Everybody Needs a Cause

New at NightsAndWeekends.com Since Last Week:
The Kingdom
Eastern Promises
Good Luck Chuck
In the Valley of Elah

It seems like there are a million causes out there to support—each with its own color-coordinated ribbon.

Well, now there’s one more.

Last week, after we all saw Good Luck Chuck, we all needed some serious recovery time. In fact, many of us skipped the Thursday night screening of Resident Evil just to stay home and try to drink away the memories of the things we saw on screen on Wednesday night. Kevin went so far as to call for an end to Dane Cook movies in his review: “Please Hollywood, do us a favor. No more Dane Cook! I think I’ll make a ribbon for this cause and start wearing it.”

After reading Kevin’s review, I decided that his anti-Dane Cook cause was one that I could definitely get behind, so I emailed him to tell him that I, too, would support his cause. Because nothing terrifies me more than the thought of having to sit through another Dane Cook movie. It’s almost as scary as the thought of having to sit through another M. Night Shyamalan movie.

So after a bit of discussion, we agreed that on a nice poop-brown color for the ribbons. Not only is poop-brown underused in cause ribbons, but we also figured it would be a nice color to represent our cause.

At Thursday’s screening of Gone Baby Gone, Kevin arrived with a fresh supply of poop-brown Stop Dane Cook ribbons to hand out. I immediately pinned mine to my sweatshirt. And I will wear it with pride.

Soon, you, too, will be able to get your very own poop-brown Stop Dane Cook ribbon. As soon as I find out how, I’ll be sure to let you know.

So anyway…on to the rest of the week’s adventures.

I only went to one evening screening this week—because we had so many morning screenings popping up. I had actually planned on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night screenings—but then we ended up with Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning screenings, and I changed my mind. Sadly, The Rock’s new movie was dropped from my plans because of it. I may have to catch that one on DVD.

Tuesday night was The Kingdom. There was a screening about a month ago, but that was in the middle of the whole fallen tree / site outage / in-laws coming for the weekend fiasco, so I skipped it. The general reaction from the critics in the area was pretty positive, though, so I was looking forward to it—despite the fact that it was yet another movie about the Middle East.

The screening of The Kingdom took place back at the theater with the balcony. We don’t really get there all that often (the last time was for The Bourne Ultimatum), but it’s probably best that way—since the Balcony Brigade can get pretty crazy. Of course, that never stops us from sitting in the balcony anyway. And really, why should it? The seats are nice and cushy in the balcony. They’re roomy, and they’re leather. How could you not love that? So we’re usually willing to deal with a few annoyances in exchange for big, cushy seats.

This time, we walked in just as the previous movie was ending. And guess what it was. If you guessed Good Luck Chuck, you’d be correct. And, since the last part of Good Luck Chuck is some of the worst stuff in the whole horrible movie, it started our evening out on a very bad, very sickening foot. It did, however, help to promote Kevin’s new Stop Dane Cook movement.

For some reason, whenever we’re in the theater with the balcony, there’s some sort of a giveaway. Of course, these happen often at evening screenings—but usually, the people doing the giveaway don’t have a balcony full of people to consider. If you don’t give cheap, ugly one-size-fits-none T-shirts to the people in the balcony, they’ll get very angry. And if you do try to accommodate the Balcony Brigade, it means either having a really good throwing arm or the patience for the winners to walk all the way down from the balcony to claim their prize. Unfortunately, the people who do these giveaways have neither—so it always makes for an interesting evening.

Pre-screening giveaways always make us a little nervous—because giving people free movie tickets and free crappy T-shirts before the movie starts is like giving a five-year-old a bag of jellybeans before bedtime. Not a good idea. But, surprisingly, the Balcony Brigade calmed down by the time the movie started.

Of course, it probably didn’t hurt that we had to sit through almost a half hour of trailers before the movie could begin. I guess those trailers are good for something after all—besides seeing which movies Meryl Streep is releasing this year. Really—from the trailers we saw, you’d think that Meryl Streep was in 40% of all movies made. The other 60% go to Dane Cook. [Please…make it stop!]

So anyway, after one evening screening this week, the endless procession of daytime screenings began. Now, this is a good thing and a bad thing. On one hand, I don’t have to worry about scarfing down dinner and spending a whole ten minutes with my husband before rushing out to screenings every night of the week. It also means that we can watch in the comfort of our very own theater, with a cup of coffee—and without all those people who make loud, stupid comments in the middle of the movie. And at least we all turn off our cell phones. On the other hand, it means that I have to get my butt in gear in the morning to get a few things done before leaving at 10:15ish. Then I get back to the office at 1:30ish. Now, it’s cool to be able to hang out with the rest of the COFCA crew, but that’s three hours of normal catching-up-on-reviews-and-stuff time that I spend driving to the other side of town and watching some movie. So I guess what it all comes down to is that I actually need to work 13-hour days just to get everything done.

