— छह हज़ार छियासी —
I was so much more excited to see the South Korean alien invasion movie
Hope last night than I had been to see the love triangle drama
The Sun Never Sets the night before—and somehow, I was
far more disappointed in
Hope.
The Sun Never Sets was a well-made movie almost exclusively populated by characters who on various levels annoyed or frustrated me.
Hope is a bafflingly scripted movie with characters that do things that make no sense, but does have countless relatively thrilling action sequences. The thing is, action alone is rarely enough to make me like a movie much. I'm not here to see a Michael Bay movie. (That said, Sean Fennessey raves so often about
Ambulance on
The Big Picture podcast that I'm going to check it out the next time I subscribe to Netflix. I still fully expect to be disappointed in it. But at least in that case I won't have wasted my time going all the way to a movie theater.)
Hope is also 160 minutes long, and yet still ends abruptly in the middle of the story. What is this shit? Also, and I didn't even mention this in my review, two aliens are played by Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender. Like: huh? They do speak a few lines, none of which make any sense, and not until only a few scenes before the movie ends.
Will I see the inevitable sequel? Maybe. Probably not. This one has a score of 68 on MetaCritic, which is in the "mixed-positive" zone but tilting toward positive. I'd say I might be convinced to see a squel if it's critically acclaimed—but, it would really have to be a lot higher than 68 on MetaCritic for me to even consider it.
— छह हज़ार छियासी —
— छह हज़ार छियासी —
I got out of the theater last night with a bit of a jolt: it was about 8:00, as expected, but I am still so used to it being light out after I go to a 4:30 or 5:00 showing of a movie, I was shocked to find it was already nearly dark. By the time I had gone down to the garage, unlocked my bike, and ridden it back out onto the street, it pretty much was dark. Thankfully most of the route has dedicated bike lanes and my helmet has a light attached—except, well, I turned it on and it went out after like two minutes. I need to recharge it. I don't really like to ride in the dark as a rule, but I had to last night.
I suppose I should have thought about this, since we're in September now and the autumn equinox is less than two weeks away. Official sunset last night was at 7:34; on the 22nd it will be 7:07, with sunrise at 6:56—and this is on Daylight Savings Time, which we're on seven and a half months of the year. Without it, sunset would be happening at around 6:00 already right now. I still would prefer that, but people really love their late summer evenings; I think it would be a small price to pay not to have to deal with the bullshit of changing the clocks twice a year. And we have the power to make Standard Time permanent right now—it's making DST permanent that requires Congressional approval, which has not happened. And I'm glad; I'd actually prefer to keep the current system than to make Daylight Savings permanent, which would mean sunrise at nearly 9 a.m. at the winter solstice. People think they could handle that fine but I know nobody actually wants that—just like when this was tried once in the seventies, people would experience it one or two years, find it untenable, and then demand the old system back.
Anyway! It was close to 8:30 by the time I got home. I heated up leftovers from the food Shobhit made for Alexia's visit on Monday for dinner (he made a lot), and ate while I worked on my review, which took me to around 9:15. After that Shobhit and I actually worked on our puzzle for a while before I went to bed.
— छह हज़ार छियासी —
[posted 12:32pm]
