— पांच हजार नौ सौ चौरासी —
Last night was Action Movie Night at the Braeburn Condominiums theater, and it was my turn to choose. I went with
Collateral, making this the
fourth time I've watched it in the 22 years since its initial release.
I last watched it five years ago, and I discovered in my blog from the time that Shobhit watched it with me. When I told Shobhit this was my choice, he said, "Didn't we just watch that?" He must have been remembering when we watched it in 2021 but not realizing it was actually five years ago.
There's just something about that movie I really like, and keeps me revisiting it every several years. I never saw it in theaters, and I wish I had; I thus never reviewed it. I saw it the first time in 2005, and then again in 2010. After that, I watched it again in 2021, and then again in 2026. So there were five years between both my first and second time seeing it and my third and fourth time seeing it; there were 11 years between the second and third.
I'd say it holds up. What most amazed me was how much I had not remembered, even from when we watched it in 2021—particularly the famous people in it at the time who were not yet as famous as they are now: Jason Statham (in a single, very brief scene); Javier Bardem (in a single, much longer scene); Mark Ruffalo (who is fourth-billed but almost unrecognizable, except for his incredibly distinct voice).
People in the group tend to like my choices, but my choices are typically more unusual than this—
Collateral is actually closer to the higher-quality choices a lot of other guys in the group might make. I already have another choice lined up for next time, which will be more into the realm of the unexpected and the kind of thing the rest might not typically choose but I am confident will be received well.
Several regulars did not make it last night, and still we had a solid group of nine: Tony, Jake, Ryan, Chris B, Andy, Greg, Daniel, Shobhit, and me. Tony even texted me to ask if I had used the theater since the last Action Movie Night, clearly to get a pulse on what kind of technical difficulties we might encounter. I'm still convinced it was Greg's janky connection setup that was the problem last time (the same setup working for him twice before notwithstanding); I streamed a movie with Laney the weekend before last with no issues at all, and last night's movie was on a DVD checked out of the library so that lessened the potential for problems even more. The only worry there was whether other library users scratched up the disc, which did not appear to be the case. there was one minor blip with the audio one time, but otherwise the movie played just fine witho no problems.
There's another advantage to playing a disc on DVD. We never know what the movie is until it's started, but I feel it's more fun to learn it from the opening titles. When people start a movie streaming from their computers, the title comes up onscreen as soon as they hit play most of the time. Ironically,
Collateral actually has no opening titles at all. People had to ask later what the movie was called, as it didn't even come up before the end credits rolled.
— पांच हजार नौ सौ चौरासी —
— पांच हजार नौ सौ चौरासी —
I had walked home from work, and Shobhit was already well into making the pasta we took downstairs for the pre-movie potluck portion of the evening. Jake did ask me what I was reading now that I was done with the
Dune series, and I said, "Probably something you've never heard of." He half-jokingly said, "That's such a pretentious answer!" Well, it was true, and I can't help that. And when I told him I was reading a science fiction novel called
The Fortunate Fall, he admitted he had never heard of it. Frankly I'd have been stunned if he had; I had also never heard of it until it was recommended to me.
But, this did give me another opportunity to evangelize about Seattle Public Library's "
Your Next 5 Books" feature, because
The Fortunate Fall is the second of 5 recommendations I've gotten out of it. And so far, I'm absolutely delighted by the books I have read from it, none of which had I ever heard of before. I just can't say enough about what a great service this is.
Then Jake told us about a super corny "futuristic" novel he's reading that he found at a used book store, was written in the seventies and is set in the year 2028. He did not make it sound very good at all, but there's something engaging enough about it that he keeps reading—he said he's three quarters of the way through.
There wasn't a lot of other food brought this week, which is unusual—and the reason it's always best for Shobhit and me to bring food, to make sure there's something vegetarian for us to eat. Jake usually brings Dick's burgers but this week he just did Safeway cookies and a tube of Pringles potato chips. Daniel brought a cheese spanikopita, frozen from a grocery store as always, but it gave us another vegetarian thing to have some of. Daniel proudly displayed it to me and said, "I brought something vegetarian." I don't know if it was that or something else he brought into the theater to smack his lips on in his seat two chairs over from me during the movie.
Anyway, we had the movie going by maybe a quarter after 7:00, and it's a solid two hours—not super short but not overlong; the perfect length, really. I had to mention the recent movie
Crime 101 to everyone because it has such a similar vibe. I'm kicking myself now though, that I forgot to mention it
also stars Mark Ruffalo. Anyway I guess I'll get back to work now.
— पांच हजार नौ सौ चौरासी —
[posted 12:31pm]
