Reviewing the Situation
Unlike a lot of married couples around our age (I suspect), my wife and I have leisurely mornings after the school bus comes. Or at least leisurely enough for some conversation.
This is the upside to both of us being essentially self employed and working mainly from home. The downside, of course, is that sometimes we're broke. But we get to talk.
My wife's morning routine lately is to have Northwest Cable News on in the kitchen while she sits 30 feet away at the computer, reading newspapers and blogs, and maybe listening to Al Franken at the same time. She can do a lot of things at once.
Sometimes I hear her yell at the TV. She does this all the time.
So, a lot of our conversations have to do with the state of the world. She fills me in when I wander upstairs to get some more tea or to nibble on roast chicken, which is the way I usually break my fast. I'm a big fan of protein in the morning.
But I asked her a question the other morning, and it had nothing to do with politics or breaking news. It had to do with a dilemma I'd just encountered.
"Who do we possibly recommend this movie to?"
I also relax my grammar in the mornings.
I guess I watch an average of 6-8 hours of TV a week. which probably makes me an American minority, although nobody seems to be courting my vote or counting on my constituency. I just got out of the habit. It's not an ideology. There's a lot of junk out there, but there's also "Frontline" and "Nova" and "Biography" and The History Channel and The Discovery Channel and "Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast." I just don't do it a lot.
And what I watch, I usually rent. As I've mentioned here before, I've been a NetFlix member for three years or so. NetFlix, in my opinion, promotes personal responsibility. You pay your $20 a month and what you get is up to you. Me, I like to get my money's worth, which means 10 rentals a month at least if I can manage it. And some of these are specific, for specific members of my family. So 10 is really not that hard. I've done 20 before.
Here's an abbreviated list of rentals in the past month or so:
- Peter Pan (2003)
- American Splendor
- In America
- The Cooler
- Runaway Jury
- Calendar Girls
- Love Actually
- Swimming Pool
- House of Sand and Fog
- Scotland, PA
- Matchstick Men
- Ghost World
- A Boy and his Dog
- Catch-22
- Secondhand Lions
- The School of Rock
- Spellbound
I enjoyed them all, with varying amounts of enthusiasm, except for "Peter Pan," which only Julie and John watched but they said it was good. "Calendar Girls" and "Love Actually" were a little disappointing. "Runway Jury" and "The Cooler" have two of my favorite actors (Gene Hackman and William Macy, respectively) so that was fun, although "Cooler" is a better film. "Catch-22" I just skimmed through, listened to some of Mike Nichols' commentary, and watched Orson Welles walk through his part and make it shine; Heller's book has always been questionable in terms of morality, anyway, and it wasn't that great of a movie.
"House of Sand and Fog" was haunting. "Secondhand Lions" was family fun with three great actors (Michael Caine, Robert Duvall, and Haley Osmond). "The School of Rock" was just plain fun.
"American Splendor" was fascinating and odd, a novel film that breaks the fourth wall on purpose.
And I just loved "In America." Just loved it. Cried, even, a little. Rent this one.
The other night, though, John, Julie and I sat down to watch "The Triplets of Belleville." I coerced John by informing him it was unusual animation. Julie had already read about it.
This is part of what Roger Ebert had to say, as it pretty much relieves me of saying the same thing:
'The Triplets of Belleville" will have you walking out of the theater with a goofy damn grin on your face, wondering what just happened to you.
So, this is my dilemma. I had a goofy damn grin on my face, at the end, but I have no way of knowing whether you would. It is just about the oddest movie I've seen in many years, and the most bizarre, and the most wonderful. But mostly bizarre.
You can find plot summaries elsewhere, if you want. It was nominated for a couple of Academy Awards, which is something, I guess. It's about 80 minutes long. It's animated, and most of it has no dialogue. I can just say you've probably never seen anything like it.
There's nothing offensive, unless you're the type who finds offense easily. It's just a bizarre, lovely, sinister, thrilling, enthralling, unusual and confusing and ultimately delightful little film, although now I wonder about it a lot.
I can't recommend it. I can't. I wish disappointment on nobody. Life is hard enough without thinking you're going to enjoy something and finding out otherwise, all traced back to me and my stupid blog.
So I will just say this: At the end of the movie, as the credits rolled and the soundtrack blasted, we all danced. We danced alone, we danced together, we slapped our thighs and banged on walls and I whacked a pair of flip-flops together, and for a moment I even danced with my son, which is really weird.
And we all had these damn goofy grins on our faces. 
1:17:26 PM 
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