Positive Press

We made a trip to the local mall today for errands, lunch and a movie.

While my wife was at an appointment, she suggested I go sit down somewhere, so I trekked to a good seat, and found a nice English breakfast tea with sweetener and milk at Andersen Bakery. The counter dude was nice to ask if I wanted the milk steamed. I thought that would make the brew too hot, but he said customers complained it was too cold otherwise.

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I figured I should go with his advice, so I took a chance and was rewarded. The moment I’d left my wife to her errand I realized how cold I was. The tea was hot, and she took a long while, so I sat at one of the tables in the common area and worked on my writing, games, puzzles, and tried to not stare too much at the beautiful ladies walking past.

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My wife done with her appointment, we headed to the cinema kiosk and purchased our movie tickets. She had asked me what I’d like to see, before we left home. I wanted to avoid the horror flicks, and she wanted to avoid some that I wanted to see, but we agreed on Last Breath, a film about a deep sea diver who encounters peril while trying to service an oil pipeline.

After a bit of window shopping, we headed to lunch and I got Ruby Thai Kitchen. Yelp only gives this eatery three stars, but the food is always good. Maybe it’s that they need to tighten things up: I did find a tiny chunk of bone in my meal. However, the pad Thai is always good, the spicy fish delicious and the eggplant tofu, well-prepared. This time I had steamed veggies rather than tofu, and they were perfectly cooked. All in all, a satisfactory meal, and a rather healthy one.

Pleasantly filled, we went upstairs to the theaters. I got kettle corn and an cookie ice cream sandwich, quite a haul, but we seldom go to the movies, so I allowed myself the splurge. It’s times like these I think of starving people in third world countries and hope I am doing enough for such people.

SPOILER ALERT:

The movie was okay, but I think, like some of my writing, the denouement was too quick. It was like the movie had a beginning and an ending but no middle. If the filmmakers wanted it to adhere to the truth, and there was no ‘middle’ to the story, they probably should have added a scene before the critical event showing an earlier mission that was successful. I am not sure I’ve every seen a major motion picture, or any movie, really, that built up (great) suspense, but went to the finish before building enough tension and lapsing enough time.

It was badly made, almost shockingly bad. But the good thing is the acting and direction were otherwise good, the characters interesting and the story incredible. I’m not sure how they botched it so badly, but this should have been apparent when the film was pre-screened. Maybe at that point the money ran out or the filmmakers didn’t want to pad the story. Either way, I was glad for no smut, no horror and no violence. It was a mall day where I had to guard my eyes more outside the theaters than in it, so I considered the experience a good one.

And in retrospect, I’ve been in situations where my umbilical snapped, and I was like an astronaut in space with a severed tether, reeling through space, unable to get back to base; in my mind, I’ve been loosed like that, and getting back is the greatest miracle in the world, so in retrospect, the story was more important than the prowess of the filmmaking.