On Wednesday, I arrived for The Jane Austen Book Club—the first screening in our Morning Screening Marathon. There weren’t many of us there for that one. Go figure. Perhaps because there aren’t a lot of chick film critics. But Lori was there, and Joyce was there, and Margaret was there, and I was there. And I, for one, liked it, thank you very much.

What I didn’t like, however, was the fact that they’d removed the booths at the theater. We knew it was bound to happen sooner or later, but it still didn’t make me happy. I loved pulling in each morning and sliding into my booth to chat and eat my cookie before the screening. I miss my booths.

On Thursday, we returned (and the crowd grew—and increased in testosterone levels) for Gone Baby Gone. There was a bit of confusion Thursday morning, though, since it was absolutely pouring on Thursday morning (to the point that people were driving 25 on the highway, which caused us all to reminisce about the time we all attended the Norbit screening despite the blizzard that had hit that day). And since the theater is pretty old, there was some leakage. Through the walls, actually. So we had to move from our regular theater—and not to the second largest theater, but to the teeniest, tiniest theater I’ve ever seen. There were—and I’m not even exaggerating here—six rows. And the screen was approximately the size of the screen that we had in our apartment, back when we used to have a projector for a TV. It was definitely the tiniest theater I’ve ever been in. But, well, it was just us, so I guess it didn’t really matter. It was just weird.

The crowd grew even larger for today’s screening of We Own the Night—which made for a fun Friday morning screening. We were even back into our old theater—which, I’m guessing, was cleared of its worst water damage.

The funny thing about today’s screening, though, was that there was a security guard. It always cracks me up when they have guards at press-only screenings. Do they honestly think that we’re going to be stupid enough to try to pirate movies at press screenings? But, hey, as today’s guard was quick to point out, we’re clearly used to the metal detectors. We know what he needs to check and what he needs to know. We know our cell phones have to be turned off.

After the screening, though, we still had one adventure left before calling it a week. This weekend is Oktoberfest here in C-town—and, according to tradition, if there’s a fest of some sort, John, Clay, and I head there for lunch on Friday. So today we walked to town to get ourselves German beer and some tasty cabbage and noodles (which, the surly German man assured us, was, in fact, German food). It was an absolutely gorgeous day for the walk—sunny and 70s. And I’ve gotta tell you—after a bowl of cabbage, half a cream puff, and a beer (all enjoyed at a nice sunny table in the middle of a beautiful, grassy park), it’s pretty tough to get back to work. But alas, I’ve gone to lots of screenings this week—so many, in fact, that I’ve barely had time to write about them. In fact, I still haven’t finished my review of yesterday’s movie. So it’s time to get to work.

It looks like next week will be more of the same. So far, we have daytime screenings on Monday and Tuesday (yes, that makes five in a row). And I just got an email that another one is in the works. And I’ve already got a couple of evening screenings planned. You’d think it was December or something….

When It Rains…

New at NightsAndWeekends.com Since Last Week:
The Nanny Diaries
Death at a Funeral

You know how the old saying goes…. Well, it definitely poured here this week.

It started insanely enough, on Sunday, with a mad, frantic dash to furnish our basement with a futon (“a good futon,” said my husband) before the in-laws show up this weekend. But that part is a very, very long story, and this week’s story is long enough already. So anyway…just when we finally worked out a deal with the salesguy, snagging us a [good] futon with a few scratches and dents in the wood for a decent price…just as we were about to load it up in the car and take it home…that’s when the rain started.

Immediately following, we did a little more rushing—this time, over to The Cheap Theater to see Ocean’s Thirteen. We came racing in at the last minute (after lugging the futon through the house and dumping the parts in the basement), and I was a little worried that we might have to sit in the front row (as we did for Ocean’s Twelve), but, for some strange reason, when we walked into the getting-full theater, there were two wonderful back-row seats, just waiting for us. It was lovely. And when I sat down, I couldn’t believe my butt! The Cheap Theater got new seats! I was in cheap movie heaven! I only paid a buck to see the movie, and I even got a padded seat!

I’d have to say, though, that the padded seat was the highlight of the whole week. After that, it was all downhill.

So here’s what happened on Monday afternoon:

At around 2:30 or 3:00, things started to get really dark. Really, really dark. There was thunder and lightning. And there was a whole lot of wind. And then I heard this noise—a noise that sounded like a garbage can had fallen off the front steps of the house. Now, we don’t have a garbage can on our front steps, so I was starting to wonder if the Evil Neighbor Kids had dumped off something earlier in the day, while they were playing with their obnoxious BB guns in my front yard (seriously, I’m going to throttle the Evil Neighbor Kids someday). Curious, I walked to the living room and found that our tree had fallen down. Okay, so not the whole tree—but half of it, at least. A really big branch. Huge. And it was all over our yard—and in our neighbor’s driveway. So I called my husband and told him, and he said, “I’m on a call right now. Can I call you back?”

