Just a reminder that it’s the first of the month, and that means movie night! Due to some changes in schedules, we’re moving movie night from Wednesday to Thursday. So don’t show up tonight, because there’s no movie tonight. The movie is tomorrow night. There will be popcorn. Maybe baked goods. And good company. And a movie.
Movie night is Thursday, October 2nd. See you then!
So, its time once again for the monthly movie night. Once a month, kitanzi and I toss open our doors and invite you all in to watch a movie, chat, hang out, snack on fresh baked goods, and generally have a good time.
What have you missed by not coming? Here’s an incomplete list of previous screenings:
Hot Fuzz
Shaun of the Dead
Kinsey
Copenhagen
Harold and Maude
Once
Juno
In almost all cases, the films were something that most of the attendees had not seen. We do tend a bit towards quirky films that one might not gotten around to seeing otherwise. (The entire point of this monthly party was to actually get through some of the DVDs we’d been piling up after all.)
This month, in the spirit of the July 4th holiday, we’re screening the wonderful musical 1776. So if you’re free on Wednesday, July 2, drop by our place after 7, and we’ll have food, entertainment, and good company for you. If you need directions, just drop me an email or leave a comment.
Hope to see you there!
Entertainment Weekly put this together as a list of the 100 best films of the last 25 years. As expected, what was included and what wasn’t both strike me as somewhat questionable. Still, I love movies, so I’ll go through the exercise. You’re supposed to bold the ones you’ve seen, underline the ones you’ve started but didn’t finish. I’ll put an asterisk next to the ones I own. (taken from epi_lj.)
It’s been a pretty social week out this way, which has been a lot of fun, on the whole.
We had a wonderful weekend, all around. I went and got myself a massage at Massage Envy on Friday after work, which was wonderful and refreshing; I hadn’t actually been since June, as I had been saving my July appointment for after the move and then I promptly fell and hurt myself.
wheezinggirl and oneandonlymatt came over for dinner Friday, since they were unable to come to our housewarming. We had a lovely dinner of baked chicken spiced with a blend we picked up from Alpharetta Spice, a local concern run by a man and his wife right here in Alpharetta. Very nice folks, and they make some wonderful spice blends. I’m particular fond of their Garlepeno Salt. I believe the chicken that night was the Rusted Roof Border Blend. The meal was rounded out by a bacon and spinich pasta dish and a potato-and-sweet-potato medly, all courtesy of kitanzi, who had the audacity to tell me when we first started dating that she wasn’t much of a cook.
After dinner, we sat and talked for a good bit, before moving into the computer room to share some music with one another on the computer, starting with an old Firefly fan video set to Leonard Cohen’s “Halleljuah”, and then they directed me to Emerald Rose’s hysterical Never Split the Party, done in stop motion LegoMation, leading me to play them bardiclug‘s “Secrets”. My memory leaves me at this point, but we had a great time, and made plans to get together again soon.
Saturday, Alice came over to bring us some shelving unites from Ikea she no longer needed, and then we went and met up with hilfy to see Stardust. What a fabulous movie. I’m a huge fan of Neil Gaiman already, of course, so I was prepared to like it, but it managed to exceed my expectations. Robert DeNiro absolutely steals every scene he is in, the chorus of ghostly princes is delightful, and every single thing about the movie makes me happy. There are some changes from the original novel to the movie, which is inevitable (Gaiman has some interesting things to say bout that process), but it has been so long since I last read the novel that I didn’t notice them overly, and in fact even managed to be surprised by some things in the film that, in retrospect, I knew were going to happen. Positively five stars; go see this film in the theatre.
Unfortunately, my back had been bothering me all week and wasn’t getting much better, so we opted to skip the Atlanta housefilk that evening. I hope everyone had a good time — we missed being there. I managed to finally find a solution for what was causing my pain by putting one of the memory foam pillows kitanzi got a while back and put it under my back. I expect that once we get the new bed broken in it won’t be a problem, and meanwhile I’ve found a way to sleep comfortably and not wake up in excruciating pain, so that’s a win.
Sunday was a quiet day. I spent a good deal of it playing World of Warcraft, but over dinner we finally got around to watching the finale of Heroes. Yes, we’d actually managed to not watch it all this time, and even more impressively we’d managed to avoid all spoilers. I won’t include any here, in case someone else has been living under an even bigger rock than us, but….wow. What a great ending for a great season. Interestingly, I read a fanfic back around the first of the year which ultimately predicted what would happen with Peter…I wonder if the author of that fic was as chuffed as I was? (If anyone feels like helping me out on this, point me to your own reaction to the finale, so I can go back and read it.)
