We watched seven movies this week. Friday night, we slugged our way through a foreign film with subtitles in French. I’m not sure what the original language was. Reading, translating, laughing at jokes that obviously weren’t jokes. Rewinding, retranslating, rewinding to watch the action on the screen. We’ve been to France, enjoyed the general delights young couples enjoy in France (read: we were total tourists) and we learned nearly nothing useful for watching a film subtitled in French. Then we switched over to a French film with English subtitles, and giggled at the translations we knew were wrong, or PC-ized for American sensibilities. Apparently Americans have sensibilities. I don’t remember the name of either of these movies, though Angela probably does.
Saturday we watched The Wrath of Kahn, Airplane, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, two of which could be considered foreign films, though filmed and produced in English speaking countries. Sunday we watched the Avengers in the theatre as a matinee. Monday we watched Keeping up with the Steins.
Then we went to our Film group. This is the fun part--we watch the films in the chunks we’re supposed to, and then we get together once a week to talk about all the stuff we noticed, and to consider things we hadn’t yet noticed.
Like, Oh, look Airplane! had subtitles, too, and so did Monty Python. Not through the whole thing, but they were there. What part does reading have in watching a movie? That conversation went on for ages.
I love that Angela and I have this we can share. The rest of our week is spent away from each other, or battling over who’s cleaning or who’s cooking. But during the movie, we’re totally together. It’s been fun. We’ve been at this group for two years, now. Each week it’s another member’s turn to choose the movie for the sixth night. This assumes that we have time outside the scheduled movies and everything else to actually fit in watching movies for no reason at all, or we end up just picking movies we wish we had time to watch.
We didn’t start our relationship based on movies. We didn’t meet in the film group, or anything like that. We met at work, part time at Sea World and I was the penguin guy, and she was a flamingo girl. We started scheduling our breaks at the same time and our first date was actually to the dolphin show. She doesn’t count that as our first date, because it was still where we worked, even though we went on a day we were both off. She counts our first date as when I took her out to dinner. It was a simple chain-restaurant affair. I don’t even remember which resturant. Angela probably does. We moved in together some ten or eleven months (depending on which first date you’re counting) after we started going out, and when she was done with her associates degree, we moved out here together. My family is out here and we had somehow managed to agree that the sea life was beginning to feel uncreative.
I started school, and she started working full time in a body shop. Angela got her Associates in something that has to do with being awesome at business, with a minors in repairing dents in cars. Not technically, I don’t remember the technical names for her degrees, but I like mine better. I’m going to school to be a math teacher. I’ve found I don’t like teaching little kids, and furthermore I’m awesome at really hard math so I’m going in for advanced placement for high schoolers. Not a glamorous job, and usually one that leaves the kids beliveing you’re a stiff or crazy or both.
But the movies. So how a body technician and a math teacher end up watching seven movies a week for the sheer social enjoyment of it? I really don’t know. I went into the bookstore, I came out part of a group. There was this guy in the DVD section, and he was talking about all these random movies, and I was just picking up a copy of a book about math systems in other countries, and I walked by and he said, hey, did you see this movie on the shelf? I don’t know if I looked like somebody he had seen browsing or if he was a little weird. The next thing I know, we’re talking like we’d been doing this for years, and I left with a little torn bit of receipt with seven movie titles and a date, time and address.
I don’t know. Maybe watching more movies will make us less tech-y and more approachable. Maybe it will make us geeks. I’m really looking forward to reading this week’s selections. Watching them, rather. I’m not going to fix that because it might mean that maybe the Film Club is a replacement for reading books, since both of us don’t really have time for that anymore. I wish I did, but I’m really digging all the stories. They’re so different, and the storytellers are so precise. It’s like short stories that we studied in Comp 1. Everything matters. Someone chose every little tiny detail.
