— पाँच हजार सात सौ चवालीस —
I just love
Letterboxd.com so, so much. Gabriel first brought it to my attention what seems like ages ago, and I didn't really engage or connect with it then, I think because I had this idea that my review blog already provided all the records and organization of the movies I watch that I needed. Oh, those innocent times! Now that I have logged nearly every movie I have watched—not just reviewed (what my blog is limited to), but
watched—in the past 20+ years and then some, Letterboxd is easly the most valuable resource for my own movie watching history that I have ever come across. Even when it comes to my own reviews, which I link to every time I got it on Letterboxd, it's there that I can find the link the most quickly.
And there is so much more that Letterboxd does for me. If this website ever goes tits up I am really going to be devastated. Consider this: I can filter just to
January 2025 and thus view every movie I have watched this month alone. As of today, there are 22 films I have watched this month—that includes theatrical releases, rewatches, movies watched at home, movies watched with friends in the Braeburn Condos theater downstairs. Today is the 27th, so that's an average of one movie every 1.23 days. I couldn't even tell you yet what the number will be by the end of this month, which is on Thursday this week: it was just established this morning that I will go see
Babygirl again tomorrow night, this time with Tracy, who has not seen it but really wants to. Shobhit's going to join us. My evenings are currently open both Wednesday and Thursday and I have no idea if I'll watch any films then, though I suspect I'll be more likely to watch season 2 of
Squid Game on Netflix, which Shobhit and I watched the first episode of last night.
Anyway. How about we narrow this down to just the past week, seven days ending yesterday? I watched 8 movies within that 7-day period. Four of those were in the theater; two of
those were on the same day, Saturday over the weekend. Five of them were with people who will thus get a Social Review point, though only four of
those were from the past weekend alone, which is what I am really here to update you on right now.
— पाँच हजार सात सौ चवालीस —
I will now try to run through all that social activity, as quickly as I can.
I left work half an hour early on Friday so I could meet Laney at Pacific Place downtown for the 4:30 showing of
Presence, the new haunted house movie from Steven Soderbergh, shot from the point of view of the ghost. Solid B movie, which I think Laney and I were aligned on; there were things about it we both liked a lot, but other things that made little sense. We walked back up Capitol Hill together after that.
— पाँच हजार सात सौ चवालीस —
Saturday morning, giving Shobhit his opportunity to get a Social Review point for that day, he walked with me down to the Seattle Waterfront to attend a civic event I really wanted to see: "Celebrating New Permanent Artwork on Seattle's Waterfront." I had asked Laney earlier if she'd want to join me for this, and this was well before I knew the two of us would have a packed day of stuff later. She later told me she was stuck by how early I was out and about when she was still at home having her morning coffee.
The event was at 11:00 a.m., mind you, so not exactly super early. That said, Shobhit and I did leave home a full hour before that, giving us time to meander through Pike Place Market on our way there, and then get to the waterfront via the Overlook Walk. I slept in later than usual that day, out of bed not long before 8 a.m., and I got up and started getting ready almost immediately. I broke just before getting in the shower to have the French toast Shobhit made us for breakfast that day, which was delicious.
My point is: my Saturday was indeed super busy, from basically the time I got out of bed until I was going to bed again that night.
And, I was really glad to have gone to the art unveiling event, as I am deeply emotionally invested in the revitalization of the Seattle Waterfront. We were not there for the entire event but for most of it, and I took 19 photos, justifying a
dedicated photo album on Flickr, which I also added to my "
Seattle Waterfront Revitalization 2019-2025" collection of albums, mostly focused on the years since 2019 but with some content regarding the now-demolished Alaskan Way Viaduct dating as far back as 2005.
I got mostly very positive responses when I posted to my socials about the event, although there was a minor amount of predictable outrage from White liberals about the "irony" of placing this art on occupied Indigenous land—as if they are not also living on said land, and ignoring the fact that the art was carved by an Indigenous woman. I did make a mistake due to a typo and misidentify the artist as "Squamish" when she was actually (and what I meant to type to begin with)
Suquamish; I added a reply on Threads with the correction but one woman, who had noted the error to begin with, found was very hostile in her expression of dissatisfaction with my not simply deleting my original post and re-posting it. I found her so annoying that I muted her; I have no idea if she responded again because I received no more notifications and I have no intention of checking. I would reconsider the way I dealt with this if I received feedback from an Indigenous person or persons, but I quickly lose patience with White people who feel they can speak with authority
for people of color. (Because both Facebook and Instagram actually have this capability, I did edit the original posts there with the correction.)
Shobhit and I had walked down there, but he wanted to take the RapidRide G line back home. I chose not to say anything, but I constantly get a kick out of how he openly resents the restriction of lanes on Madison for this bus line, but when he's actually walking and needs a bus back home, he sure does love making use of the great service that new RapidRide line actually is for non-drivers.
— पाँच हजार सात सौ चवालीस —
— पाँच हजार सात सौ चवालीस —
The rest of Saturday, Laney and I went to two different theaters to see two different movies on the same day—a very rare thing but it was all that schedules would allow at that point. The first film was in the U District, so we met at 1:00 at the Capitol Hill Light Rail station—fairly shortly after Shobhit and I had gotten home from the waterfront.
We arrived at U District Station in plenty of time to see the film
September 5 at the AMC 10. We both quite liked it a lot. There was a real "Finally!" quality to finally getting to see this particular film, which we had been sitting through the trailer for, over and over, as far back as
September. We were first told it was opening in November, though I knew it was the kind of film that might get a separate local release date in its limited release schedule. It was later pushed to a November limited release and going wide in December. I couldn't tell you how many times I checked AMC and other theater schedules for this movie over the course of the fall—only for it to get its expanded release in January. But not only that, AMC had
published showtimes for the weekend of January 17, and Laney even booked the seats for us—only for them alert her they had been canceled. It was re-scheduled for this past weekend, and only then were were finally able to go see this damned movie.