Tonight is gaming night. We’re about to start a brand new AD&D campaign from level 1, with what’s left of our current group. bedlamhouse‘s cruel and heartless desertion moving away marks a huge change in the dynamic of the group, but we’re determined to carry on. I realized recently that I’d been playing with this group, through various iterations, for eight years, which is pretty much the longest I’ve ever been with a single group of people gaming. There was the group I started with (1983-1987), the East Carolina Gaming Club (1986-1990), Jim and Steve in Athens (1990-1993), asynaka1 and his friends (1993-1998), Craig & Co (1994-1997), and then a gap until I joined up with Bill and Don. (Yes, several of those dates overlap. I’m polygamerous. I’m not even trying to figure out all the various places I dropped into and out of hejira2006‘s Doctor Who and Star Trek RPG campaigns.)
The people at the table change, but the game is forever. And so it goes.
Last night after work, I drove down to Perimeter Point to meet up with Alice for dinner and a movie. We had a leisurely meal at Atlanta Bread Company and discussed the day and a variety of other topics; one of the things I love about hanging out with Alice is that she’s always got something interesting to talk about, and often about subjects that I’m not already immersed in, which is a good stretch for my brain.
Our movie for the evening was the just-released The Bourne Ultimatum starring Matt Damon. I admit that I had no idea what to expect from this film, having seen neither of its prequels nor read any of the novels which they are (loosely, I’m told) based upon. But it was the film that Alice suggested she was very interested in seeing, and I had no objection to it, even if it was a film I might not have ever seen if someone had not asked me to go with them.
I’m glad she did. Ultimatum isn’t a deep film, by any means, but its a roller coaster ride that starts on a high and never lets up. The plot is tight and gripping, and paced in such a way that even when something preposterous happens, your brain doesn’t quite have time to object before the action moves on. The violence is hyperkinetic and neatly manages to avoid unnecessary gore while at the same time never being cartoonish. I heard the director refer to some of the fight scenes as a “violent ballet” in a radio interview last week, and that’s a fitting description.
Jason Bourne as a character is interesting to watch. Matt Damon manages to be likable enough for us to keep us on his side while still being about as emotionally withdrawn as its possible to be without completely ceasing to be human. David Strathairn is fantastic as the CIA Black-Ops director who wants to stop him before he learns to much, and Albert Finney makes a surprise appearance at the end. Surprising in an action film, the various characters never quite become caricatures.
I’m not sure this was the Platonic Ideal of an action movie. But it was awfully darn close, and i’m looking forward to getting the two previous films on DVD and watching them now.
We were driving up North Point Parkway, when kitanzi spotted the movie listings for the UA Movie Theatre. The last three entries in the first column read:
TRANSFORMERS
KNOCKED UP
HARRY POTTER
Yeesh. It’s getting so you can’t go *anywhere* without running into spoilers!
Ok, so after yesterdays’ list of book-to-film adaptations, here’s another long list of movies. This time, it’s Jim Emerson’s 101 Essential Films. Emerson writes:
This isn’t like Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” series. It’s not my idea of The Best Movies Ever Made (that would be a different list, though there’s some overlap here), or that they were my favorites or the most important or influential films, but that they were the movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They’re the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat “movie-literate.”
So, I looked up the list and here it is, with only a couple changes. (I added “Fight Club” because it’s essential and it hadn’t been released at the time I made the list.) I remember I tried to represent key examples of all important genres, movie stars, directors, historical movements, and so on — like an overview of the 20th century in 101 movies. Yes, there are many more I’d like to add, but remember, this is only a primer. How many have you seen?
According to the UK newspaper The Guardian, here is a list of the Top 50 book to film adaptations of all time (a list, oddly enough, containing 51 items). Note which ones you’ve seen the movie of and/or read the book for. For films with multiple adaptations, any film adaptation counts.
So, although most of our weekend was spent calling friends and sweeties and relatives to tell them our news, we did manage to accomplish some other things over the weekend as well.
Saturday we went swimming, and then went out to Asia Garden for a lunch of Chinese food. I really like the food there, and they have the added bonus of delivering to our apartment when we want takeout. (And are, amusingly, faster to deliver than the place that’s right across the street). We then did some necessary shopping and came home to watch TV, hang out on #filkhaven, and call everyone we needed to call.
Sunday was more swimming, after which we ordered some pizza and then went down to Medlock Crossing to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
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