— पांच हजार दो सौ चौबीस —
I truly cannot remember the last time I was so disappointed by a movie I was so excited to see. Sam Neill and Laura Dern! Back together in a
Jurassic movie! Teaming up with the
Jurassic World team! When I first saw the trailer revealing this fact, I
literally got chills.
Well. It turns out the few quiet moments included in that trailer were the best moments either of those great actors, otherwise completely squandered and wasted, had in the whole movie.
I really figured at the very least that
Jurassic World Dominion would be a solid-B, if stupid, thrill ride, just as the previous two films had been. Somehow, I seemed to like it less even than either Alexia or Shobhit did. Shobhit is usually spot on when he guesses what grade I will give a movie, but he immediately guessed, "B? B-minus?"
I gave it
a C+. You could argue even that was generous, but there were still some thrilling sequences. But, the movie is too long, focuses way too much on the human characters, and all of the human characters are one-note and completely uncompelling. The thing that gets me the most about this is that, even six movies into the franchise, with more effort on the part of both the writers and the director, this movie
could have been a lot better. Instead, it was like they couldn't be bothered. Everyone involved is stopping just short of literally yawning while on the job, waiting for the inevitable paycheck. Anyway, you can read more detail about my thoughts on the movie in that review, which I spent a good hour writing after we got home at about 9:00.
The showtime was 6:00, but we all converged at The Braeburn at about 5:30. Alexia was driving back from her trip to Portland; I had been feeding Cassie twice a day since Sunday evening. Shobhit was returning from a visit with Louie and Steve. I was coming home from work, making the ill-advised decision to ride the #8 up Denny, thinking that would make better time due to it being the one transit option from work with no transfers.
Sometimes, it is. But yesterday, it absolutely would have been faster—if even only by ten minutes, which sometimes can make all the difference—had I just walked to the Monorail, transferred to Light Rail at Westlake Station, and then walked home from Capitol Hill Station. The key difference here is that both the Monorail and Light Rail, at least on its tunnel sections, are totally unaffected by street traffic. And traffic was horrendous early yesterday evening—something both Alexia and Shobhit agreed was due to the rain. After days of dry weather, it was much wetter than usual yesterday, and bizarrely, quite counter-intuitively, it often seems as though Seattleties actually have no clue how to drive in the rain. Alexia said she passed several car accidents on the freeway on the way up from Portland. I guess yesterday she had even gone further down to Salem first.
Denny Way, where my bus drove, was a shit show. At least two major intersections at which we moved so slowly that it was four or five light cycles before we finally got through the light. By the time we finally reached my stop at 15th Ave E & John, after the five blocks walking home it was 5:20. I might have gotten home all of five minutes later than that had I walked the entire way.
Maybe this is the note to self I need to remember: #8 bus up Denny
might make good time on a nice, sunny day. If it's raining? Don't try relying on street transit: either walk or take the Monorail and Light Rail.
Until all this, the general expectation was that we'd all walk downtown for the movie from home. Shobhit called me while I was on the bus and said he didn't want to walk in that rain and would happily just pay for parking. I texted Alexia and she just wrote back,
I will drive. She revealed later she had made the same decision: she had no intention of walking a mile in the rain. I totally still would have, but I guess I'm the only one. And Shobhit noted that taking the bus would have cost him as much as just paying for parking. I'm the only one with an annual transit pass.
When I got home, I happened to walk right past Alexia arriving at her door with her suitcases. She said she'd be ready at 5:30, but a few minutes later I texted her that Shobhit would also need to change before we left so I would text her when we were ready. We were headed downstairs to her car by about 5:35. I had quickly scarfed my leftover pizza from the night before, and Shobhit had a shot of whiskey. After we arrived at Pacific Place and made it to the fourth floor, Shobhit went into Johnny Rocket's and bought orders of fries and onion rings to go, so he'd have something to eat. I had some of it, and shouldn't have; after several days of steady, if minor, weight decline, I was back up about half a pound this morning. Shobhit expressed regret himself this morning, saying those onions rings and fries had been way too greasy and did not do well in his body.
Anyway. Both Alexia and I had been very excited. I did a rare thing and actually wore a T-shirt to work yesterday, as Alexia and I agreed while at the Seattle Pride at the Park event last Saturday that we would both dress for the occasion: I wore my classic-logo
Jurassic Park T-shirt. Last Saturday itself, while we were together, Alexia ordered a raptor T-shirt with CLEVER GIRL as the caption. It actually arrived yesterday! We couldn't find a poster before the movie so we took a selfie in front of some plants outside the theater, but then a digital poster had changed to
Jurassic World Dominion after the movie, so we got
a far better photo, thanks to Shobhit taking the picture for us.
Too bad the movie didn't live up to our excitement. Alexia didn't have any complaints, but neither did she rave about it. She was more vocal about her enjoyment of every other movie before this one. And this was the first one she went to see in a theater since the original
Jurassic Park! Well, I guess we can now move on to our next franchise for might nights at home.
— पांच हजार दो सौ चौबीस —
— पांच हजार दो सौ चौबीस —
I'm posting a lot later than usual today because I just had my twice-monthly FaceTime lunch with Karen, but she had a scheduling conflict at noon and so we had to push it back to 1:00.
We had a generally pleasant chat as always. I'm just annoyed that, after remembering it the last two times, I completely spaced bringing my iPad today. I had to chat with her on the much tinier screen on my phone. Plus, for some time, I kept hearing my voice coming out the speakers on her computer, but with a half-second delay. I could never hear myself think, any time I was speaking. I tried hanging up and calling her back, and it didn't fix the problem. So then
she hung up and called me back on her iPhone instead of her laptop, and that didn't fully fix it, but it was much better: I could still hear myself, but the volume was far lower. I could hear myself think while I spoke, anyway.
We talked a fair bit about the more finalized travel plans I've made since we last talked. I already told her about my Victoria and Denver plans, but now they are both actually booked: the hotel in Victoria, the flights to Denver and back next month. In fact I finally registered all the required information for the ArriveCAN app so I can present a QR code to the customs agent when we cross the border Sunday morning.
So, I have quite the busy weekend ahead. Shobhit's cousin Harshall is in town and we'll be meeting up with him in West Seattle tonight. I have Happy Hour in the park with Laney tomorrow afternoon. We leave for Victoria Sunday morning. I'm hoping we can leave early enough that we'll have time to hit Butchart Gardens on the way to Victoria from the ferry dock on Vancouver Island, as the Gardens are right along the way on that route. We can do Malahat Skywalk the next day, and we'll have High Tea at the Empress Hotel on Tuesday afternoon—something I have kind of amazingly never done, even though this will be my seventh visit to Victoria.
I'm very excited and eager to get this weekend rolling! God knows it should prove to be better success than last night did. I had fun writing my review, in any case.
— पांच हजार दो सौ चौबीस —
[posted 2:09 pm]
