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Last night was Action Movie Night at the Braeburn Condos theater, and we had a good showing: nine people. Let's see if I can remember them all: Tony, Ryan, Chris B, Joe, Derek, Daniel, Shobhit, myself, and newcoming Britne. Jake, the only regular besides Tony who has been coming since the group's inception, had a rare week where he was out; had he made it like usual, we'd have had ten.
"Britne" is pronounced like my niece, "Britni," by the way. She's a Black woman, so we've added a dash more diversity to the group: before Shobhit and I started coming, literally all the regulars were straight guys. Besides Joe, who is Asian-American, I'm pretty sure they were even all straight white guys. For certain periods, anyway; I should be fair: there was a period where a Black guy named Rashid was coming; and for around a year Sean was bringing his friend Jesse, who is also a Black guy.
So far as I can tell, Shobhit and I were the first gay people to become regulars, and Britne would be the first Black woman. She struck me as pretty young, although she did talk about having bought a house in West Seattle, which makes me wonder if she just looks deceptively young—or, perhaps, she has a high-paying tech job or something and she's elbowed her way into the world of tech bros. Who knows! I'm fully aware I am largely speaking in generalities here.
. . . Huh. I just found her on LinkedIn. She's a Live Sports Program Manager at Amazon Prime Video. Well, I
was on the right track there. Her professional experience dates back to 2014, which would indicate she'd have likely graduated college ten years ago at the most recent, so she could easily be in her early thirties.
Anyway, I'm thinking about this through the lens of Action Movie Night attendee demographics. Last night alone, it was actually pretty diverse: at least three out of the nine were not White, which is a solid third (33.3%), and each of those three people were of different races. I can't speak to Britne's sexuality, except to say that, before she arrived and I finally asked: "Whose using the email with the name 'Brit-nay'?" And Tony told us it was a woman he met recently, and they wound up talking a long time about movies, "their partners" each having no interest. The thing is, plenty of people call their straight significant others "partner" these days. Gabriel refers to Lea that way. I have a feeling at least part of it is that people as old as we are now feel that "boyfriend" or "girlfriend" sounds more juvenile that the more mature sounding "partner."
Anyway, the movie discussion apparently had Tony convinced Britne would love Action Movie Night, and he both invited her and added her to the group email list. She emailed us all last time that she was unable to make it, and I think most of us had no idea who she was. I genuinely thought maybe it was one of the already-established regulars using a join account with . . . a partner! But, nope: Britne was a real person coming to Action Movie Night this week for real. She was very friendly, had a very warm presence, and had a very nice smile. And if she becomes a genuine regular, she'll be the only woman. She doesn't much seem like the type who will care about that though.
I was struck though, by Ryan at one point saying about a movie that came up in conversation (I forget which one): "That doesn't seem like a 'man movie." I have no idea if Britne had any sense of what he was talking about, but Ryan's been attending since 2016, and it must have still been being called "Man Movie Wednesday" at the time. I think that phrase is always going to be a minor sticking point for me, I find it so regressive. To the group's credit, they've always been very welcoming—and truly never judgmental about other people's movie picks. Certainly not like I fairly regularly am, at least privately, or here on this blog.
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Which brings us to this week's choice: it was Derek's turn to choose, and he presented us with the 1985 Jackie Chan movie
Police Story.
I did not like it much. I think I may have liked it at least slightly more if we hadn't watched it not with subtitles, but dubbed in English—which Shobhit, and clearly many others, prefer. But, while more recent movies have some better voice acting in dubbed dialogue on foreign language films, this one from 1985 had truly awful voice performances. To be fair, in all likelihood, the original Cantonese was not all that great in the performance department either. The movie existed entirely to showcase fantastic action and fight sequences.
And, I will concede that a lot of the action in it was pretty great. I just hated how often it was obivously on film they sped up slightly. And what passed for a story was unbearably corny. So, even though I totally get why that movie is loved by many, it just didn't do it for me. I gave it
two and a half stars on Letterboxd.
Also: the food Shobhit and I contributed was a pretty large batch of butternut squash ravioli. Three pizzas were brought by others, one of them vegetarian, and I had two slices of that. What I'm saying is, I had a shit load of carbs, on top of the three-shot rum and cherry Zevia cola cocktail I brought. So, I snoozed through a lot of the movie. I still caught most of the action set pieces though, including the mall Christmas light string stunt that the filmmakers were so obviously proud of, they repeated it three times.
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Today is the first day I've had without even a one-hour social engagement in a solid week: since last Thursday.
Shobhit has a work shift, so I'll be home alone for the evening; we already watched this week's episode of
Fargo after the movie last night, thanks to the movie being thankfully fairly short. I'll be making use of the time tonight doing laundry.
Exciting stuff!
I mentioned to Laney on Tuesday that I still feel just as busy right now as I did during the holidays. It's not actually the same, but it's somewhat close—but, by and large, I've shifted back to nearly all of it focusing on movies again. I plan to see another movie after work tomorrow, and another Saturday. At least my plans with Laney on Sunday are Happy Hour and not a movie, so that's a bit of mixing it up. Monday will shift to television focus, as that evening is the Emmy Awards, which occur after my colonoscopy that day. Tomorrow I start my low-fiber diet. Fun!
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Oh, one last thing: when Laney and I saw
All of Us Strangers on Tuesday, I really loved the soundtrack. I went searching for a soundtrack album, and was deeply disappointed to discover the only album is the film score. I did find some people who have already created playlists of the movie's soundtrack, which has been nice; I'm on my third listen to one of them right now as I write this.
But, the playlists that include the key tracks from the movie that I would feel are important, include
thirty-one tracks. Did that movie that was only an hour and forty-five minutes long really have that many needle drops? I'm eager to see the movie again just to figure this out. I want to create a playlist of just the tracks that are the most prominent or memorable needle drops, so it's more like a standard soundtrack album. I do like most of these 31 tracks, but it's a little much.
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[posted 12:31 pm]