I like to watch the sets and costumes. The stuff that’s period or sci fi or not just jeans and a t-shirt are my favorite, though t-shirts are pretty cool. I’ve learned to use my t-shirt analysis skills in real life, too. But the sets and costumes--those are intriguing. I start to see little things like if there’s dust in the air in the sunlight. If there’s a curtain tie-back and what it’s made of. If there are finials on the posts of the staircases. If the staircase handrails are worn. If there are shoes under the dress, and if they match or don’t. How many pairs of those shoes are there, and what is the purpose of each? Maybe one is the stunt double for the other, whose job is to be exposed in the parlor from under the edge of the skirt hem. I start to notice if the sleeves seem to match the personality of the person wearing the clothes--puffy, straight, buttoned, french-cuffed, oversized, fitted. It seems like a lot of not-watching-the-movie is going on, but I find I follow the story just fine. No one in the film group does this kind of detail watch, so I kind of filled this role. I don’t think it was a normal thing for me to do right off the bat, I just kind of watched and listened the first month or so and at first thought that people all talked about similar things, but then I discovered that they were supplementing each other. Some paid particular attention to dialogue, some to foley art, some to hair and makeup, some to period accuracy, some to translation accuracy, some even read the screenplays and brought their literally analysis to the group. People responded to the chimes-in and it enriched the discussion.
The hardest part is not being able to go back after the meeting and watch all seven movies again. Fitting seven new movies into the schedule is hard enough. I’ve frequently thought that there would or could be a call for a night where we screened clips of what we’ve watched and discussed so that we could experience what others saw all incorporated into ourselves. But the more we listen to each other, the more we start to recognize and find these things in the new selections. I think some people do go back and watch some of the movies, but I also think they don’t have jobs or school.
I think Angela and I are the only couple that shows up, although I know there is something going on between the girl who always wears tights and heels and the guy who chooses the groups of movies. I haven’t decided if they’re an ex couple, a secret couple, or an actual couple. I bet Angela knows, though. Everyone else is either single or their significant others are busy doing something else, indifferent to the nature of the club dynamics, the awesomeness that is something completely divorced from everything else that I do, all the things I have built my identity from for the previous 22 years.
Besides movies, I have a girlfriend of 4 years, I have a chalkboard on my wall so I can work out random math problems, including unsolvable problems. I like things to be true and untrue, so an unsolvable problem is built on something being untrue. This is what the search is for. Which part of this is untrue? Why? I used to eat vegetarian when I was in middle and high school, but I got over that pretty quickly when I moved out of my parents house and discovered really good meat. And seafood. I really really liked seafood when I didn’t have to eat what my parents prepared. Though I stopped again when I worked at Sea World. That felt a bit strange. I wrote for my school newspaper under an alias because my columns were always getting negative attention from authority figures. I would conduct interviews during lunch hours by recruiting people to recruit people to interview for me, so no one actually knew who the author was. I wrote a piece that was a mock-graduation speech for my last publication. I had an editor on livejournal who would proofread what I wrote, which helped keep my bad grammar and spelling from seeping out and giving me away. I’m sure my English teachers would have noticed that. I tried building furniture with the guy down the street from me as a summer job once. I determined that for the safety of humanity, I should never try to actually build something. Theoretical engineering was my limit. The practical people should build and fix my mistakes. I always thought I would try to go into engineering. I did Lego Robotics when I was 15 because it was awesome. But I didn’t like all the time I had to spend not doing facts and figures. All the assembly, the tedium of wiring, that was too much. I read two magazines: the National Geographic because everyone should, and Time because everyone shouldn’t. I don’t know how I ended up getting Time magazine. I don’t think I am ever charged for it. Maybe it is a gift. But I tell them when I move and they keep sending it, so I keep reading it. I have a little sister who is seven years younger than I am and I don’t know her very well. I don’t think she is a vegetarian. Angela wants to try to spend more time with her, but I’d rather wait until she’s graduated and a little less teenagerish. My dad works at a plant making ceramic plates for armored cars. My mom works for the city as a clerk in one of the offices. She’d rather work for the county. I never learned how to cook. I wanted to learn to play an instrument but I never picked one and stuck with it. I picked about seven (rough estimate) and piddled around and went to private lessons for whatever I thought was fashionable that year. I’m allergic to cats, our apartment can’t have dogs, and I never want to see another fish swimming in a glass enclosure as long as I live. Or snail. Or sea monkey. Just say no. I learned to tie my shoe kind of backwards so it’s always a pain to do. I have tried to retrain my muscles but then my shoes are all loose and I really just want to wear shoes, so I deal with it. I prefer my sandals or some flip flops. And jeans and a t-shirt. I have about ten thousand t-shirts, and none of them are plain. I don’t like to wear hats.
