It’s November, NaNoWriMo has begun, and when it came time to pick a movie for date night I said, “Let’s go have a long fancy dinner somewhere.” I couldn’t find anything I wanted to see that we hadn’t seen already. The movie probably start flying into the theaters fast and furious in a week or two, but for now there are very slim pickens.

Darin said, “I’d kinda like to see The Weather Man. It’s gotten good reviews.” So we went to see that.

Note to self: next time Darin talks about reviews, read them first.

The Weather Man is the story of a TV weatherman in Chicago (no, not a terrorist — that Weatherman movie might have been interesting), Dave Spritz (Nicolas Cage), whose life is falling apart. He’s divorced, and he doesn’t really know his kids: his overweight daughter who’s miserable in ballet class and smokes, and his teenaged son who’s attracted the unseemly attentions of his drug counselor. His father (Michael Caine) is a Pulitzer-prize winning author who makes Dave uncomfortable, because he feels like nothing he does is good enough. Everything makes Dave miserable: being recognized for being a TV weatherman, his relationship with his ex-wife, whether or not pursuing a job on a national morning show is a good idea. Dave’s emotional range goes from “blank affect” to “emotional constipation,” and the only time we seem him animated and happy is when he’s doing the weather map dance in front of a green screen.

The best scene is definitely the final one, and I’m not completely sure that’s not because it was the final damn scene of the movie.

Slowest. Movie. Ever. It’s cram-packed with actory goodness… Long stretches where the actors talk. Long scenes of people walking across snow. Nicolas Cage as his most nasal. I don’t want every movie to be full of slick dialogue or slam-cuts or problems neatly wrapped up in a bow after ninety minutes. But I’d like, I don’t know, something like an interesting character. Every single person had the same energy, the same languid affect. It felt like the director said, “Okay, take your time, take as long as you need to do this scene.”

The movie’s interminable. I went to the bathroom three times and I’m quite sure I didn’t miss anything.

Darin, for his part, liked the movie. I need to ask him why. No matter what his answer is, though, he never gets to pick a movie again. EVER.

Via the inimitable Making Light, here’s a trailer for The Shining cut to show it’s a feel-good family flick.L

In one of those weird tics of memory, I can’t remember whether I actually saw this in a film class or simply read about it, but I saw* one clip of film of a woman walking alone at night set to three different soundtracks: horror, so you knew she was being followed; romantic, so you’d think she was on her way to a romantic encounter; and a third I can’t remember at the moment. One clip of film, three completely different moods.

(I also feel as though I’ve seen Kuleshov’s famous montage experiment, but I know I’ve just heard about it.)

*You just read the caveat, right?

We were looking for something, anything, to see. Nothing appealed to one or the other of us for some reason. Finally I said, “Okay, we can see Wedding Crashers.” A movie Darin had wanted to see for some time, but I had been less than thrilled about.

“It’s at the Pruneyard. Where should we go for dinner?”

“The brewery?” The light dawned on me. “And I can drink beer, which will help me find the movie funny!”

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Wedding Crashers is the story of John and Jeremy (Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn), two divorce mediators (a great opening scene…and then their job is practically never mentioned again) who like to crash weddings so that they can meet chicks. We see a montage of them hitting every type of wedding (Jewish, Irish, Japanese) with appropriately stupid pseudonyms.

Finally they hit the motherlode: the wedding of the daughter of the Secretary of the Treasury, for some unknown reason played by Christopher Walken because it could have been played by any actor of the right age. Seriously, they did not need Walken for this role, but at least he’s working. John and Jeremy end up involved with the two other daughters of the Secretary. John’s belle (can’t remember her name or the actress’s name) is affianced to a total asshole, which makes us wonder after a while if she’s a complete moron for staying with him, and Jeremy’s belle turns out to be a psychotic stalker. Oh yes, and the Secretary’s son is a “homo” artist who develops a thing for Jeremy.

There is some funny stuff in the movie, particularly in the first half. But the gratuitous gay-bashing (as Darin put it, it felt like it came out of a movie out of the Fifties or something) was annoying, as was (as usual) the script that left the best ideas undeveloped and spent way, way too much time on stupid stuff. One element that is just left lying there is that John and Jeremy clearly like going to weddings, and not just ’cause they get laid. In the opening montage, we see that they have a blast at every single wedding they go to…but that element is never explored, never a factor. Instead, we get the foul-mouthed granny (I’m telling you: this movie is jam-packed with kneebusters from 1960). And I found John, our ostensible hero, rather annoying, because he never listens to what his friend is telling him, too busy focusing on his own romantic problems. One should never find Vince Vaughn preferable to Owen Wilson, but that’s what happened here.

Definitely wait for cable.

I cannot believe I’m actually waiting until this weekend, when we get The 40-year-old Virgin in theaters and at last we have something to go see.

§

I keep forgetting about the side effect of alcohol on me, which is, namely: that I sleep poorly, if at all. And I got up at 6 to go running with Rob.

“You spent five bucks on beer so you could spend twelve bucks on a stupid movie?” he asked.

It’s only ten per person these days, Rob. Clearly a bargain.

Ow. My poor dehydrated head.