watching film

Interview scheduled for Monday.

Do you suppose that's bad luck? I mean, we all know about Mondays, don't we?

Last night, my roommate and I wandered over to the little independent movie rental place that lives on the corner of El Camino next to Taqueria el Greasinit, (my name for it, not theirs), and came triumphantly away with three DVDs and a flirtatious film nerd. That is to say, we actually retained the three DVDs. The flirtatious film nerd was my roommate's acquisition, proving -- as though we needed any proof for something so self-evident -- that even film nerds can have a soft spot for gorgeous Korean women with perfect teeth.

I have a personal fondness for small, independently owned video stores, the lifeblood of the film rental industry and the salvation of the film goer who wants to watch a movie that is more than six degrees from Kevin Bacon. Being just off of a main thoroughfare, we have easy and convenient access to both a Hollywood Videos and a Blockbuster, both dimly lit and poorly stocked, not to mention homogenous in their selections.

There is no excitement in going to either Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. Our local Blockbuster attempts to minimize all possibility of interest by filling out its staff with horny acne-riddled teenagers, who ogle the large-breasted jailbait that occasionally come giggling into the store. As a general rule, they pretty much destroy all my best hopes for the future of humanity. The movies that can be picked up in Blockbuster are precisely the same as the movies that can be picked up in Hollywood Video. There is no surprise. "Oh," you'll never think, picking up a DVD case. "This is that rare, uncensored recording of 'La Boisse' that made such a sensation in France and began the whole neo-ferrari-poop movement in film." The films at Blockbuster and Hollywood Video are of a far more mundane sort, available even in the checkout lines of Safeway. Incidentally, they are also the same movies that came out on video and DVD as blockbusters four years ago, still inexplicably listed under the "New Releases" section of the rental display.

Independently owned movie rental stores carry independent films. They carry television series not seen since the '80s, and foreign films that won awards in foreign places, where foreigners actually watch movies. They carry films that might have dubious artistic merit, next to movies that revolutionalized movie-making. They have movies that have never hit the american movie theatre chains, (being too artistic or too foreign or, horrors, too intelligent) and even better, staff themselves with people who actually care about movies.

In fact, the only complaint I have with independently owned movie rental stores is that it's usually very difficult to find anything there. This is because they actually carry movies, plural. The reason it's always easy to find everything in Blockbuster and Hollywood Video is that they don't carry movies, plural. They carry four hundred copies of movie, singular, incidentally the top block buster draw in theatres across America half a year ago.

It is the unavowed resolution of Blockbuster and Hollywood Video to eliminate the independent movie rental store. It is our mission to stop them.

So anyway, we patronize the Movie Groove, down the street. We got three DVDs. We've watched two. They're due today. I'll get around to the last one tonight.

That's all.

What, you want more from me? Give it up. I'm sleepy. I'm going to take a nap.

I can do that, see. I'm unemployed.

No, wait. I do have one more thing to say on the subject of movies. I have a pretty vanilla taste in my films; all I demand is that it not be actively insulting to my intelligence, and I'll be okay with watching it, more or less.

On the subject of the Academy Awards, I would like to announce that I have absolutely no interest in who wins and who doesn't win.

This is why.

I've mentioned before that I've been in multiple piano competitions, and I've won most of them. This is because I was (cough) really a very good piano player. However, the thing about any artistic medium is that the stuff that's really great, the brilliant work, the groundbreaking work, is also usually the controversial work, the stuff with personality.

Committees hate personality. It's the nature of committees to punish personality.

Even if a committee wanted to, they couldn't do anything else. Any work that's outstanding enough to be brilliant is also, by the very fact of being brilliant, going to inspire strong emotions: passionate love, equally passionate hate. Passionate loves score high. Passionate hates score low. On the other hand, art that's not brilliant but rather Good, in the sense that it doesn't really offend but is actually quite good on its own merits, is not going to inspire the depths of passion that brilliant work does. Thus, it scores above average across the board.

You see how that works out? The brilliance loses. The pretty good wins the day.

I'm not even going to go into the Cliburn competition and the past two or three winners of it. I'm just saying.

Yeah.

Naptime now.