(Hello? Did I just mention that our tree just fell down? Am I not freaking out enough?)

So after he called back, he decided that it might be a good idea to come home an hour early. So while he packed up and drove home, I went through our paperwork, looking for our homeowner’s insurance policy and the phone number of our tree guy. By then, it had started raining.

So we called the tree guy, who said they’d be there around 6. I’m not sure which 6 they were talking about—on which day—because they never showed up. And my poor husband ended up braving the hurricane conditions and hacking up the tree enough for our neighbor to get in and out of her garage. Meanwhile, I went and got groceries, all the while thinking about buying a condo.

But wait. There’s more. While I was digging through paperwork and staring at the tree that was lying in our yard, I stopped to check my email and discovered that the site was down. Well, not down exactly. The hosting company had said that they were upgrading their software, so we might have some database problems for a while on Monday. Now, I’d already had those database problems on Monday morning, and I figured it was over. But here they were again. You could get to the site. You could see the skeleton, but you couldn’t get to any articles. I figured it would come back eventually (“Fifteen minutes!” the hosting company promised. They lied.). But it didn’t. In fact, it was down all night. When we tried to contact customer service, they said they had “specialists” who were “looking into it”—but it could be another 24 to 48 hours.

Brilliant.

So on Tuesday morning, I had a giant tree in my front yard and a site with no content. And I was pretty much ready to curl up in a ball and die. But, instead, I went to the screening of 3:10 to Yuma. When all else fails, go see a western, I guess.

Since the site was down, I thought about taking myself out for lunch afterwards, since I just didn’t want to look at that poor, naked site any longer. But I headed back—which is a good thing, since my husband’s network had gone down at work (I know…really weird, huh?), and he had set up shop in his office at home. He said the tree guys had been around, and they said the whole tree needed to go. He also called some other tree guy, who said he could take it down Wednesday morning at 7:30.

As for the site, nuthin’.

So, with a naked site and a tree still in our front yard, we figured we might as well just go to a movie. This time, Resurrecting the Champ. When we got there, I was a little surprised to find that no one was there. There was one other critic waiting to get in, and there were two people in line. Two. Usually, when I get to the screening, about 30-45 minutes before it starts, there’s a big, loud, angry mob, ready to throw things at me for not waiting in line. This time, there were two people.

Two.

When the rep let us in, there were seven of us in the film critic row, and that was about it. By 7:30, there were a couple more critics, and then there were about 10 other people. It was weird. As Jason said, they could have screened the movie in the break room at Wal-Mart, and we would have had plenty of room (and, as I pointed out, we could have gotten Sam’s Choice sodas for a quarter—maybe even a dime!).

So apparently, no one promoted the screening. Either that, or no one wanted to see it—even for free. Still, though, despite the empty theater, when one couple came in, they stopped in front of our row and stood there for a few minutes while they glared at the “Reserved for Press” signs on some of the seats. Really, people. There are 5,000 other seats in here—and you’re mad that you can’t have those two?

Fortunately, though, the movie wasn’t bad at all. And it helped me forget about my naked site and giant dying tree for just a couple of hours.

On Wednesday morning, 7:30 came and went, and there were no tree guys. But, on the bright side, my dear, sweet husband was able to figure out how to make some programming changes to get the site back up—or at least parts of it. So that was a start.

The tree guys finally showed up at around 3, and I was a little bit nervous when I noticed that one of the guys had a hook for an arm. I kid you not. There was a hook. And this was one of the guys who was going to be using a chainsaw in my front yard. Clearly, he’s not so good with a chainsaw. Why would I want him giving it another shot in my yard? So I went into the basement, where I wouldn’t have to see the blood.

Fortunately, though, there was no blood and no screaming. And, a couple of hours later, there was no tree. It looks really weird. And it’s ridiculously bright in our living room—so I’ve taken to keeping the curtains closed.

So anyway…we still had one little problem: the site. Try as we might, we couldn’t get the thing fixed, which meant another long, frustrating conversation with a clueless customer service rep. Let’s do the math here. The site was completely naked for 43 hours. Then it was partially naked for another 11 hours. That makes 54 hours without a fully functioning site. Now, I’m not going to go into the numbers here, but what it boils down it is a pretty serious loss in readers. (So if you were driven away earlier this week by a shamefully naked site, please go back. We’re fully clothed now, and we really want you to come back. Please. Thank you.) But it was Wednesday night, and we were finally working again.

