american whine story
Another evening last night filled with watching a movie and then writing the review: this time it was the documentary feature The Lost Leonardo, which I saw at the Regal Meridian at a 4:50 pm showing after work.
When I bought my ticket at the kiosk in the lobby, there was one other seat purchased. I never saw anyone else ever come into the theater, though. So, this time I got the entire theater to myself. I quite loved that experience. I still kept my face mask on though.
The movie itself was all right. I enjoyed it. I also enjoyed the freedom to exchange several messages with Ivan over Facebook Messenger. He wanted to watch American Crime Story: Impeachment, which premiered this week. I had assumed I could watch it on Hulu since it's an FX show, but after a bit of online research I discovered that, since it's also a Ryan Murphy produced show and he has exclusive streaming deals with Netflix, it isn't available on Hulu and is set to stream on Netflix instead in 2022. But! After I got home I discovered the Xfinity box still had the first episode available to watch on demand, and so I set the box to record the whole series, and Ivan and I can watch the first episode sometime this weekend.
Shobhit is getting all pissy about this show. "I don't want to watch that!" He's convinced it will denigrate Democrats, which is honestly preposterous. We'll see how it depicts Hillary, but frankly, you can talk until you're blue in the face about how good Bill Clinton was for our economy, but the man's administration has a legacy of anti-Black policies (notably the 1994 crime bill that caused even more skyrocketing incarceration of people of color), and far more relevantly here, the insanity on the part of Republicans in the wake of the Lewinsky scandal still doesn't change the fact that the man qualified as a sexual predator there, taking advantage of his position of power and absolutely victimizing Monica. And, this show is largely from her perspective, which she fucking deserves, no matter what knee-jerk reaction Shobhit might have.
He also tried to tell me the show is getting "really bad reviews," which is not in the least bit accurate, at least not on average. Some reviewers hated it (including some of my favorites, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, and The New York Times was mixed at best), but plenty have liked it a lot (The San Francisco Chronicle, CNN, The Boston Globe). At worst you could say the reviews are mixed, and I want to make up my own mind. The score on MetaCritic is 61, which they categorize as "generally favorable reviews." Shobhit just wants to come up with a reason to declare the show is bad before he even gives it a chance, because he is so protective of his beloved Hillary Clinton (and I see no reason to expect the show to outright shit on her in particular anyway).
That said! I absolutely do want to watch the show, but I kind of expect even my own reaction to be mixed at best. Ryan Murphy has an established history of shows that are totally mixed bags, often starting off strong and then going off the rails (last year's Hollywood being a prime example). Ivan declared last night that "That man is a genius," and that's way too far on the other side of the pendulum from where Shobhit is with this. My expectations are pretty squarely in the middle.
Anyway, Ivan had hoped maybe we could watch the first episode last night, but he left to get takeout very shortly after I got home from work, and then I discovered the premiere episode was nearly an hour and a half long. He was supposed to have last night off but then he picked up a shift again, so that left not enough time to squeeze it in. We'll watch it over the weekend.
Shobhit and I wound up watching another movie instead—another documentary, in fact, on MSNBC. We watched right after I finished the movie review, knowing I would be interested: It's called Memory Box: Echoes of 9/11. Being on MSNBC, I'm guessing it did not have a huge viewership, but I found it deeply affecting. The filmmaker created a literal box for people to step into and relate their stories about 9/11, people from New York and The Pentagon and even the Pennsylvania town near where United Flight 93 crashed, all of whom did this around a year after the 9/11 attacks happened. This was what most of the movie, maybe three quarters of it, consisted of, these archived testimonials, never before edited together like this.
But then, in the last half hour or so, several key people from those 2002 and 2003 video clips returned to reflect on it again, in a new "memory box," twenty years later. It was quite fascinating to see that, and to prompt me to reflect on the event again after twenty years. Being the twenty-year anniversary, there's a lot about that going around. I used to post thoughts about it yearly on my LiveJournal when the anniversary came, but then I stopped ages ago. You can only say so many new things every year for years on end.
I do see a clear difference, though, between how the country came together in the wake of 9/11, as opposed to how divided we have remained throughout the current pandemic (which is not discussed much at all in this film, but we do see people with masks on in the present-day clips). The difference, I think, is the collective shock and trauma of a singular event, plus the feeling of being attacked by outsiders. I mean, people have tried to blame the Chinese for COVID, and that racism still exists, but culturally it largely fizzled as compared to the anti-Muslim sentiment after 9/11. With the pandemic, with no real "enemy" to lay blame onto, and with the exponentially higher death count being so much more spread over both geography and time, it's a lot easier for people to make the conscious choice to turn a blind eye. And the lack of care for fellow citizens in that context is rather dispiriting, compared to the collective assistance that descended upon New York in 2001.
There's a clip of a Muslim woman in the film from 2002, talking about how she thinks something good might actually come out of it, that it might ultimately make the world better as we all help each other. It was pretty hard to see that kind of hope from the vantage point of 2021.
I don't know why I keep doing this. Once again, I forgot I had a FaceTime lunch with Karen! I think maybe this is easier for me to do because we still aren't back to meeting in person for lunches. I mentioned that when we hung out with her and Dave and Anita last weekend, and she mentioned something I never realized before: when she came to have lunch with me at Six-Seven at the Edgewater Hotel, it took her half an hour to get there from work and half an hour to get back, and she would have to integrate that into her work schedule. I'm sure we'll meet at a restaurant again at some point, but not having to do that when we just hop on FaceTime for our lunch hour is, I'm sure, a lot more convenient for her, so it will probably continue like this for the foreseeable future.
I just need to do better at paying attention to the schedule. The damned thing was on my Google Calendar, after all; it always is! But today, I think I also had it more on the brain that I have my next Happy Hour with Laney tonight. And that one, we're meeting for in person.
In any event, Karen attempted to FaceTime me when I was in the kitchen waiting for my lunch to finish in the microwave, sunglasses on my head, thinking I'd be eating out on the patio. Nope! I had to decline the call and then text her, One minute!
Then I took the lunch into the phone room near my desk, and we chatted for a good fifty minutes. Not a lot of pressing substance, except to say that her work life was just a bit upended when, only half an hour before, one of her five employees attempted to put in his notice due to a medical issue, and she convinced him just to take a medical leave of absence. Either way, it leaves a lot of her company's work load in the lurch.
We chatted about plenty of other stuff, of course. It was nice and pleasant as always, even after having already spent several hours with her at her new property in Tulalip only four days ago. Now though, I need to get back to work.
[posted 1:02 pm]