— पाँच हजार चार सौ चौहत्तर —
We had our biweeekly Action Movie Night last night, and we had an unusuall high turnout: ten! This was in large part due to two unusual attendees: a young man named Tom who I'm not sure I had ever seen before; and Rashid, who used to come a lot, recently moved to D.C., but was in town for only a day and happened to have time to swing by. He actually left in the middle of the movie, to go catch an 11 p.m. flight back home. After flying out just the night before. Yeesh.
I'm amazed he even made the time to come by and see us. But, he did talk about how much harder it is to make friends at his age, so I can see him wanting to connect with some old friends.
So who all was there, then? Tony, Jake, Ben, Ryan, Chris B, Derek, Tom, Rashid, Shobhit and myself.
It was Ben's pick this time. This guy has a relatively mixed history of choices, in my opinion. The last three have been bad movies, in my opinion, but in the past (before I started attending) he has picked great ones, including
Nightcrawler and
Sicario.
This week he chose the 1988 low budget science fiction thriller
The Live, which, to my recollection, I had never seen. Others in the group actually liked it, but I thought it was bottom-of-the-barrel among all movies ever chosen by anyone. To call this movie dumb would be giving it too much credit.
It wasn't boring, at least. And, at 94 minutes, it was barely more than half the run time of Shobhit's choice (
Awaara) two weeks ago. There was cursory talk about it at the potluck last night, and Chris seemed to think it was actually okay. I had mentioned from the IMDb trivia page for the movie last time that it was reportedly Chairman Mao's favorite movie, and Chris actually remembered that: "Chairman Mao's favorite movie? How could you go wrong?"
Either way, as I have already stated before, these biweekly gatherings are far more about the communal experience than about the movie anyway. A couple of other movies really tested my patience, but at least
The Live didn't do that. Nor did was it in the least bit scary. I don't think it was trying to be. It's more of a metaphor, albeit a wildly clumsy one.
— पाँच हजार चार सौ चौहत्तर —
— पाँच हजार चार सौ चौहत्तर —
Shobhit decided to make the dinner this time, cooking up packets of
Maggi noodles with fried tofu and a bunch of vegetables added. It proved pretty popular, actually.
I think I forgot to mention that at the last Action Movie Night potluck, I had stupidly set the glass lid for the casserole dish in which we brought the pasta I had made, on top of the empty insulated bag I had carried it down in. That bag was on a shelf about chest high, and I did not balance it carefully enough. I shouldn't have set it there at all. And, soon after my back was turned, it slid off and fell to the floor, shattering all over the place.
I have to take responsibility for that, and can't really blame Shobhit for it. But! With the movie choice being his, and all the stuff happening as people were arriving, Shobhit had me pulled in multiple directions at once, something he really likes to do and which drives me crazy. Had I been able to do just one thing at a time, I might have been more likely to take the time to make sure that stupid lid was in a more secure position.
Anyway, we debated whether to bring the Maggi in the same casserole dish this time, just with no lid. We opted for a large glass bowl instead, which we bought at the same Cal Anderson Park "yard sale" as the casserole dishes. It was very hot to hold, but we made it work. And we do have some tasty leftovers, which I will eat some of tonight with some peanut sauce mixed in. (Shobhit would never go for that, as he hates peanut butter or anything remotely like it, like peanut sauce. Even though he's fine with solid peanuts. Which he did add to the Maggi!)
That basically covers the entirety of the evening. I did a little bit more logging of movies on Letterboxd, and that's it. Shobhit immediately got skeptical, asked who owns it, was afraid it would be some security risk. I looked it up and they appear to be independently operated and based on Auckland, New Zealand, with some staff in
a few U.S. cities.
— पाँच हजार चार सौ चौहत्तर —
[posted 12:33 pm]