There was a fairly similar experience with
Nickel Boys, the now-Best-Picture-nominee that we had been seeing trailers for, for months, and again, I checked week after week for showtimes and saw none. I was getting to the point of assuming we would never even get a local release of this film and I would just have to wait until it was streaming on Prime Video (as an MGM film, Amazon owns it). But, almost on a lark, I checked for showtimes again last week, and discovered it was actually playing!
But, here was the rub, on two fronts: it was not playing at any AMC theaters in Seattle, only at the Regal Meridian 16 down by the Convention Center (a block south of AMC Pacific Place). Plus, the showtimes generally sucked, and I did not want to have to see a showtime at 6:05 on Thursday last week which would have meant getting home close to 9 p.m., and the weekday showings this week are
only at 3:40. I could make 6:05 work on
Saturday night, though, so I emailed Laney about it, assuming she would not want to both pay extra at a non-AMC theater and have to see two movies in one day, but it turned out she was just as eager to see this film as I was, and so we made a plan not only to see both movies, but to go to an extra Happy Hour between them, rather than going home only to turn right around and leave again.
So, we chose
Alder & Ash, the place with a $10 Happy Hour menu that we discovered a few weeks ago on the corner of 7th and Pine, and previously had scheduled in November, otherwise the soonest we could schedule it. The options were fairly limited, especially for vegetarians—I had two food options—but the bruschetta was so delicious, in the end I decided it was worth it. Also, their Happy Hour menu online had a mai tai on it, which was what I really wanted, but in person the menu was changed, and I had to settle for a "fall sangria," which was all right: it was not at all sweet, mixing wine and cherry brandy with cinnamon, so it had strong notes of both cherry and cinnamon. It wasn't my favorite, but I still kind of liked it. Laney had the "Mini Fish and Chips," and we were both so impressed with the food we said we'd come back sometime and explore the regular menu. We'll see about that, though.
We had to take Light Rail back downtown from the U District to get there, and then we had only to walk across the street to the Regal Cinema to see
Nickel Boys—and, honestly, it was not as great as I expected or wanted it to be. Don't get me wrong, it has a ton of things to recommend it, but I stand by the (apparently minority) idea that its ample artistic abstractions obscures the essentia (and horrible) American story it's telling. More than anything, I just struggled to get used to the first-person cinematography, an issue only exacerbated by its stylistic and nonlinear editing. I get the idea that it was meant to evoke memory more than strict experience, but it was still a stylistic choice that didn't work for me. A lot of my complaints are minor, but there are also a lot
of them, which cumulatively creates a bigger issue on the whole.
Laney seemed relatively aligned with me on this. In any case, I gave it a solid B, which is definitively lower than I expected, especially for a movie with a whopping rating of 91 on MetaCritic.
— पाँच हजार सात सौ चवालीस —
Saturday was so packed full, I had to split the movie reviews I wrote between Satursday night and Sunday morning, even though I had seen both movies on Saturday. As soon as I got home, I wrote the review for
September 5 first, and shared that to my socials at 10:27 p.m. I was just too tired at that point to go right into writing a second reciew, and I was in bed shortly thereafter. Shobhit did not come to the movies that day, or even join us at Happy Hour, as he was at a different social event, which he took a very deliciius homemade salsa to.
He did join for the movie I watched on Sunday, though, this time with Alexia. This was originally scheduled to be a double feature of the Tim Burton films
Batman and
Batman Returns, but she is so busy taking care of the last of her late mother's things from storage that she asked to cancel. When I couldn't find any other friends to take her place in the Braeburn Condos theater reservation, she compromised and came for just one movie. So, I sent her four movie ideas as alternatives, and she chose
Thelma, a really delightful film from last year.
The three of us had gathered in the Braeburn theater at noon, and I could not get my laptop to connect to the Xfinity wifi hotspot as usual. Then, I finally managed that, only for the fucking projector in the theater to refuse to work. I tried and tried to get it to work—the sound worked fine by this point—until finally giving up and we all just want up to the condo to watch it. So much for not wasting the theater reservation!
But, it was fine. We drew the blinds, and both Alexia and Shobhit were just as entertained by the film as I expected and wanted them to be. We visited for a little while, and then Alexia left, talking about having us come to Issaquah sometime to try one of the Indian restaurants over there.
I still haven't even mentioned
all of the movies I watched over the weekend—because on Friday night, after finishing my review of
Presence, I sat with Shobhit while he watched his SAG Awards screener of
Wicked. Shobhit wound up complaining of it being too long and slow; I agree that it's way too long, but I never found it to be slow. In fact, I was impressed by how engaging it was
for a movie that lasted two hours and forty minutes. I still think it's a little much to adapt only Act 1 of the stage musical and make it mere minutes shorter than the entire show, including the intermission. That seems a little nuts, but, whatever.
Shobhit has otherwise been burning through his screeners while I'm at work or at other things. We might have watched another movie last night, but I had forgotten that I had put my Netflix account on hold for one month rather than actually canceling it, so it actually reactivated on the 24th. So, we started
Squid Game 2 last night. That first episode actually was pretty gripping, even though I still hate watching foreign shows overdubbed in English rather than just reading the subtitles. But, I let it go because Shobhit prefers it. He sure loves to say "I sacrifice," but what about when
I sacrifice! Like right here!
— पाँच हजार सात सौ चवालीस —
[posted 12:30pm]
