The weekend after Thanksgiving is generally pretty low-attendance at the box office, since everyone scurried out during the extended holiday weekend to see all the big shiny blockbusters. Didn’t you? I didn’t, but then I was in Boston eating beans and haddock and clam chowder and looking in the holiday-decorated windows at Filene’s and finding a winter hat that covers my ears without making me look like that chick in The Blair Witch Project. I ended up with the most irresistably adorable hat ever. Every time I put it on, my boyfriend stops whatever he is doing to kiss me. Yes, we’re kind of nauseating in that way sometimes. Better hope you don’t run into us on a cold day.
Anyway, the traditional drop in box office is probably the reason why hardly any new movies are opening this weekend. I guess the conventional wisdom is that we’re all planning to stay home, trim the tree, and watch some old holiday favorite on TV like It’s a Wonderful Life or Brazil. Screw the conventional wisdom, there are plenty of good movies still in theaters, from The Incredibles to The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie to Sideways. Austin theaters are still showing The Motorcycle Diaries, Kinsey, and I Heart Huckabees.
Holidailies update
FYI: I am running behind on setting up the Holidailies stuff this year. I will still do Holidailies this year, but I’m out of town and won’t be back until late Monday, which means nothing will get done before Tuesday night. So “updating in the month of December” may mean Dec. 6 (hey, it’s St. Nicholas’ Day) through Jan. 6 (hey, it’s Epiphany). Please be patient. I promise you I will update this site to let y’all know as soon as you can sign up for Holidailies.
Now I will go recover from too much turkey and forced social interaction. See y’all next week.
The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004)
The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie: 2004, dir. Sherm Cohen, Stephen Hillenburg, and Mark Osborne. Seen at Galaxy Highland 10 (Nov. 21).
(This is a spoiler-free review. Read away! Then go see the movie already.)
Oh, that wacky SpongeBob. We don’t even have cable TV and we like him. My boyfriend and I rented the Season 1 DVD a few months ago and spent the weekend watching waaay too much SpongeBob at once. It’s better to space out the episodes a little, something I will have to remember now that the Season 2 DVD is available.
It’s been a nasty, gray weekend in Austin and by Sunday afternoon we were sick of driving in it, sick of staying home and looking at it outside, and generally feeling bleah and grouchy. So we decided to see The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. It was also a good opportunity to try the Galaxy Highland theater, which several people had recommended very highly. Galaxy is a small chain with theaters that do not show commercials before the movies. I didn’t want to pick The Incredibles for our first movie there, because I am going to be pickier about sound and picture quality for that particular film, but I thought The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie would be a good choice.
no oyster dressing
This is the first year that my parents are spending Thanksgiving without any of their kids around. It would be easy to drown in pathos about how the kids all deserted them, but it’s not that easy.
It all started last year after my mom worked hard to host a Thanksgiving dinner that would include her sister’s family and my mom’s parents (my grandparents). Well, wait. It starts earlier than that.
movies this week: twoooo weeeeeks
I’m going out of town for Thanksgiving, so I’m not sure whether I will be able to write a “Movies this Week” next week. I don’t want to feel all that pressure on me to get it done, especially if I’ve been eating a lot of turkey and just want to nap.
So I thought I would do two weeks at once, folding next week’s movies into the current format with this week’s new films. This meant I had to face the scary nationwide Thanksgiving releases, for which I was unprepared. I had to be strong. I had to hang on. Or my mind might well snap … See, the whole thing has left me so unhinged that I am unintentionally paraphrasing Rocky Horror. Oliver Stone and Chris Columbus in the same week, it can’t be good for a girl.
