Popcorn Not Included

Tonight, I went to see Date Night with Steve Carrell and Tina Fey. Well, I didn’t go with them to the movie, they were starring in it. I went with my husband. And while I loved the movie, I can say with complete certainty that Date Night will not be critically acclaimed nor be in the running for Best Picture at next year’s Academy Awards, so basically – it’s a must see! It was a hilarious and enjoyable waste of time, as is most of my time wasting. You always know it was worth taking out a second mortgage to afford a trip to the theater when you’re laughing so hard you cease breathing.

Movie theater ticket prices are in fact one of the primary references for me knowing how quickly I’m aging. Because I remember when movies, the evening showings mind you, were only $4.25. (Saying ‘mind you’ is another clue to the early stages of decrepitness) Granted movies were only worth $4.25 back then, whereas now, I’ll sometimes see something I like so much that I feel like I should leave a tip on the way out, in addition to the ten bucks I paid to get in. Movies have come a long way in the last twenty years. Well, technically they’ve come a long way in the last 600 years when you consider Christopher Columbus, et al., didn’t even have movies. Then again, would they have risked sailing over here after seeing Pirates of the Caribbean II, Dead Man’s Chest? I daresay they would not. It’s just that I’ve only been watching for the last couple of decades. And the advancements aren't only in special effects, which we can all admit are mind-boggling considering the dnuh-dnuh-dnuh sound in Jaws freaked us out back in the day and now we’re ducking our heads in the theater because we feel like we’re in the passenger’s seat of the Batmobile and Christian Bale thinks it’s a good idea to go under the semi. But there have also been drastic improvements in the scripts and the actors. Excuse me for not getting excited about Singin’ In The Rain when I could be watching Edward Cullen destroy a rival vampire in the quest to save his true love, whose very scent torments the boy night and day! And our movie stars are so much better looking than they were even twenty-five years ago. I mean come on early cinema, where are your Dicaprios? Have you not Brad Pitts?

Alas, the most important thing I have to impart from my trip to the theater is that I’m moving. Temporarily. You can reach me at the Wakefield 12 cinema through the end of summer. Because I really want to see every single movie that was previewed, and that never happens. They almost always throw in some random zombie movie where people’s jaws are coming unhinged that I most definitely wouldn’t see. Well, not this time. Hollywood has a big summer planned for us and I’m looking forward to enjoying many more movies.