Movie Extravaganza

I have a hard time believing it myself, but Keith and I actually went to 3 movies in 4 days between last Thursday and Sunday.

We usually refuse to leave the house. Because it's a nice house, and we have two wonderful pets and wireless Internet and Tivo and an HDTV. What's not to love? As long as I either 1) do the dishes, or 2) manage to ignore the mounting pile of dirty dishes in the sink, I'd usually rather be home than anywhere else.

But a strange confluence of events conspired to actually bring us out of our lair multiple times in a short stretch, purely for entertainment purposes. Such an event might not be seen again for many, many years. Possibly even decades.

Thursday night (a weeknight!) we went to see Spirit of the Marathon . We had heard about it from a few different sources, and knew that it was only playing one night across the country in select theatres. Surprisingly, it wasn't playing at the indie theatre just down the street from us, but it was at the multiplex less than a 10-minute drive away. I enjoyed the movie, and I also was surprised to enjoy the fact that it was an event. It wasn't really publicized much, and it was only playing one night, so if you were in the audience it meant you had a serious interest in the subject and you'd gone out of your way to be there. I noticed that everyone in the theatre laughed at many of the inside runners' jokes throughout the movie, and I enjoyed being a part of that group. It was also motivational since Keith is training for his first marathon in May. I don' t know if specialty documentaries with limited engagements might be a wave of the future, but I personally liked it and would be interested to attend more of these events.

The other influential factor in our run of theatre-going was that Oscar nominations just came out. And, not surprisingly, we hadn't seen any of the five nominated for Best Picture. When we first moved into our house, we thought it was fantastic that an indie movie theatre was a 10-minute walk away. Even better, Monday nights was $5 admission night. We started going to the movies regularly on Monday nights. Then life interfered ... we thought about reviving the tradition, but there weren't any movies we really wanted to see .... so in 2007, we went to very few movies at that theatre or any other. Hence, the lack of surprise at our dismal Oscar-nominee-watching record.

Saturday afternoon, we saw Juno. It was funny and cute, although it reminded me of a recent pet peeve. Why are there no movies about couples who intend to get pregnant? Even if you decide to have a baby, you still don't really know what you're in for. I think there's still a lot of potential for comedic gold! It doesn't just have to be when a high schooler is pregnant (as in Juno) or when a career-woman gets Knocked Up. But of course, that's my very biased opinion.

Sunday afternoon, we went back for Atonement. Ever since Bend It Like Beckham, I've had a bit of a girl-crush on Keira Knightley, and I'm a fan of WWII-era movies, so I was looking forward to this one. Keira looked lovely, of course, as did James McEvoy, but my immediate reaction was that I liked Juno better. This didn't stop me from wanting to hop the first plane to England after the movie was over, though.

Keith tried to keep the streak going, and suggested we see There Will Be Blood last night. But I had to put a stop to the madness. I was afraid the animals would forget who we were! And I was stressed out that going to the movies would stress me out, since I start my online tutoring this week so I'll have nine hours less free time than I previously had. I felt the need to preserve what unaccounted-for hours I had, and get in some quality time on the couch.

But hopefully we won't completely forget about the heady anticipation of actually leaving the house for purely entertainment purposes. We do still have three more Oscar nominees to see, and only a few weeks before the awards are announced. It just may happen!