I was forced to see “Drag Me to Hell” on Saturday night because my friend Beth and my dear boyfriend both wanted to see it, and I couldn’t very well allow them to go without me and risk Beth pretending to be scared and jumping into Kamran’s lap at the first sight of some old lady puking embalming fluid into Alison Lohman’s mouth or something.
I, to say the very least, don’t choose to see horror movies. I was talked into seeing “The Mothman Prophecies” in college and still hear voices coming out of the sink. I was talked into seeing “The Strangers” last year and, um, basically can no longer function as a normal human being. And yet my last two boyfriends have been major horror freaks. Only the last one was kind enough to watch his movies while I was away at work, while the current one seems to delight in forcing me to watch “House of 1000 Corpses” over and over again.
So naturally, I spent most of “Drag Me to Hell” with my chin tucked into my chest to ensure that I wouldn’t accidentally see something horrific with my peripheral vision. After the opening scene in which I actually jumped and then laughed for five minutes straight out of nervousness, I thought it best for the other patrons that I not look during, say, the entire parking garage bit. The great thing for me–but maybe not for people who actually like to be scared–is that the music in the movie totally lets you know when something terrifying’s going to happen. And the one or two times when it doesn’t let you know, you’re left applauding the director for fooling you. And I was glad for those few times in the end, too, because it meant that I had to watch at least a little of the gore. When I did, I realized that the movie was mostly just shocking, gross, and over-the-top rather than pee-your-pants scary. I didn’t think the plot was bad at all, either, and there’s a lot to be said for that.
There’s also a lot to be said for the theatre where we saw the movie, Village East Cinema. It seemed to be fairly modern from the outside, but there were old-fashioned box seats on the sides like you’d see in an opera house, and this was on the ceiling:
Now if only ticket prices could harken back to that era.
I’ve never seen a single episode of “Star Trek” in my life, so I was a little reticent about paying $20.50 to see the new movie on IMAX. But twelve of my co-workers were going, and I’m nothing if not a sucker for peer pressure, so I paid my monies, and I joined everyone at the Lincoln Center theatre on Saturday afternoon. The theatre was ginormous, but Jack and Dean spotted me from the very top row as soon as I walked in the lower doors, and after spending $13 on concessions and having one of my bra straps pop off, I settled in for a totally exhilarating, way-less-nerdy-than-expected movie.
I didn’t get all of the jokes, and all of the time flexibility stuff would’ve freaked me out had I not been dating a physicist for a couple of years now, but overall, I thought it was pretty rad. My friend Emily grew up on “Star Trek” and informed me that actually wasn’t nearly as geeky as I had presumed, but I think she just forgot what it really used to be like when faced with a new ship full of hot, young actors with the incredible ability of pulling themselves up off of cliffs with one hand repeatedly. And I don’t blame her, really, because:
And you? Trekkie, newbie-who’s-interested-in-seeing-the-movie, or still bewildered by all of the good reviews?
My friend Beth and I went to see Adventureland last night in its last night at the theatre near Union Square. It features Bill Hader, who I have totally seen twice while living in New York, but even without an appearance by one of my very best friends I’ve never actually spoken to, it was a seriously great movie: funny, beautiful, and very touching.
I’m not going to spoil anything for you, but I loved that New York–where I live now–was idling in the background while the characters lived out their lives in the Midwest, where I’m from. Everything they did felt so familiar to me, so college-y and carefree, and I got very nostalgic for those simpler days when I was all idealistic about what I’d make of myself. At the same time, the relationship in it felt so much like what I have now with the good doctor; all of the excitement and the closeness they felt was exactly what I feel with Kamran. There was a point when Kristen Stewart–who is totally great in this movie, for all of you who hated her after Twilight (which I didn’t see but heard horrible things about)–looks at Jesse Eisenberg and says something like, “You’re the coolest boy I’ve ever met. And the cutest.” And I totally made out with Beth at that moment and pretended it was Kamran, because that’s just what I think about him.
ANYWAY, did anyone else see this thing? Am I the only one who liked it?
I forgot to tell you that a couple of weeks ago, I was picking Dr. Boyfriend up from law school, and after a stop at the Whole Foods in Columbus Circle for dinner at the hot bar, we exited the Time Warner Center to find a movie being filmed.
We obviously think celebrity is lame, but we couldn’t help trying to get a look at the actors to see what the fuss was all about. The whole sidewalk was roped off, stage lights were set up all around, and limos were pulled up to every curb. It turned out that Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant were filming some new movie called Did You Hear About the Morgans?. Greeeeeat title, huh?
