reminisucks
I decided I wanted to go see a movie yesterday, and with no better option available among the films in theaters that I had not already seen, I went to see Reminiscence. I fully did not expect it to be great, knowing that it was getting very mixed reviews, but I found the concept compelling and thought it might at the very least have nice visuals. Instead, it proved notably worse than I expected.
I mean, I gave it a solid C; it could have been way worse. It's rare that I give a film a worse grade than that; it kind of has to actively anger me in its badness. This one was more, kind of, dull. But it also contained a lot of detail choices I found distracting in their lack of logic.
But, Shobhit had his Project Management class—even had a pretty significant presentation to take part in, for which he actually dressed up—and this gave me something with which to fill my evening. I rode straight there after work—okay, with a slight detour to the downtown Central Library—to see the 4:50 showing. I think there were only three other people in there with me.
I wondered how much that had to do with just the showtime, but this movie is doing abysmally at the box office, even within the context over overall lower box office due to the ongoing pandemic. As in, it opened last weekend and ranked #9 in the weekend box office. Even Respect did better, ranking at #5, in its second weekend. This is a movie with a $68 million budget, and so far it's earned $1.95 million domestically and $4.55 million worldwide. Yikes. I think that genuinely qualifies as a flop.
I rode my bike the rest of the way home afterward, and proceeded to write the review, taking a break for some lentil and frozen (but fried) parathas Shobhit made for dinner. He was clearly kind of irritated that I did not also have some of the other vegetable dish he made, but I am content with just one vegetable dish for my dinner, and I chose the lentil with some rice. For what it's worth, it was quite tasty.
I only saw Ivan briefly, as he was out somewhere when I got back, and he returned while I was writing and then was soon off to work again. I think he had some of what Shobhit made for dinner, though, as Shobhit often shares when he makes a high-volume dinner. I'm thinking we should make a more conventional pasta again soon, as I have countless veggie ground samples from work at home and need to start burning through them. One is in the refrigerator only because there's no room left in the freezer after our grocery shopping last weekend.
In other news, Valerie still hasn't watched the video tribute to Auntie Rose that I sent her, but she did text me an acknowledgment of the email I wrote her, and said she would wait to watch the video until this weekend "when I can give it the presence it needs." I wonder what she does on a day to day basis otherwise? My understanding is she hasn't had a conventional job since she left Microsoft in the nineties, and the house she lives in now is something I would bet a million dollars she and her family have never thought of as "a mansion" but, by my standards it's not far from it. That doesn't mean she doesn't get busy, though; that's not what I'm suggesting at all—only that I have no idea what she does. She clearly put a lot of time into the virtual aspects of her mom's memorial that is now slated for October 2.
In her text she also sent me a link to this annual event in Port Townsend called "The Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Race," which, pandemic restrictions depending, are slated to happen that same day. It does sound interesting, and if Shobhit and I made a day of it in Port Townsend that day, we can check out the parade that happens at noon, well before the 2 p.m. scheduled timing of the memorial.
All that aside, it's getting pretty frustrating constantly having no real sense of where the pandemic is going, and furthermore knowing the reasons lay entirely at the feet of Americans who are either too ignorant or too lazy to get vaccinated. A few weeks ago there were all these predictions of this Delta variant surge peaking in mid-September, but always with the caveat of the lead-in to the fall season likely complicating whatever drop there might be thereafter. But today we've got Dr. Fauci saying we won't see anything approaching to the end of the pandemic now until spring 2022—and that's an optimistic estimate, contingent on more people getting vaccinated.
I am so sick of living in a country full of people making an active, conscious choice to be morons.
[posted 12:24 pm]