Two more movies

This week has been crazy busy. For one thing, it's still the beginning of September. Elaine is getting used to a new school and Arthur's school misprinted the agenda books, so we don't know when the late starts or early dismissals are and the phone line isn't updated and the webpage is terribly out-of-date.

And then, I decided to go to the film festival.

Monday we saw The Company You Keep, a thriller for old people. It was quite exciting and intriguing and, like Cloud Atlas on the weekend, quite good to look at, with some great scenery for Julie Christie's hangout at Big Sur and the big ol' chase through the woods in Michigan. (Perhaps both were shot in British Columbia!)

One nagging thing is that the chronology is all wrong to me: the crime that Robert Redford and Susan Sarandon are charged with took place "around" 30 years ago. That was 1982. (Believe it or not.) They were members of the Weather Underground, which had sort of petered out about 10 years before that. (So maybe our movie takes place in 2000? No clues to that, unless gas at $3-something a gallon is a clue. No mention of Sept 11, no mention of the Occupy movement.) And they were student radicals at that point, so maybe 30 at the outside. Robert Redford is 76. Susan Sarandon is 65. But, quibbling aside, it was a fine way to spend an afternoon!

Tuesday the Ikea delivery truck came with all sorts of stuff to assist us with the moving around of bedrooms. Arthur got a new shelf/room divider which should make life easier for him down there in the basement, and we got new furniture for Elaine's new room. But! We can't set anything up for her for another 10 days because our painter is not available till then, and no point getting all excited till the room is lavender instead of sunflower yellow.

Yesterday, we figured that both of us going to a movie at dinnertime for two days in a row was maybe not a good idea, so the morning found me trading in a ticket at the box office, before a lunch date, before a movie. Yesterday's movie was called Beijing Flickers and it was a tale of a few friends in various states of misery in Beijing. Our hero's dog runs away, his girlfriend leaves him for a richer man, he tries to commit suicide but stands on the wrong railway track and the train just passes him by. And so it goes. Interesting.

Last year I saw three movies, and each one was better than the last. This year has certainly been a mixed bag so far, and none of the movies has been totally wonderful. Nothing has been bad, but nothing has been as super-fun as any of last year's picks.

Tomorrow I see Jayne Mansfield's Car. Another movie full of senior citizens -- Robert Duvall, John Hurt: what could go wrong?

Tonight Arthur and Stephen are going to Lunarcy! which promises to be "zany" and tomorrow night,  or is it Saturday, Stephen goes to The Lebanese Rocket Society, which should be "poignant" and "riveting." I'd like to see both of them, but then, there are another dozen movies I would like to see!

Ah, and I must tell you my knitting-related story! I was in line, waiting for The Company You Keep, and had to dig around in my pack for something... ticket, perhaps? So I took out my bike helmet and my knitting and whatever. The woman next to me, who was wearing a necklace sort of like this, asked me what I was knitting. So I told her it would be a hat, but my arm was sore and I was trying to be moderate. Her friend said I should learn to do things with my other hand (hint: not a knitter) and the first woman (a knitter) said, "Yes, that would be easier than being moderate!"