Category: Movies

I am hyperventilating

A secret source with the initials “David Clark” brought me first the rumor, then the confirmation: Brick will be showing at the Baxter Avenue Theatres this Friday, June 2, at 12:50, 3:10, 5:30, 7:50 and 10:05. Normally I’d want to see it as soon as I left work, but I’d also like to see it with Maria, who has to electrocute children until after 8:00, and anyway I bet this is a movie better seen after dark.

SO! If you live in or around Louisville and love either a) me or b) good nasty detective stories, please show up at the Baxter for the 10:05 show! It will be a party! I will buy your popcorn!

This goes out to my posse in the 402.

Okay. As you probably know, I want to see a movie called Brick. Brick is ostensibly coming to the Baxter Avenue Theatres, but not on the release date (May 26) promised by Brick’s distributor, Focus Features. That’s because May 26 is part of Memorial Day weekend, when Baxter will be busy filling seats for movies that “anyone has heard of” and that “make money.”

The evidence suggests that Baxter now has a print of the film, but is holding off on showing it for the aforementioned financial reasons; it doesn’t help that Focus decided Brick wasn’t doing well enough to justify more publicity spending, and is now recycling prints by moving them from one theater to another instead of making new ones. If there’s no perceived market for Brick in Louisville, Louisville may not see Brick at all.

Every time I’ve called the management offices of the Baxter to confirm or deny a revised release date, they seem a little startled that I’ve even heard of it, much less that I know it’s scheduled to come here. One guy actually asked “how did you hear about that? A rumor? Where did you hear the rumor?” I would like to change that. I would like them to pick up the phone and go “are you calling about Brick too?”

So: if you live near Louisville and you have any interest at all in the movie, it would be neat if you called the management office at (502) 456-4404 and casually asked hey, Brick? Is that coming here? Oh, do you know when? Cool. No need to call if you don’t live around here, and no need to wheedle, threaten or cajole. Just ping a little data against the collective consciousness of whoever answers the phones over there.

Don’t all do it today, either; pick a time within the next week or so and put a little note in your datebook. People on the LJ feed can call dibs on days in the comments. Whatever. This whole operation is very casual, except if you don’t do it you don’t love me.

I really, really want to see Brick. I am going to print out some flyers and hang them down Bardstown Road. I am going to continue talking it up here until you’re all sick of it. I swear, I am going to make an event on Facebook.

I would like you to see it with me, and I’d like us both to have the chance.

Messing around with my lightbox and some of the more striking images from the Brick trailer. This isn’t quite what I want yet, but it’s getting there:

A girl in geisha makeup in front of a broken mirror, shielding her head.

The same image, reduced to three colors of construction paper.

Click for the 100k version.

There’s probably a Photoshop filter that does this automatically, but I don’t care. I’ll make a wallpaper or something out of this later, and I have more like it that I want to do. It is such a PRETTY trailer. Also, apparently it’s not coming out in Louisville this Friday after all, so I’ve got time to kill.

On my birthday party

To invite you to my birthday party is to hold you in high esteem. If you are reading this, you are a person of discerning taste, and are almost certainly invited to my birthday party. Michelle Kwan is, as previously mentioned, invited to my birthday party; so is Mindy Kaling, neé Chokalingam. Vincent Baker and televison’s Rob Thomas are invited to my birthday party. Maria and I watched P.S. last night, which has restored Laura Linney’s invitation to my birthday party, after a brief revocation involving The Mothman Prophecies. Tom Peterson of LEO Weekly is invited to my birthday party. Kelly Link and Emily Watson are each invited twice.

The obvious corollary is that mere joy or sexual allure are not enough to score an invitation–but being disinvited is not necessarily a slight. Hackers is not invited to my birthday party; it would spill soda on the ponies. M. Night Shyamalan has had his invitation taken away and put in my desk drawer until he makes a movie without a twist. The casts of Arrested Development and Firefly are invited to my birthday party, but only one at a time. We don’t want to lose focus.

The metaphorical birthday party we’re discussing here is not to be confused with my actual birthday parties, which are pretty much just like Tuesday Night Basketball except I get to go “whoo!” and think about death.

If you don’t already wish you were a baller then I bet you wish you did.

Basketball tonight is TURKEY DINNER FROM HELL! Night. We are making a turkey and all the fixings. Do not attempt to remind us that literally weeks remain before Thanksgiving. Your Earth time cannot hold the turkey. FROM HELL!

Speaking of conspiracies, we are going to go see HARRY POTTER ON THE DAMN IMAX and you should come with us. The November 18 2330 hrs (Stonybrook) show, to which a few of us have tickets, appears to have already sold out. I’m going to go out on a limb here, however, and say that my girlfriend might want to see it more than once. I’ll post the second showtime when I know it.

I make a very convincing Nazi

Lisa posted it way first, the how-fast-can-we-make-a-photocomic version (my estimate: five minutes in toto). I am a sneaky person who had the advantage of the original raw files to work with, so here’s mine, an hour and a half of work later:

Raiders of the Lost Ark in Three Panels

(SPOILERS)

"Let's see...  where did I leave that Ark of the Covenant?"

"Ah, just the Ark of the Covenant I was looking for."

"YAY DEATH"

On Saturday night, Maria, Michael and I went out and saw Serenity.

On Sunday, we went right back out and saw it again.