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Susan and I met for lunch at the Begum Palace, an Indian restaurant in... you know, I'm not actually sure which side of the Madison/Chatham border it's on; the towns pretty much blur into each other, as is common in the greater NYC metro area, and I am shockingly bad with the geography of the place I spent the first eighteen years of my life. :-/ Anyway, the Begum Palace puts on a good buffet, so that was fun.
After that we headed to her place and then my parents' house (to brush our teeth and see each others' dresses), and then drove out to the East Hannover theater to see The Eagle, which I enjoyed a lot. It's not the deepest movie in the world, but it's quite well done for what it is. You can tell that it's mostly made with real actors out in real rain and mud, actually getting wet and dirty, which counts for a lot in my book. I think they may even have built an actual replica Roman fort for the early battle scenes. (Presumably they reserved their CGI for things like reconstructing a stretch of Hadrian's Wall, which was done quite convincingly.) Furthermore, there is some attempt made at showing how all parties in the various battles have good and bad points -- I love conflicts that aren't straight black-and-white, so that is a massive plus for me.
There are only two things that really bug me. 1) There is a complete lack of explanation for the appearance of some significant plot device characters near the end of the movie -- I mean, I can handwave the business, but I shouldn't need to handwave something that relevant to the story. That's bad writing. 2) Where are the women? Much is made of the father issues Marcus and Esca share, but while Esca briefly tells us of his mother's fate, I have no idea what happened to Marcus's mother... and given that his father died in disgrace when Marcus was somewhere between five and seven years old, his mother must have been the one who raised him and instilled Roman values in him. So why is she Ms. Not Appearing in This Movie? She should at least be mentioned once or twice! Bah.
I am now interested in reading the book the movie is based on -- Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle of the Ninth -- to see if she does better on those two annoying points, and also to see what was inevitably cut during the adaptation process.
After the movie, I dropped Susan off at her place and went back to my parents' house to eat a snack, shave my legs, and otherwise get ready for the reunion, which started at 7pm in the Madison Hotel. I arrived around 7:15 and was the first person there besides the people who'd arranged it, which was slightly awkward for a few minutes. Fortunately a bunch of other people arrived by 7:30.
My graduating class was, IIRC, about 125 people. I think maybe twenty or thirty showed up at the reunion -- some were busy, some lived too far away, and there was also apparently drama on Facebook wherein a couple people said things to the effect of, "Are THESE the only people attending? Well then, count me out!" because, you know, there's no point going to a reunion if the 'cool' people won't be there. To which one of the arrangers responded, more or less, "What are you, thirteen?" and ignored them, because some of us have grown up since high school.
I am glad I went. I had a good time catching up with people I haven't seen or heard from in years -- even if I did use Facebook more than the absolute minimum I do now (which is basically maintaining a small signal flag to both show that I'm not dead and give people a way to find me if absolutely necessary), Facebook doesn't provide the depth of interaction that a true meeting and conversation can. (Also, the hors d'oeuvres and the little buffet dishes were quite tasty. *grin*)
And now to bed, since I have promised to take my dad to church tomorrow morning.
After that we headed to her place and then my parents' house (to brush our teeth and see each others' dresses), and then drove out to the East Hannover theater to see The Eagle, which I enjoyed a lot. It's not the deepest movie in the world, but it's quite well done for what it is. You can tell that it's mostly made with real actors out in real rain and mud, actually getting wet and dirty, which counts for a lot in my book. I think they may even have built an actual replica Roman fort for the early battle scenes. (Presumably they reserved their CGI for things like reconstructing a stretch of Hadrian's Wall, which was done quite convincingly.) Furthermore, there is some attempt made at showing how all parties in the various battles have good and bad points -- I love conflicts that aren't straight black-and-white, so that is a massive plus for me.
There are only two things that really bug me. 1) There is a complete lack of explanation for the appearance of some significant plot device characters near the end of the movie -- I mean, I can handwave the business, but I shouldn't need to handwave something that relevant to the story. That's bad writing. 2) Where are the women? Much is made of the father issues Marcus and Esca share, but while Esca briefly tells us of his mother's fate, I have no idea what happened to Marcus's mother... and given that his father died in disgrace when Marcus was somewhere between five and seven years old, his mother must have been the one who raised him and instilled Roman values in him. So why is she Ms. Not Appearing in This Movie? She should at least be mentioned once or twice! Bah.
I am now interested in reading the book the movie is based on -- Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle of the Ninth -- to see if she does better on those two annoying points, and also to see what was inevitably cut during the adaptation process.
After the movie, I dropped Susan off at her place and went back to my parents' house to eat a snack, shave my legs, and otherwise get ready for the reunion, which started at 7pm in the Madison Hotel. I arrived around 7:15 and was the first person there besides the people who'd arranged it, which was slightly awkward for a few minutes. Fortunately a bunch of other people arrived by 7:30.
My graduating class was, IIRC, about 125 people. I think maybe twenty or thirty showed up at the reunion -- some were busy, some lived too far away, and there was also apparently drama on Facebook wherein a couple people said things to the effect of, "Are THESE the only people attending? Well then, count me out!" because, you know, there's no point going to a reunion if the 'cool' people won't be there. To which one of the arrangers responded, more or less, "What are you, thirteen?" and ignored them, because some of us have grown up since high school.
I am glad I went. I had a good time catching up with people I haven't seen or heard from in years -- even if I did use Facebook more than the absolute minimum I do now (which is basically maintaining a small signal flag to both show that I'm not dead and give people a way to find me if absolutely necessary), Facebook doesn't provide the depth of interaction that a true meeting and conversation can. (Also, the hors d'oeuvres and the little buffet dishes were quite tasty. *grin*)
And now to bed, since I have promised to take my dad to church tomorrow morning.