Of course, Sarah Jessica and Hugh weren’t actually anywhere in sight. It was merely their stand-ins rehearsing the scene while they likely sat in their limos–Sarah Jessica calling home to Ohio, Hugh wondering how he was going to get past kissing Sarah Jessica’s horsey face without losing his lunch. But the crowd, of course, was still totally enthralled.
I doubt I’ll add their stand-ins to my list of famous people I’ve seen while living in NYC, but if Kamran keeps running into Keanu Reeves and Eliot Spitzer, I might get desperate for something to talk about.
Things aren’t as joyous around here as I’m used to. I’m blaming the winter. I’m hoping it’s the winter.
On Saturday night, I went out for what was supposed to be a wild girls’ night involving all six of my closest NYC ladyfriends. One by one, though, they had to work or had delayed flights back from business trips or had to “pick something up in Brooklyn” (what?), so it ended up being just Emily, Sonya, and Jessica. We went to dinner at BonChon for chicken that is both “tasteful” and “nutritiously enriched”. I don’t know what either of those words mean, but it was a damned fine chicken wing they were serving. It was so weird, though–the place was on the second floor of an unmarked office building, yet it was crowded with greasy-fingered eaters. It’s funny how Asian people somehow convince white folk to sneak into secret rooms for designer knockoff purses and into elevators of seemingly empty offices for sesame-glazed drumsticks.
After not even finishing one plate of wings and rosemary French fries, we went to Karaoke Duet to sing our hearts out in a private room. Karaoke usually means Emily doing the humpty dance, Beth–the whitest person you know–somehow knowing all the words to every Kanye song, and me . . . okay, I always sing sad 90s songs. But this time, EVERYONE was singing sad 90s songs. We actually kept apologizing to each other for choosing them, but we couldn’t stop.
I stood up at one point to take a picture of the three of them leaning back against the mustard-colored vinyl couch, completely sullen, but as soon as they saw the camera, they all became totally fake-animated:
Look at this! Jessica went as far as pretending to sing into her closed fist.
The really depressing part of the night was that karaoke had been half price before 8 p.m., so we’d gone to dinner at 4 to give ourselves plenty of time to sing for cheap. Which meant that we were finished hanging out at 8:30. Sonya went off to see crappy Asian movies with her boyfriend, Jessica went to meet up with her similarly-German friends to eat some weiner schnitzel or something (wait, is that Austrian?), and Emily came back to Kamran’s with me to gel her hair before a hot date. I had really wanted to go dancing, but when we got to Kamran’s and found him already in bed with his pajamas on, I lost all energy.
On Saturday, we watched Brick, which I didn’t know was a neo-noir when I added it to my Netflix queue. Despite hearing good things, we were both set to hate it and had pretty well succeeded after ten minutes, but once the story started making sense, we found ourselves warming up. Halfway through, I said, “I don’t hate watching this movie,” and he agreed. And then we ended up liking it. I don’t quite think that Joseph Gordon-Levitt actually needed to impersonate Humphrey Bogart during the last ten minutes for us to get that it was supposed to be a noir, but the interesting–sometimes annoying, but always interesting–wordplay throughout the film made us forgive that. Still, total bummer.
On Sunday, we watched the John Cassavetes film A Woman Under the Influence, and I pretty much cried the entire way through it. I thought it weird when we paused it so Kamran could go to the bathroom and I found myself lying down on his couch and leaking a couple of tears into his red satin pillows, but by the time an hour had passed, I was in full-on sob mode and had to ask Kam to stop staring at me so I could concentrate on not killing myself. It was seriously the bleakest movie I’ve ever seen. It’s what Revolutionary Road was trying to be and totally failed at. You don’t know who to blame for everything that happens in it, and you want to give all of the characters a Valium. We debated abandoning it with thirty minutes lef but decided we had to know what happened. When we finished, I said, “Let’s watch it again with commentary!”, and Kamran said, “I’m not watching that again. EVER.”
On Monday afternoon, my Internet randomly went down at work–only mine, mind you–and that’s when I found out that my laptop had 13 viruses and had been banned from the network by my IT guy. I spent two entire days without access to my photos, my music, and my smut. I don’t check my blog visitor count every ten seconds like I used to, I don’t have the motivation to write for Examiner.com, and I find myself unable to listen to anything but super-poppy songs like this:
On the bright side, what had better be the last snow of the season just passed, and soon it’ll be warm enough for me to wear the PINK SATIN COAT my sister bought me for Christmas:
I'm Katie, a farmgirl originally from Ohio who moved to NYC in 2005 for no apparent reason. I like vintage-looking things that are actually new, filagree everything, people who don't make me feel awkward, meaning it when I say "no sleep till Brooklyn", and not trying too hard.
