Tag Archives: Tom Hanks

Thursday Thoughts

Posted in Whimsies by

Premature Reporting?
Bec told me yesterday that when my blog post showed up on her email and she saw her picture, she was afraid I had written an obituary for her, just in case, and accidentally posted it. I assured her that I no obit prepared as I was fully confident in the skills of the surgeon and her own stubbornness regarding her surgery on Monday morning. “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” said Bec and Mark Twain.

Cookie Monster
I have two – count ‘em – two granddaughters who are Girl Scouts. Being the good grandparent that I am, I ordered five boxes of cookies from each. I swore this year I wouldn’t do it, and yet…..

The cookies are particularly onerous because my favorite cookie-eater Bill has given up sweets for Lent. So they sit on top of my desk, tempting me.  My plan is to divvy them out to myself until the weekend, and take any unopened boxes to our church food collection basket. Or maybe since she will be unable to protect herself, I will take a box or two to Bec.

I’m a Bit Chilly
I mentioned that we the owners of this home in Mesa, AZ, had to install a new air conditioner. For reasons I can’t quite explain, it also necessitated the need for a new furnace. It had something to do with, I don’t know, something. Anyway, for the first time since we arrived in AZ in January, I actually turned on the heat yesterday morning. While I promise I’m not complaining (Jen bitterly sent me a screen shot of the Weather Channel’s temperature indicating 1 degree yesterday morning in Fort Collins, Colorado), I still made a pot of chili this week. The highs will only be in the 50s. Bill and I have tickets for the home Spring Training baseball game between the Rockies and the Diamondbacks, and it might be a bit cool. I might even have to wear a sweatshirt over my Rockies shirt.

Pentagon Papers
Bill and I went to the movies yesterday and saw The Post. Never mind that Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep are such incredible actors. The story was fascinating. I was in high school when all of the Pentagon Papers stuff was going on, so I’m afraid I didn’t remember much about it. I will confess, however, that towards the end of the movie, when Katherine Graham/Meryl Streep makes the decision to publish the story and told her naysayers, “This is not my father’s paper; it is not my husband’s paper; this is MY paper now and I will make the decision based on what I think,” I literally let out a tiny little cheer. Very quiet. And I might have pumped my fist in the air. Just a little bit.

Angry Campers
The theater was filled with people about our age. We thought it would be empty because we were at a 4 o’clock showing and we thought people would be heading to their early dinner and the movie has been out for a while, but there was not a seat to be had. At one point, there was literally a yelling match between two men who were not even sitting in the same row. From what I could tell, one man didn’t have his phone turned off and kept getting either calls or texts. The other man yelled at him to turn off his phone. Yelled. A few moments later, he yelled at him again. The man with the offending phone yelled back, “I’m trying to figure out how to turn off my phone.” And you wonder why they get impatient with winter visitors.

At the Movies

Posted in Whimsies by

I’ve been feeling neglected the past few days because Bill has seemingly spent every free minute as of late with the other lady in his life – his pretty red sports car. He has actually worked at getting her running for the entire summer. He’s making progress, because I hear the engine running on occasion, but nevertheless, more packages with parts arrive from Amazon almost daily and every night he has grease under his fingernails. The postman has handed Bill so many packages containing parts that I’m pretty sure he thinks he is responsible in part for any progress Bill is making on the car.

Anyone who knows me would attest to the fact that I have been simply an angel of patience during this entire project. Oh, oops. That would be someone else because I have complained endlessly to the poor man. The good news is that my nagging goes in one of Bill’s ears and comes out the other. It’s why we have survived nearly 25 years of marriage – his ability to ignore my nags.

But he must have felt some degree of guilt, because he announced Saturday night that he had just purchased two tickets to go to a movie the next day that we have both been wanting to see – Sully, starring the endlessly talented Tom Hanks. I swear, Tom Hanks could play a tree and win an Academy Award.

The theater to which we went is a bit of a drive from our house, but totally worth it because RECLINING SEATS. The first time I saw a movie at this theater, I saw Boxtrolls with Addie, Alastair, Dagny, and Maggie Faith. We bought our tickets. We purchased our popcorn and candy and beverages. We moved into the theater and sat down. Suddenly I looked over to my right and noticed that Dagny was reclining.

Wait, what?

