December 21, 1997

x The Paperwork.
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Movie Weekend

There are a lot of movies out there, I tell you.

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..previously on the Paperwork

Index of days
Dramatis personae
Glossary of terms

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I've been known to dream about movies before they come out, usually if I'm excited about seeing them (Pulp Fiction, Titanic) or if they've been so overhyped I feel like I've seen them already (Crimson Tide).

It's rare that I dream about a movie after I've seen it, but last night was spent with dreams and one terrible nightmare on board Titanic.

Yes, folks, I'm one of the hundreds who've lined up to see it this weekend, and clearly the movie made an impression on me: the ship dominated my thoughts all last night. I woke up at 3am, having had a nightmare involving drowning and the cold ocean and having no way out, and I couldn't get back to sleep until about 5 (and that was with an additional application of melatonin).

This said, Titanic is not a horror movie. It is a giant-scale movie-movie that is a romance in the first half and action-adventure in the second half--the two times I looked at my watch were: the midpoint (when Leonardo and Kate kiss), and at the end of Act II (when the boat hits the berg, and I hope that doesn't spoil it for anyone). But I didn't look at my watch because I was bored; I looked because I wanted to know how much time had gone by. It's all true: it doesn't feel like 3 hours.

Scale: grand. Action: plenty. Characters: nil. Everyone is a type in this flick, from the Irrepressible Young Society Woman to the Happy Poor People to the Noble Engineer to the Effete, Vicious Snob. Billy Zane should have taken Cameron aside and said, "James, could I have a character to play, please?"

The framing story, in which a group of modern-day treasure hunters go searching through the Titanic's wreck (I've read that those are actual shots of Titanic, for the most part): pretty good. The part where the treasure hunters explain how the boat sank: key.

Darin and I enjoyed ourselves mightily. As we waited in line--the last time I waited in this long a line for a movie: The Lost World--the guy in front of us said that the movie was worth the wait and didn't feel like 3 hours. He'd seen it Friday night. And was back Saturday afternoon for another looksee. I don't think we enjoyed it that much, but if Cameron can get the repeat audience...

Spoilerspoilerspoilerspoilerspoiler

Does anyone else think that Rose should have worn the necklace to bed that night so that it would be found in the morning, rather than tossing it over the side?

I wonder if I should put a spoiler on the spoilers page: The boat sinks.


The movie that we went to see Friday night was Tomorrow Never Dies. Rating: ennnh. As Darin put it, he'd tell you to rent TND on video and go see Titanic in the theatres. I knew that the movie was nothing special when one of the exotic locales turned out to be Hamburg, extraordinarily boring industrial city.

The action: okay. The quips: has Bond always killed people in spectacularly horrible ways and then made a joke about it? Both Darin and I were struck by the repeated sadism of various scenes. The villain: crazy as a loon and therefore not particularly serious, no matter how terrible his scheme. I say this being a very crazed fan of Jonathan Pryce's.

We had dinner Friday night at Cha Cha Cha in Encino. Rating: okay. Darin loved the fried plantains but thought the jerk seasoning was okay and didn't stand out. We didn't have anything spectacular there.

As Darin got very, very sick later that night, we probably won't be going back. I'm not sure it's due to the food, mind you, but it never hurts to be safe.


Today: we might go see Mousehunt.


Last night I went to bed right after we got in from the movie and had something to eat--around 8:30pm--because I had a terrible headache, the kind where I start massaging my scalp because I can feel my scalp muscles bunching up under the skin because the pain is so bad.

I guess that was a migraine. Except I don't have any visual cues, just a horrible, throbbing headache. But it's cured me of eating candy during a movie, I'll tell you that much.

The 
             Paperwork continues...

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Copyright ©1997 Diane Patterson