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I had minimal socializing over the weekend to a truly unusual degree. I did go next door to Alexia's for our latest installment of our "Harrison Ford-athon," the 1995 remake of
Sabrina. I enjoyed it way more than I expected to, and found it lovely, but then discovered the original, from 1954, starred Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn. We then agreed that we will take a break from Harrison Ford-athon for our next movie, and watch that one. It's bound to be way better.
That was it for hanging out with friends this weekend. I did text Tracy to see if she'd be up for hanging out Saturday, but evidenlty the answer was no, because I never heard back. It was also a rare weekend with no plans with Laney. Furthermore, Shobhit not only worked all three days, but took an extra shift on Saturday and worked an extra couple of hours yesterday. He worked 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday, and yesterday worked 8:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Plus, there were no movies for me to go see either. The only time I left the condo on Saturday was to walk to the Central District PCC and get some cat food. The only time I left the condo yesterday was to take the recycling out, and pick up Saturday's mail.
The net result of all of this, actually, was an unusually relaxing weekend for me. I quite enjoyed it. It was like a weekend "staycation."
That said, I suppose it could be said there was still a "notable event" on Saturday. I had the whole day free, so I decided I would finally sit down and watch the French film that had surprisingly taken the top spot in the 2022 Sight and Sound poll of the best films of all time:
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. It happens to be streaming on HBO Max, almost certainly because of that list pushing the film back into film consciousness.
I already knew it was incredibly long, and that it was almost entirely just a woman going about her daily routine. The film certainly delivered on these promises. I can check it off my list now. I texted Gabriel that I watched it, and that if I never see it again, I'll be fine with that.
Cizien Kane is wildly entertaining compared to this movie. (Honestly,
Citizen Kane is more entertaining—or at least engaging—than you might expect.) This was absolutely a "homework" movie watch.
I wanted to write up something about it for my recent burst of activity
on Letterboxd—exactly the same thing I wrote in the introductory paragraphs to
the blog post I shared on Saturday, after the movie was over. I then proceeded to share the very review I had written for Letterbox, having surprised myself by writing as much as any standard movie review I write. I shared it in this feed and not the movie review feed, though, because it was really more of my thoughts on something I did that day, rather than a review of a current theatrical release or new film release.
I wrote that entire review while the movie was still playing. Trust me, I didn't miss out on anything by doing so. Well, except there was a couple of times when I rewound to see how I actually managed to miss something, like her son suddenly being out of bed. I used the remote to backtrack a couple of minutes, literally thinking to myself,
I can't believe I'm doing this.
At this point, let's say, I have mixed feelings about the film. I understand why critics voted for it, but I also find myself actively resisting agreeing with them just because a bunch of other people declared it. My opinion is that "the best film of all time" should embody everything about what film is supposed to be. A film that is by design not in the least bit fun does not fit that mold. People are propping this film up because of all the filmmaking conventions it pointedly rejects. I think there should be more to it than that.
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The other thing I did to fill my time over the weekend was start working on my "2023 in Ten Minutes" video. That may seem odd, given that I still have a quarter of the year left to live through, but I want to follow the same approach I did with "2020 in Ten Minutes"—giving significant time to the trip to Australia. In 2020, I alotted four of the ten minutes to Australia, and am doing the same this time around.
In 2020, there's roughly thirty seconds of the year prior to the trip to Australia covered, so I did that this time too. So, the Australia portion should end at about 4:30. After adding tons of photos and video clips, which at first had the full run time at 24 minutes, I have so far whittled it down to Australia ending at 6:30. I'm at a painful part now where I really want all of this stuff included, but have to sacrifice beloved clips for the sake of the rest of the year. I still need to cut another two minutes out.
I also need to start working on the 2024 calendars soon, and haven't yet done that. I spent a little time over the weekend reading books, though not a lot; I remain on track with the 15 pages per day on the Book Club selection.
After Shobhit home home from work last night, I had made macaroni & cheese at his suggestion, with tomato, bell pepper and chopped veggie chicken added. I also made us hot chocolate. We had to call Xfinity because the current
Winning Time episode on Max kept giving an error and not playing. They rebooted the box and that seemed to help, until it didn't. I mirrored the screen from the app on my phone using the Apple TV box, and that worked fine. Shobhit suggested I check again about halfway through the episode, and that time the Xfinity box app finally worked and played the episode.
—Which, by the way, was the finale of a strangely numbered seven-episode second season, to a show that's been canceled so there also won't be any more seasons. I don't know any of this history so I had no idea whether the L.A. Lakers won the championship in 1984, making it perfectly suspenseful to me—and then a surprise when, it turned out, they lost. What a bizarrely downbeat way to end a series. There's a sort of postscript of what eventually became of all the major characters (and real people) that touched on more positive things that happened later, but none of that was part of the drama of the actual show. Very strange. Gabriel, who had spent a lot of time trying to get me to watch the first season until I finally did, texted me to say essentially the same thing.
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[posted 12:32 pm]