Saturday we watched The Wrath of Kahn, Airplane, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, two of which could be considered foreign films, though filmed and produced in English speaking countries. Sunday we watched the Avengers in the theatre as a matinee. Monday we watched Keeping up with the Steins.
Then we went to our Film group. This is the fun part--we watch the films in the chunks we’re supposed to, and then we get together once a week to talk about all the stuff we noticed, and to consider things we hadn’t yet noticed.
Like, Oh, look Airplane! had subtitles, too, and so did Monty Python. Not through the whole thing, but they were there. What part does reading have in watching a movie? That conversation went on for ages.
I love that Angela and I have this we can share. The rest of our week is spent away from each other, or battling over who’s cleaning or who’s cooking. But during the movie, we’re totally together. It’s been fun. We’ve been at this group for two years, now. Each week it’s another member’s turn to choose the movie for the sixth night. This assumes that we have time outside the scheduled movies and everything else to actually fit in watching movies for no reason at all, or we end up just picking movies we wish we had time to watch.
We didn’t start our relationship based on movies. We didn’t meet in the film group, or anything like that. We met at work, part time at Sea World and I was the penguin guy, and she was a flamingo girl. We started scheduling our breaks at the same time and our first date was actually to the dolphin show. She doesn’t count that as our first date, because it was still where we worked, even though we went on a day we were both off. She counts our first date as when I took her out to dinner. It was a simple chain-restaurant affair. I don’t even remember which resturant. Angela probably does. We moved in together some ten or eleven months (depending on which first date you’re counting) after we started going out, and when she was done with her associates degree, we moved out here together. My family is out here and we had somehow managed to agree that the sea life was beginning to feel uncreative.
I started school, and she started working full time in a body shop. Angela got her Associates in something that has to do with being awesome at business, with a minors in repairing dents in cars. Not technically, I don’t remember the technical names for her degrees, but I like mine better. I’m going to school to be a math teacher. I’ve found I don’t like teaching little kids, and furthermore I’m awesome at really hard math so I’m going in for advanced placement for high schoolers. Not a glamorous job, and usually one that leaves the kids beliveing you’re a stiff or crazy or both.
But the movies. So how a body technician and a math teacher end up watching seven movies a week for the sheer social enjoyment of it? I really don’t know. I went into the bookstore, I came out part of a group. There was this guy in the DVD section, and he was talking about all these random movies, and I was just picking up a copy of a book about math systems in other countries, and I walked by and he said, hey, did you see this movie on the shelf? I don’t know if I looked like somebody he had seen browsing or if he was a little weird. The next thing I know, we’re talking like we’d been doing this for years, and I left with a little torn bit of receipt with seven movie titles and a date, time and address.
I don’t know. Maybe watching more movies will make us less tech-y and more approachable. Maybe it will make us geeks. I’m really looking forward to reading this week’s selections. Watching them, rather. I’m not going to fix that because it might mean that maybe the Film Club is a replacement for reading books, since both of us don’t really have time for that anymore. I wish I did, but I’m really digging all the stories. They’re so different, and the storytellers are so precise. It’s like short stories that we studied in Comp 1. Everything matters. Someone chose every little tiny detail.
I like to watch the sets and costumes. The stuff that’s period or sci fi or not just jeans and a t-shirt are my favorite, though t-shirts are pretty cool. I’ve learned to use my t-shirt analysis skills in real life, too. But the sets and costumes--those are intriguing. I start to see little things like if there’s dust in the air in the sunlight. If there’s a curtain tie-back and what it’s made of. If there are finials on the posts of the staircases. If the staircase handrails are worn. If there are shoes under the dress, and if they match or don’t. How many pairs of those shoes are there, and what is the purpose of each? Maybe one is the stunt double for the other, whose job is to be exposed in the parlor from under the edge of the skirt hem. I start to notice if the sleeves seem to match the personality of the person wearing the clothes--puffy, straight, buttoned, french-cuffed, oversized, fitted. It seems like a lot of not-watching-the-movie is going on, but I find I follow the story just fine. No one in the film group does this kind of detail watch, so I kind of filled this role. I don’t think it was a normal thing for me to do right off the bat, I just kind of watched and listened the first month or so and at first thought that people all talked about similar things, but then I discovered that they were supplementing each other. Some paid particular attention to dialogue, some to foley art, some to hair and makeup, some to period accuracy, some to translation accuracy, some even read the screenplays and brought their literally analysis to the group. People responded to the chimes-in and it enriched the discussion.
