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edenfallingToday I did something that I think I have never done before. I went to see a movie on its opening day.
Of course, I went to see said movie at a 2:20pm afternoon matinee while most of Ithaca was down on the Commons for the first day of the Apple Harvest Fest, so it's not like I was fighting for a ticket or a seat, but still. This is not something I do.
The movie in question is 50/50. It stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Watching everything he's ever acted in includes new movies too, you know. *wry*
Anyway, there was some kind of trouble with the projection system, such that between each preview a horrible grinding and screeching noise came from the left front corner of the theater. When the film itself started, the screeching noise became continual instead of only lasting a couple seconds. After a minute and a half, I went out to the lobby to find a staff member and notify them of the issue. When I came back to the theater, the sound had cut out completely.
Fortunately about thirty seconds after that, somebody got to the projection booth and fixed the problem. (Mostly. The noise came back twice later on, but only for about two seconds' duration each time.)
The point of this is that I effectively missed the first five minutes of the film -- in which we are first introduced to the rather nebbishy Adam, his somewhat highstrung girlfriend Rachel, and his boorish friend and coworker Kyle -- which is annoying. But it's not insurmountable; 50/50 is not the most subtle film in the world, and the characters and relationships are pretty easy to parse even without those first scenes.
Hmm. I have read a few reviews of the film (I like to have some idea of what I'm letting myself in for when I sign away an hour and forty minutes of my life) and by and large I agree with them. This is a pretty good story, pretty well acted -- nothing great, a bit sitcom-ish at first, awkward in its handling of Rachel, but deeper and truer than it might seem at the start, and sweet without getting cloying.
Tangentially, I was pleasantly surprised by Anna Kendrick, whom I had never seen before. This has nothing to do with her acting skills. (I am pretty sure she was in, um, something where she got praised for good work fairly recently -- oh, what's it... right, Up in the Air -- so I knew from hearsay that she could act.) It has to do with her physical appearance. She is average-looking in a way that leading actresses so rarely are allowed to be. By which I mean she's thin and pretty and has nice hair, but she also has a nose with actual character, plus the kind of facial structure that makes me think "rabbit" or maybe "squirrel." She's not cookie-cutter. She looks like a real person. Men can do that all the time and still be considered handsome and sexy. Women are much more restricted by narrowly defined beauty stereotypes. So I am cheered by Anna Kendrick's existence and career. May she have many more roles for decades to come!
So yeah. I liked the movie. There were a few points where I had to hide behind a shield of interlaced fingers lest my sympathetic embarrassment squick overcome me, but overall that was eleven dollars (eight for the ticket, three for bus fare) well spent. :-)
Of course, I went to see said movie at a 2:20pm afternoon matinee while most of Ithaca was down on the Commons for the first day of the Apple Harvest Fest, so it's not like I was fighting for a ticket or a seat, but still. This is not something I do.
The movie in question is 50/50. It stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Watching everything he's ever acted in includes new movies too, you know. *wry*
Anyway, there was some kind of trouble with the projection system, such that between each preview a horrible grinding and screeching noise came from the left front corner of the theater. When the film itself started, the screeching noise became continual instead of only lasting a couple seconds. After a minute and a half, I went out to the lobby to find a staff member and notify them of the issue. When I came back to the theater, the sound had cut out completely.
Fortunately about thirty seconds after that, somebody got to the projection booth and fixed the problem. (Mostly. The noise came back twice later on, but only for about two seconds' duration each time.)
The point of this is that I effectively missed the first five minutes of the film -- in which we are first introduced to the rather nebbishy Adam, his somewhat highstrung girlfriend Rachel, and his boorish friend and coworker Kyle -- which is annoying. But it's not insurmountable; 50/50 is not the most subtle film in the world, and the characters and relationships are pretty easy to parse even without those first scenes.
Hmm. I have read a few reviews of the film (I like to have some idea of what I'm letting myself in for when I sign away an hour and forty minutes of my life) and by and large I agree with them. This is a pretty good story, pretty well acted -- nothing great, a bit sitcom-ish at first, awkward in its handling of Rachel, but deeper and truer than it might seem at the start, and sweet without getting cloying.
Tangentially, I was pleasantly surprised by Anna Kendrick, whom I had never seen before. This has nothing to do with her acting skills. (I am pretty sure she was in, um, something where she got praised for good work fairly recently -- oh, what's it... right, Up in the Air -- so I knew from hearsay that she could act.) It has to do with her physical appearance. She is average-looking in a way that leading actresses so rarely are allowed to be. By which I mean she's thin and pretty and has nice hair, but she also has a nose with actual character, plus the kind of facial structure that makes me think "rabbit" or maybe "squirrel." She's not cookie-cutter. She looks like a real person. Men can do that all the time and still be considered handsome and sexy. Women are much more restricted by narrowly defined beauty stereotypes. So I am cheered by Anna Kendrick's existence and career. May she have many more roles for decades to come!
So yeah. I liked the movie. There were a few points where I had to hide behind a shield of interlaced fingers lest my sympathetic embarrassment squick overcome me, but overall that was eleven dollars (eight for the ticket, three for bus fare) well spent. :-)
