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We had our biweekly Action Movie Night in the Braeburn Condos last night, now the sixth that I have attended (seventh if you count the one time we went in 2017)—fifth for Shobhit, as he missed the last one while he was in India. He didn't miss much on that one anyway.
It was also by far the least-attended among those we've gone to so far this year: six people. I even remember all their names! Besides Shobhit and myself, there were Joe, Derek, Chris and Jesse. Jesse was the one who chose the movie this week, surprised by Tony's announcement via email on Sunday that it was his turn to pick. It was his 10th time since joining the group, and he hadn't expected to be chosen to pick that soon any more than I had—with peak attendance of 14, I figured I'd have to come at least 14 times before I got to pick. But, to my genuine shock, Tony also noted I was the backup in case Jesse could not make it, and on
the full movie history, I'm already noted to be the chooser
next time—only the 7th time I've come. I truly thought it would be early next year before I got to pick, but I get the feeling Tony is a little more arbitrary with these anointments than I thought, and doesn't necessarily have everyone waiting a full cycle of everyone else choosing first.
It should be noted, also, that not only was this maybe only the third time in history that Tony himself did not make it (apparently there was a death in his family and he was out of town as a result), but something like two other friends of his who have been coming from the beginning, since before they opened it up to the whole condo complex, also did not make it. One wrote to the email list that his wife and son had come down with a cold and although he hadn't come down with anything yet he didn't want to risk spreading it, which was considerate (not to mention, I began to realize, probably a factor in these gatherings being smaller over the fall and winter months than they had been over the summer). Another guy, the second of two Chrises, wrote in to say he just got married last weekend and is too busy with related events this week to make it. A third also said he was out of town; another said he wouldn’t make it. Several never even chimed in.
In Tony's initial email, he had written,
The resident residents Joe/Derek/Matthew, will be in charge. Make me proud! So, I made sure all the dishes used were either washed or put away or in the dishwasher before we all left at the end of the evening.
I was much relieved when Shobhit and I got down there and discovered Jesse, who had not emailed any confirmation, was there with a chosen movie. I have a specific movie in mind for my first choice but it is unavailable streaming or even VOD right now, so it was too short of notice for me to get my hands on it—I have the DVD on hold at the library, but I may just see if I can find it cheap to buy at a store on Capitol Hill—and I didn't want my first choice to be forced as an alternate movie I didn't really want to be my first. Also, I really wanted at least Tony to be there when I chose for the first time.
Jesse was very nervous about how well his choice would go down, and actually commented on how the low turnout this week took some of the pressure off: if people hated it, at least not as many people would. There was nothing to hate, really; he chose the 2018 movie
Den of Thieves, starring Gerard Butler, making it the fifth out of six movies this year at Action Movie Night that I had actually never seen before. The movie itself was . . . fine. Way too long, but the plot picked up significantly in the second half and kept me engaged after that.
The real problem was, I think, Jesse's laptop, which he had used to connect to the theater with an HDMI cord so he could play the movie from Netflix. This is how most people seem to be doing it, but the wifi signal down there is weak, and I will endeavor always to make my choices from physical hardware: a DVD or Blu-Ray.
The weak signal causing pauses for buffering were far fewer, however, than Jesse's laptop regularly going to black on the screen, which did the same to the movie screen. All told, although the sound went out, I'd say we actually
saw 90% of the movie, if that. That may sound like a lot, but bear in mind the blackout frequency was very random, and it became a lot more frequent toward the end of the movie; we probably got to see the visuals of maybe three quarters of the last half hour or so. Jesse kept trying to fix it, and then I guess he sort of gave up. Only Shobhit or I seemed clearly annoyed by this; I found it crazy making. I was especially annoyed by it during the climax of the movie because it meant there were potentially crucial visual moments we were going to miss. Never had we seen a movie with so many technical difficulties.
Jesse does use an Mac laptop, and I have no idea if that was part of the issue, compatibility or anything of that nature. It seems perhaps notable that it was the first OS that was recognizably from Apple, though.
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The food we brought last night—and we always bring food rather than drinks, just to be sure we have at least one vegetarian option to eat—was actually, for the first time, made entirely by me: pasta. To Shobhit's credit, past was his idea. Plus, he did dump the entirely of the rest of our small bucket of feta cheese into the sauce. It must have bee a third of the container still left and I thought it was way too much to dump in there. But, we'd had the feta in the refrigerator for quite a while already, and I had to admit later it was clearly a big factor in how delicious the pasta was in the end, and everyone who had some complimented it.
When it comes to the food, the low turnout last night is really the only reason there was enough leftovers after the movie for me to put into three lunch containers for work. The pasta I used was a 16oz bag of fusilli, the spiral kind, one of my favorites for how well it grabs the sauce around it.
I did my hybrid walk/transit commute home from work, having learned that I can barely catch a Monorail without having to wait another ten minutes so long as I leave the office by 4:25, then walk to Seattle Center, which is a 0.7 mile walk. I then take the Monorail to Westlake Station, where I take the elevator down to the Light Rail station—I often barely miss a Monorail in this case, but yesterday I barely caught one just pulling in, so once I walked the half-mile home from Capitol Hill Station, I was actually home by about 5:05, giving me more than plenty of time to make dinner before the Action Movie Night scheduled for 6:30.
Shobhit didn't get off work until 5:00, and then he was delayed getting out of his work shopping area by a car accident in an intersection at 15th Avenue. I was just about done with the pasta by the time he got home. He made himself a martini, and when I was washing dishes I dumped out the extra martini he had in another glass because I thought it was water. I should have asked him first, and I felt bad about it, but less bad as he went out of his way to mention more than once down in the community kitchen that I had thrown out his cocktail. What he sought to get out of behaving that way, I don't know. If it was just to annoy me, it worked. Much like his going out of his way to comment on a hot man on the movie screen, as if this gathering of straight men would care. That one probably should not have embarrassed me as much as it did; any average straight guy might quite comfortably make the same kind of observation about a woman if the roles were reversed.
I'm actually kind of surprised Shobhit didn't fall asleep during the movie. A couple of times it sounded like he was snoring quietly, but when I looked over his eyes were open.
The Action Movie Night's full history is littered with a lot of great titles, but on average the movies chosen since we starting coming, in my opinion, have held steady at an average level of mediocrity. The one thing that I'll give due credit for impressing me, at least in a sense, is that all but one of them have so far been movies I've never seen—kind of surprising given the vast number of movies I see every year. That said, this group on average seems to have pretty populist tastes for fundamentally unchallenging movies. Not to say that these movies have any obligation to be challenging, but I would prefer they at least managed to stand out in some way, and so far these recent ones haven't, really. A few of them have been surprisingly lacking in actual
action, although that's been established as not an absolute requirement; the history reveals that they veer into horror or mystery or thriller or crime as well. My first choice, assuming I can manage the title I want, however, will fit firmly in the "action" category.
If nothing else, and this is really what keeps me coming back, there's something to be said for the communal movie-watching experience, regardless of the quality of the movie. On weeks with peak attendance there are often more people at these movie-watch nights than there are at a lot of the movies I go to in regular theaters. And at least these guys I'm slowly getting to know, and eating and visiting with before each movie. It's nice.
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[posted 12:38 pm]
