fragmentary

After a week of running around Friday I just couldn't do it anymore. I intended to go to the MOMA to see the Doug Aitken exhibition. But it was just too damn cold. I wimped out.

Instead, the RM and I came back to Brooklyn and hung out. We got Indian food and then stopped for drinks at a cute little bistro place and then rented movies and headed home.

The people at the Hollywood Video were eager to get home and were shouting at us, doing everything in their power to hustle us out of there. The RM's dvd would't play. It was scratched up and crapped out. I had the not very helpful suggestion of spitting on it and wiping it. Which she did and then it was worse than before. My bad.

I rented "Conversations with Other Women." It's about two people who meet at a wedding reception and how the evening evolves from there. The two people are Helena Bonham Carter and Aaron Eckhart. The movie is presented in a split screen format. The two sides of the screen show related things. Two camera angles, the scene and a flashback, two possible ways that the scene could play out, two halves of the same scene that merge and separate.

The skeptic in me can't help but get the feeling that the real reason they wanted to use the split screen was for the love scene. But it's actually a really interesting effect throughout. It brings something new to a story with old bones.

I suppose it is a chick flick. But not in the common boy meets girl formula. More like the sketchy outlines of a reinterpretation of melodrama. Added to that there is something so smart and sharp something so edgy about Bonham Carter's performance that rises above the conventions of a love story.

Besides which the chemistry between Eckhart and Bonham Carter is smokin' hot. That's some split screen love scene, Kids. *whew*

It is rare to see a movie about adults. It's rare to see a movie in which adults talk about anything. Dialogue ... even talky monology dialogue is in itself refreshing. I kinda like it.

I can feel many of my 36 years. Not all of them, but many. And in my bones I have a sense for what that means. And watching this movie I felt like I was watching characters who also carried that sense of their years.

In my 20's I had a sense endless possibility. In my 30's I have a sense of my limitations. Not the least of which is a concept of my own mortaility. And I have to say that I do not find this to be a bad thing. I bitch and moan about it endlessly but I will admit that interesting things come out of the process by which I press against those boundaries. Among these is feeling of identity and self-definition that I did not have before when I could not envision myself who I was or who I might become. Certainly there was loss in that process, but there was gain as well.

And where does this wisdom lead me? Nowhere. I have it but mostly choose not to use it.

On Saturday I did laundry, went to a Shochu tasting at the wine shop, chilled out with the RM at a coffee shop and then proceeded to drink like an idiot and do the kinds of things that idiots do when they drink.

We drank with a Scotsman. It was fun. If he is any representation of what it's like to drink with the Scots, I've got to find me some more Scotsmen to drink with.

Met a 25 year old boy. I seem to meet a lot of 25 year old boys. They seem to be all over NYC. Makes me kinda wish that I had moved here when I was 24. Nobody told me that this is where all the 25 year old boys live.

Drinks and early morning poker were a sure recipe for a painful Sunday. There's not much to say about Sunday. It snowed. (pretty snow) I caught up with friends over the phone and watched "The Great New Wonderful" which is not a brilliant comedy. It's more of a bore with a few good dramatic performances. Very static and cold. Needed more camera angles on the love scenes, I guess.