Then came Thursday. I got up on Thursday morning, and the tree was gone, and the site was working. All was good and happy and sparkly in the world. And then I got to my computer, checked my email, and started getting to work, only to discover that my Internet connection had just gone and disconnected itself. This led to an hour of finagling, accompanied by a fair amount of bad words. And then, for no apparent reason, it just came back.

Just like that.

So I got back to work, putting together this week’s massive newsletter. I got everything ready to go, and I sent a test email to myself. And what happened?

Nothing.

I tried again.

Nothing.

I tried five times, and nothing ever showed up in my inbox. So I called my poor husband/webmaster in a panic, asking him if he could think of any possible reason why our mailing function would be broken. He couldn’t think of one reason. Not one. But since he couldn’t do anything about it, he said maybe I should just skip this week’s newsletter—an idea that I instantly rejected, since the site had been naked all week, and I desperately needed to tell people that we were still here. So then he told me that I might have to take my newsletter document and translate it into normal email format.

And that’s when I started to sob.

You see, my newsletter document is 17 pages of HTML code. I keep the format every week, and I update the information and send it out. That way, it doesn’t take a lot of work. I keep up with the links during the week, and it takes me an hour or so on Thursday morning to do all the audio links and the trailers and contests and things. I didn’t even know where to begin reformatting it—and even if I did, it would have taken me until next Feaselday. So I continued to sob.

That’s when my husband took pity on me and said he’d come and try to fix it if I would make him lunch. So I wandered off to make lunch.

Anyway…that whole thing brought about another hour’s worth of headaches—during which time I had to cut out a part of the newsletter because it was making the mailing function pissy, for some reason or another. But eventually, I got it sent out—and only 2 ½ hours late. Yea.

By this point, I had told myself not to even think that things couldn’t go any worse. Because they always can. Just ask Murphy.

Also by this point, I had decided that there was just no way I’d be going to the screening of The Kingdom. It’s too bad, since I was looking forward to seeing a movie so far in advance that I’d have time to actually put some thought into my review. But, if you recall, the in-laws were scheduled to arrive on Friday afternoon, and that meant that I needed to clean toilets and scrub floors and bake brownies for my bro-in-law.

I also needed a good stiff drink. Or three. My intention was to drink myself to sleep. Of course, that’s not what happened. What happened was I spent the night cleaning bathrooms and washing towels and things in preparation for guests. And I watched a couple of episodes of The Muppet Show. And I went to bed early.

When I got up this morning, I was really, really looking forward to this morning’s screening. It’s not that I was totally psyched about the movie or anything, it being a documentary. But I just couldn’t wait to get out of the house. Just to get out for a while and talk to someone else—someone who could talk to me about something other than hosting glitches and trees—would be wonderful. And, fortunately, the first person I saw when I walked up was John. And John is always happy to hang out and chat. To make things even better, he had brought his lovely friends from Washington.

On the downside, there was no screening. The print hadn’t shown up yet, and it wouldn’t be there for another hour. And it would be another half hour after that before the screening could start. So we ended up rescheduling the screening for next week—which was really no big deal, since the movie isn’t coming out for a few weeks anyway. And that left me with plenty of time to grab lunch with John & Co., which was absolutely wonderful (both the food and the company). It also means that I have one less movie review to write this afternoon, which gives me the time for one more music review. So it all works out in the end.

Next week is another relatively quiet week, screening-wise (or at least it’s supposed to be). We’ve got Wednesday and Thursday morning and Monday and Thursday night. The problem, though, is Thursday night. On Thursday night, we have two screenings scheduled. Instead of scheduling them for the same time, the reps scheduled one for 7 and the other for 9—giving us the illusion that we could actually do both. There are, however, two problems:

1) The first movie is 110 minutes long.
2) The screenings are at two different theaters.

While some of us see this as an impossibility—and have resigned themselves to seeing either one movie or the other—others of us see this as a challenge. So here’s the scenario that Kevin has set up for us:

Okay, so we get out of the one movie at 8:50. Since the parking situation at that theater is a nightmare, and we’d never even be able to get out of the garage by 9, we’d have to have someone pick us up. In a van. And bring us to the second screening at the second theater. We might be a little bit late, of course, so we’d have to talk the rep into telling the crowd that the print was late, and that the movie will be starting just 15 minutes late. And that’s how we could make it work.

Personally, I love a good challenge. And if someone has a van and a willing driver, I’d be all over that plan. I’ve done the two-theater back-to-back double-feature before. And though it was totally insane then, too (in fact, I think it may have been last Labor Day weekend, too—since I’m pretty sure I had to get up the next morning and drive the six hours to my parents’ cottage…), I’d definitely do it again. So find me a getaway van, and I’m in. Else, I guess I’ll just have to pick one or the other.

Tune in next week to see what happens…