My general opinion of the movie fare for the next two weeks is that if you live in Austin, you should check out the Dobie and the Alamo, or maybe go see The Incredibles. Otherwise, proceed at your own risk.
movies this week: pre-turkeys
I get so anxious about seeing all the movies I want to see and new ones are opening and most of them don’t look all that appealing to me, which is good because I’m still trying to figure out what we can fit into this weekend what with the Netflix rentals pouring in and some friends wanting to go to the “surprise” film at Mr. Sinus and if it’s the film I think it is, I’m dying to see what they do to it, and then there’s Fanny and Alexander at the Paramount that I know I ought to see but I’d much rather see The Incredibles but should we see it at Alamo Village, which I love but isn’t the greatest theater to see a big blockbuster-ish movie, but on the other hand won’t have any kids there, or do we force ourselves to deal with commercials and rude crowds so we can enjoy the perks of a bigger theater, and maybe we should wait until they add an outtakes reel anyway, plus everyone’s been telling me I must see Sideways and heaven only knows how much longer Dobie is going to show it, considering they took out Stage Beauty after only a week and are bringing back, I cannot believe this, Napoleon-fucking-Dynamite, instead of showing Kinsey or something new, for which I think they ought to lose their arthouse theater status, since they’re not even showing Undertow, which was written by an Austinite, but I’d have to go to Arbor Great Hills to see it, which I confess I haven’t been to since it reopened and I really should go even though their pre-show “The 2wenty” gives me migraines, not to mention that I’m trying to catch up on a particular film genre I’ve been neglecting and will have to go to Vulcan Video to rent those films and I’ve been spoiled by a mail-order DVD rental service where I do not have to speed across town at 10 pm to return a movie that I finished watching about 5 minutes earlier because I realized it was due back in the store, and hell, let’s face it, what a large part of me really wants to do is forget all this and just watch Shaun of the Dead again. Mmmmm. Zombies.
movies this week: let’s escape
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I sure could use some good old-fashioned escapism and entertainment. I’m in dire need of wit and humor and action and adventure and really wild things. And I notice that the ideal movie for these things is playing next week.
No, I didn’t mean The Incredibles. I am too annoyed by noisy crowds to brave a Pixar movie on opening weekend. Maybe in a couple of weeks.
I was thinking more of The Lady Eve, that delightful Preston Sturges comedy with Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda and Charles Coburn, which is being shown in Austin next week. Aren’t we lucky?
You know what kind of movie you want. Maybe you’re fortunate enough to find it in a theater this weekend. Maybe you have to go to Vulcan Video (or your local video store of choice) and dig around in the VHS section. But my advice to you is to find your favorite brand of escapism and indulge like mad.
(A special edition of Dr. Strangelove was released on DVD this week. That might be a particularly apt choice. On the other hand, it might seem a little too apt.)
movies this week: happy holidays
It’s always fun to pick movies associated with an upcoming holiday, and find a few to watch as part of the celebration. And as you know, one of the more important holidays is taking place this week, so I have been thinking about appropriate movies.
(Oh, geez, now she’s going to talk about scary movies again, and probably gush over Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi.)
Of course not. That has nothing to do with the holiday I am talking about. If there’s some lesser holiday involving skeletons and witches and ghosts, it pales in comparison.
(I get it now. She’s going to talk about patriotism and voting and apple-pie American films, probably gushing over The Candidate and Bob Roberts and maybe even Blaze. Give me a break.)
I am not. That’s not really a holiday anyway. And it is not as important as the upcoming holiday of holidays.
I am talking, of course, about my birthday.
The Hot Rock (1972)
The Hot Rock: 1972, dir. Peter Yates. Seen on DVD (Oct. 27).
This was another fun movie in a week surprisingly full of fun films. The Hot Rock isn’t a well-known film, despite its having starred Robert Redford, adapted by William Goldman (from a Donald Westlake novel) and directed by Peter Yates, who also directed Bullitt and Breaking Away (one of my favorite movies). Somehow this movie has been forgotten, which is a shame.
A couple of years ago, I went through a phase where I watched a lot of caper movies, heist movies, and con movies, and I don’t know why I stopped. (I don’t know why I started, either—it might have been Ocean’s Eleven or maybe my finding a copy of The Thief Who Came to Dinner.)
Galaxy Quest (1999)
Galaxy Quest: 1999, dir. Dean Perisot. Seen on DVD (Oct. 22).
After tiring of gruesome horror movies, this was just what we needed. Galaxy Quest is funny and cute and pretty smart too, smarter than I would have guessed.
Yeah, I know everyone else has seen this movie already, including my boyfriend, who promised I would like it. He mentioned something about Sigourney Weaver wearing a costume that gets more and more shredded as the movie continues, and that Tim Allen was pompous but that this fit his character perfectly and was actually enjoyable. That was about all I knew except that Star Trek jokes were somehow involved.