Last December, D. and I went to see Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol in IMAX just so D. could see the first six minutes of the new Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises. A few nights before that at 10 pm., D. had gone to the same IMAX theatre at the Scotiabank movie theatre in downtown Montreal to watch just the first six minutes, and then get up and leave. He told me there were people dressed up as Batman, people dressed up as the Joker, and someone dressed as Robin - all for six minutes. D. is so into the director Christopher Nolan that seeing the first six minutes of the Dark Knight Rises was worth seeing twice. (Unsurprisingly, D. obviously went to the midnight show of Batman when it opened last week, and then we saw it on Friday night, and then he saw it again with his brothers on Sunday. That's 3 times in 3 days.)
I like that kind of devotion. I like people who love directors and certain movies so much they have to see the first six minutes, or they have to go to the midnight showing the day (or rather the night before) it opens. I like people who dress up as Batman (or as pirates which L. told me she and her friends did in a movie theatre in Dallas when Pirates of the Caribbean came out 9 years ago). I like people like N. who could always be counted on to see the Harry Potter movies at the midnight showing, and who saw Serenity at midnight too. We crossed paths in front of a movie theatre on Shattuck in Berkeley in March 2006 when N. was lining up to get in to the theatre on the opening night of V for Vendetta. I was super embarrassed that I was leaving the theatre at this point, having just seen Failure to Launch. (For the record: I have a weakness for Matthew McConaughey which is why I saw that movie, but I am the first to admit that it was a bad movie. I also saw Ghosts of Girlfriends Past in theatres for the same reason, and had the same disappointed reaction.)
I love going to the movies, and I wish I could go more. I always love winter vacation because, especially in high school and during university, I would go see so many movies. But I don't have the same passion for the movies that I have for other things, like books for example. And some people, like my brother, think my taste in movies is appallingly bad. I do like seeing cheesy movies, that's true. But I think it ties in to how for me, movies are mostly just fun and entertainment, whereas reading for me is about more than that. As an example of my relationship with movies, the last movie I can remember being really really excited for - to the extent that I went to see it on opening night with A., E. and L. way back in June 2002 - was the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, and that was because I had loved the book so much!! Sadly it wasn't even that good.
Every once in a while, however, I'll find a movie that I love. Most recently those movies have been Whip It which Drew Barrymore directed and which is so good. It did really badly in theatres and I don't know why because it's so good! I wish Drew Barrymore would direct another movie but I worry she won't because Whip It made so little money. If you haven't seen it, you should rent it. I saw it in theatres, and then I watched it twice in a row on a plane ride. I watched it once, contemplated watching a different movie for about half a second, and then pressed the screen to re-watch Whip It. The other most recent movie I loved so much was The Lives of Others. This is another movie that if you haven't seen it, you must. I first saw it in Paris in March 2007. It moved me so much that I happily went to see it again with N. 2 months later when he was visiting Paris and staying with me for 6 days. Both times I was seeing a German movie with French subtitles and was curious to see if I'd find the movie any different if I watched it with English subtitles. S. and I rented it once and I actually think I preferred the French subtitles. Maybe just because I felt like some of the English translations seemed different than what I remembered reading in French. That movie was especially intriguing to me because I am fascinated by the history of the Eastern bloc, and much of the movie is set in 1984, the year I was born.
Another movie related thing I like is seeing two movies in one day. I've done it at home a few times - gone to see a movie in the afternoon with a friend, and then another movie that night with my parents. Sometimes it's just good to make it a movie day and watch more than one. On a June Friday in Paris, I had the day off from work and decided to go see one movie which started at 10 am and another that started at 3 pm both alone. I went to more movies alone those first six months of 2007 that I lived in Paris than I ever had before or ever have since. In fact, I'm not sure I've been to a movie alone since I came back from Paris. But I can think of 5 right now that I saw alone, and there were likely a few more thrown in there too. Paris in general is one of the best cities for movie going in the world. (Another great city for movies, unsurprisingly, is LA. S. and I especially like the Arclight Cinema in Hollywood.) There are hundreds of movie theatres there (see picture below), and they show a wide variety of French, European and Hollywood movies. Plus, movies start as early as 9 am there while in Toronto, I feel like the earliest movies start is 11:30 am. They should start earlier!
This post has really been about going to the movies but I have to just quickly say that renting movies is pretty great too. S. and D. are tied for my favourite people to watch rented movies with (and it's not just because I've watched the most movies with one or the other of them.) While there is definitely something special and fun about going to the movies and watching a movie on the big screen, there is something equally special about watching a movie at home on my laptop from the comfort of my bed. Since we graduated Berkeley and stopped living in the same place, S. and I have spent many subsequent visits in Salt Lake City, LA, Moab, and Mont Tremblant lying on comfortable beds or couches watching movie after movie (there's always so many to watch and we never can choose just one!). Our movie watching marathons started in November 2007 when I visited S. in Salt Lake City. I missed her so much, didn't like Austin, and didn't want to go back there early Monday morning. On Sunday we woke up to lots of rain. I needed to watch The Battle of Algiers for a class I was taking and S. said she'd watch it again. I had rented it and brought it with me before leaving but given the terrible weather, we thought it'd be fun to rent some other movies too. So we braved the rain, drove to Blockbuster, rented 13 Going on 30 and Center Stage and bought some chocolate at the drug store next door. We then spent the whole day on her bed next to the window with the rain incessantly falling outside but us warm and cozy inside watching 3 movies in a row and eating lots of chocolate. I could have stayed like that for at least a week :)
To close, watching movies is always fun, whether at home or in theatres. I also like that you can go to a movie in different countries and cities all around the world and the experience is usually going to be pretty similar. So yeah for movies, and let's hope I find a new one to love so much I want to see it in theatres and/or on planes multiple times soon!
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