All in One Go

New at NightsAndWeekends.com Since Last Week:
Run Fat Boy Run

(For my weekly Cheap Seats report, as well as other entertainment-related stuff, check out the new N&W.com Blog)

This week, we got all of our screenings done in one go—or at least I did.

This week, I only had two screenings—and they were both on Tuesday. We started Tuesday morning, with a screening of 21. I got to the theater at the usual 10:45 and made myself at home. I grabbed myself a cookie and filled my coffee mug, and I mingled. Lately, our screenings have been rather few and far between—and it was only the fourth morning screening of the month—so it was nice to have the time to catch up.

And, as it turned out, we had plenty of time to do our catching up. After we’d been standing around for a while, we found out that the print had shown up at the last minute—actually, just before I got there. It also showed up all in the wrong order. So they were scrambling to get everything set up for us. Ten minutes, we were told. Maybe 15. Actually, how about 30? But, for once, we didn’t really mind. We just kept on chatting and drinking our coffee.

Once we finally got into the theater and the movie started, things were still a bit…off. There were some blinky things over on one side, and the image seemed a bit messed up. I was a bit worried that we’d get a few minutes in and find that we needed to stop again and wait for them to try again. But, fortunately, that didn’t happen. And it was lucky for us, too—since the movie was a whole lot longer than we’d expected.

The best thing about 21: the “rewind” scene—when Laurence Fishburne goes into the casino security room and has the security guy rewind the recording from the casino floor. That means that our Year of the Rewind count is now up to three:
21
Funny Games
Vantage Point
(Honorable Mention: Be Kind, Rewind)

In fact, our favorite quote of the year is now, “STOP! Rewind that!”

By the time we got out of the screening, it was nearly 2. John and I had planned to have lunch at our favorite little place down the street—and by the time we got there, we pretty much had the place all to ourselves.

After lunch, I headed back to the office. I got settled back in at about 3:30—which meant that I had a whole three hours to finish some work before I had to leave again for the evening screening. Fortunately, I managed to get a few things done—including most of my 21 review—before hitting the road once again.

At about 6:45, I arrived at the theater for our Run Fat Boy Run screening. Since most of us absolutely adore Simon Pegg, Fat Boy was one of those movies that we’d been eagerly anticipating for ages. So you can imagine our anger and frustration last fall when we were so close to seeing it and then the studio decided to bump the release date back a bit. But at least they screened it for us. Despite the fact that David Schwimmer (who, let’s face it, hasn’t had the best of luck when it comes to movies) had directed it, we were having a hard time pretending not to be excited. And, fortunately, we weren’t disappointed. Thank you, Mr. Pegg.

So there you have it—one big, long, crazy day of screenings, and I was done for the week. Of course, that’s not to say that I couldn’t have done more. There was actually a screening of Stop-Loss on Wednesday night, but there was just no dragging me to another war movie. Seriously, people, can’t you think of anything else? Haven’t we seen enough war movies already? The fact that it starred Ryan Phillippe didn’t help. Even Joseph Gordon-Levitt couldn’t talk me into it. Instead, I stayed home and caught up on my pile of DVDs.

Next week, however, won’t be so easy. Next week, we’ve got screenings on Tuesday morning and evening, Thursday morning and night (by night, I mean 10 p.m.—blech!), and Friday morning. Only time will tell if I manage to get up for that Friday morning screening—but, right now, my guess is no.