The hardest part is not being able to go back after the meeting and watch all seven movies again. Fitting seven new movies into the schedule is hard enough. I’ve frequently thought that there would or could be a call for a night where we screened clips of what we’ve watched and discussed so that we could experience what others saw all incorporated into ourselves. But the more we listen to each other, the more we start to recognize and find these things in the new selections. I think some people do go back and watch some of the movies, but I also think they don’t have jobs or school.
I think Angela and I are the only couple that shows up, although I know there is something going on between the girl who always wears tights and heels and the guy who chooses the groups of movies. I haven’t decided if they’re an ex couple, a secret couple, or an actual couple. I bet Angela knows, though. Everyone else is either single or their significant others are busy doing something else, indifferent to the nature of the club dynamics, the awesomeness that is something completely divorced from everything else that I do, all the things I have built my identity from for the previous 22 years.
Besides movies, I have a girlfriend of 4 years, I have a chalkboard on my wall so I can work out random math problems, including unsolvable problems. I like things to be true and untrue, so an unsolvable problem is built on something being untrue. This is what the search is for. Which part of this is untrue? Why? I used to eat vegetarian when I was in middle and high school, but I got over that pretty quickly when I moved out of my parents house and discovered really good meat. And seafood. I really really liked seafood when I didn’t have to eat what my parents prepared. Though I stopped again when I worked at Sea World. That felt a bit strange. I wrote for my school newspaper under an alias because my columns were always getting negative attention from authority figures. I would conduct interviews during lunch hours by recruiting people to recruit people to interview for me, so no one actually knew who the author was. I wrote a piece that was a mock-graduation speech for my last publication. I had an editor on livejournal who would proofread what I wrote, which helped keep my bad grammar and spelling from seeping out and giving me away. I’m sure my English teachers would have noticed that. I tried building furniture with the guy down the street from me as a summer job once. I determined that for the safety of humanity, I should never try to actually build something. Theoretical engineering was my limit. The practical people should build and fix my mistakes. I always thought I would try to go into engineering. I did Lego Robotics when I was 15 because it was awesome. But I didn’t like all the time I had to spend not doing facts and figures. All the assembly, the tedium of wiring, that was too much. I read two magazines: the National Geographic because everyone should, and Time because everyone shouldn’t. I don’t know how I ended up getting Time magazine. I don’t think I am ever charged for it. Maybe it is a gift. But I tell them when I move and they keep sending it, so I keep reading it. I have a little sister who is seven years younger than I am and I don’t know her very well. I don’t think she is a vegetarian. Angela wants to try to spend more time with her, but I’d rather wait until she’s graduated and a little less teenagerish. My dad works at a plant making ceramic plates for armored cars. My mom works for the city as a clerk in one of the offices. She’d rather work for the county. I never learned how to cook. I wanted to learn to play an instrument but I never picked one and stuck with it. I picked about seven (rough estimate) and piddled around and went to private lessons for whatever I thought was fashionable that year. I’m allergic to cats, our apartment can’t have dogs, and I never want to see another fish swimming in a glass enclosure as long as I live. Or snail. Or sea monkey. Just say no. I learned to tie my shoe kind of backwards so it’s always a pain to do. I have tried to retrain my muscles but then my shoes are all loose and I really just want to wear shoes, so I deal with it. I prefer my sandals or some flip flops. And jeans and a t-shirt. I have about ten thousand t-shirts, and none of them are plain. I don’t like to wear hats.
0 comments:
Post a Comment