Russian saying from the Soviet days that translates as "I don't know anything; my hut is at the edge of the village."
Bam!
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