I do not believe it!! Remember how I said I so badly wanted to see the Departed, and finally, today was the day?

The ex was a little late, b/c he again got lost, and needed me to give him directions. But not late enough to interfere with our movie plans.

Beloved and I went to Starbucks for some caffeine/warm coziness (he doesn't drink coffee, so he had a hot cocoa), and then on to the theater. We were a little nervous as the T took some time to show up, but we got to the theater and in our seats about 10 minutes before the show was due to start.

We saw a preview for Spidey-3, which looked pretty damned good.

Then we saw one about some movie about the guy who wrote Amazing Grace, and honestly, I don't like historical pictures. Nor do I like biographical pictures, for the most part. Oh yeah, and comedies generally bug me. But really, I don't consider myself a picky movie-goer.

Then came this really cool looking preview with Hilary Swank in it, who I like.

[and if you can't tell, I like previews - a LOT. To me, missing the previews is like missing the first 10 minutes of the show.]

The Hilary Swank one was about religion, in that creepy-magical form. I like those kinds of movies about religion. I like movies that are about the super-natural, and as much as I really despise religion in real life, I like movies that depict it as something magical and powerful.

This movie, the Reaping, looked cool. Rivers of blood and lots of bugs and hints that it was the plagues returning.

But I had to just look up the title on IMDB through a search for Hilary Swank. Why, you may ask? Since I was in the theater looking at the preview?

Well, b/c half way through, the picture cut out. We were all hoping it was a temporary glitch - perhaps *that* preview. But then we heard a few more previews. HEARD a few more. The only one I could pick out certain voices from was a new Adam Sandler movie, about a man whose family died [I thought in a plane crash, but this blurb says a 9/11 plane crash].

I was hoping hoping hoping that it would switch to a different reel for the film itself. Or that the movie theater would respond to the 7-10 people from our audience who went out to complain and let them know what was going on.

But sure enough, as the screen remained black, Jack Nicholson's voice came over the speakers - and our movie was starting. Beloved told me -- they can't rewind these movies, we should go -- but I wanted to see. We'd been in another movie, once, where it got all fucked up, and they did in fact start it over. That was difficult for us today, though, b/c I was supposed to meet the ex at my house by 4 p.m. (although it's 4:31 right now, and he's not here, and he's not answering his phone). Finally, they turned on the lights in the projection room and someone started to look at it. They said no, they cannot rewind it at ALL, and all they could do was start it where they had turned it off (4 minutes in). I didn't want to miss the first 4 minutes of a movie that I'd been dying to see for a long time.

So we left.

There were some 50 or 60-something women sitting in front of us who beat us to the Customer Service desk, bitching up a storm, "you've wasted our time, we came all the way over here to see This. Movie., and we complained WELL before the movie started, and I want my money back AND a free pass!" The manager was all thrown off, saying "I just got here, I just got here." They said, "I don't care! You work here! You should make sure that when these things happen they get fixed IMMEDIATELY, not 20 minutes later when we've all missed the beginning to our movie!" He said, "okay, okay - you can have a refund and a free pass." I said, "I want that, too, but I want to use ONE of them to go see Pan's Labrynth, and it starts in 5 minutes, so please take care of it NOW."

I had happened to see that Pan's Labrynth was playing at 12:55, and we had really wanted to see that one, too. So he had me sign a paper, gave me tickets to Pan's Labrynth, and told me to come back for my refund after my movie.

We then got to see SOME previews. I didn't get to see The Reaping again, though. Damn.

And I really loved Pan's Labrynth. It didn't have the same oomph that Children of Men had, because Children of Men was what could happen in the future, if you follow one possible arc of the present down an extremely nasty path of destruction and misery. Pan's Labrynth clearly had one foot in the head of one person, and the other into a certain point of Spanish history. It was less threatening, on the whole, to the world I live in. Not so with Children of Men.

The child actress in Pan's Labrynth? SHE deserves and Oscar, in my opinion. Not that little girl from last night who spent 2/3s of the movie sitting in a van wearing headphones while SOME members of her family said interesting things and created a decent story.

So even though I was yet again prevented from seeing the movie that was #1 on my list, I saw a great movie that I wanted to see, and a third that was nominated for an Oscar.

I just went through Netflix to see what of the other nominees are available on DVD. Here's my list of rentals:

The Devil Wears Prada (Beloved is less than thrilled, but Meryl Streep is nominated, so he's relenting)
Half Nelson (I know nothing about this movie)
United 93 (I used to refuse to watch this -- I don't like shameless emotional manipulation ... but it was nominated)
The Black Dahlia Hilary Swank AND Scarlett? Yes, I'll watch this one.
The Prestige (I saw both these previews - Black Dahlia and this one, at the same time I saw the preview for The Departed, and I thought "wow, there are a LOT of good movies coming out!) Also - it, too, has Scarlett, and the added eye candy of Hugh Jackman. Mmmm, mmmm.

Everything else has yet to be released on DVD. I need to see:

THE DEPARTED (Jesus!! I mean, really!!) **
The Blood Diamond**
Babel **
The Queen **
Little Children (Kate Winslet is prettier than the woman in the book. I would have picked Catherine Keener, or someone else with dark hair, and who isn't ALWAYS beautiful.)
Dreamgirls (I sure as hell hope that an American Idol person doesn't win over the others - that's just not fair)
Volver (This would be on my list even if it weren't nominated) **
Notes on a Scandal
The Good Shepard
and I suppose Letters from Iwo Jima (can you hear it? The lack of enthusiasm for a war movie? A historical war movie? Ptooey.)

Somehow, I doubt I'll get to see them all before the Oscars on February 25th. Even if Beloved and I see a movie every night during the week that the girls are with their father, that's 5. My top 5 are starred.

Labels: movies

posted by Zuska @ 4:19 PM

1 Comments:

At Sunday, January 28, 2007 7:03:00 PM, LL said…

I too am somewhat obsessed with movie previews- if we miss them, I'd rather just wait until the next movie time. A few movie comments: I LOVED The Departed and The Prestige. My husband and I saw them a week apart and decided they were both the best movies we'd seen all year. United 93 was surprisingly good- I wasn't going to watch it, but my husband netflix'd it. It was very moving and didn't feel like a commercialization of a very tragic event. Dreamgirls was also phenomenal and my hubby grumbled about Devil Wears Prada and then really enjoyed it (as in, he didn't complain about it when it was over).

I hope you get to see your movies!