“How did you do that?” I asked her. She very patiently got up and before you could say Lazyboy, I was also reclining. I was so excited that I think she rolled her eyes but it was dark and I can’t say for sure.

Anyway, I have been reclining ever since, because RECLINING SEATS. It’s the only way to see a movie.

columtIt reminded me – as it will remind most baby boomers – about how different it was to watch movies in the days of our youth. Our one and only theater – cleverly called the Columbus Theater – got a new movie every week, and I saw every one that the Catholic Legion of Decency would allow me to see. If the Legion of Decency said no, then there was no point in even asking. There was one ticket booth, one concession counter selling popcorn, a few kinds of candy, and Coca Cola. No nachos, no hot dogs, no Sour Patch Kids, no San Pellegrino.  Popcorn, a Coke, and Milk Duds. Take it or leave it.

When you entered the theater, you were looking at a stage covered with heavy red velvet curtains that opened when the movie began. The seats were also covered in velvet. There was a balcony, probably for the people less interested in the movie and more interested in something else that the Legion of Decency would also disapprove of.

It’s true that they only showed a single movie, but it’s also true that the movie ran over and over. This dynamic is the background for one of my favorite Dad stories. As he tells it, when he was a young boy, he and his buddies would sneak into the theater by walking backwards into the exit as people were leaving. I suspect the theater owner, who knew the boys because his business was right across the street from my grandfather’s bakery, knew full well what they were doing. Just sayin….

As for the movie Sully, Oh. My. God. It was so good. If it wasn’t for the fact that I was reclining, I would have been on the edge of my seat the entire time. So worth seeing!

Even though I may never fly again because BIRDS. But I will go to the movies.

And by the way, as I searched for a photo of my old theater, I saw for the very first time (I swear this is true) how spectacular the artwork on the building is. I have never noticed this before….

colum2

Seriously. Pretty nice, even if it didn’t have reclining seats. It’s no longer a theater, by the way, but the city fathers and mothers seem unable to tear it down. I can’t blame them.

This post linked to the GRAND Social

Road to Perdition

Posted in Whimsies by

Road_to_Perdition_Film_PosterBack in the early 2000s, Bill and I went to see the film Road to Perdition at the movie theater. Very uncharacteristically, neither one of us knew the plot of the movie, knowing only that it starred one of our favorite film actors, Tom Hanks. We had seen him in many movies of course. In fact, we had seen him a couple of years before in Castaway. Though Bill probably wouldn’t admit it, we both liked him in Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail. (Bill was a big fan of Meg Ryan before she got so much plastic surgery that she looks more like Bozo the Clown than Meg Ryan. He always used to say she reminded him of me. I cling to that very thought. And at least most of my face isn’t tucked behind my ears.) Hanks had been the voice for Woody in Toy Story, for heavens’ sake. We seriously anticipated a lighthearted film, in fact had not a single notion that it would be anything but a sweet movie.

The film, of course, is the story of a mob enforcer and his young son who are out to avenge the murder of the rest of their family. It is horrifically violent, concluding with Tom Hanks dying in the arms of his son after successfully shooting their enemy in the face. About three-quarteres of the way through the movie, Bill leaned over to me and deadpanned, “Well, this is about the worst comedy I have ever seen in my life.” I began giggling so hard I thought they would kick me out of the theater.

So, just as Road House has become synonymous in our eyes with bad movies, Road to Perdition has become the term we use when a comedy isn’t funny.

Yesterday afternoon, Bill took a rare afternoon off from yard work. It was kind of chilly and overcast, and he mentioned he was feeling caught up with outdoor chores. I suggested he sit down with me and we could watch a Netflix movie. Much to my surprise, he agreed. After perusing all of our choices, we selected Million Dollar Baby, a 2004 boxing movie starring Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, and Hilary Swank. It’s not easy to find a movie we can both agree on, but Bill likes the sport of boxing and I like Clint Eastwood.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Neither one of us was anticipating a comedy. The story line was about a grouchy boxing manager who was estranged from his daughter, and who agrees to train Swank’s character for the title fight. It was fairly graphic, and got me wondering why on earth anyone would ever CHOOSE to be a boxer.

But about halfway through the movie, I began getting a bad feeling. Things were just moving along too positively for an academy-award-winning movie. Hollywood doesn’t do cheerful.

I have mentioned before that I hate books where a character to whom you have gotten attached dies of cancer or anything else. It simply irks the living daylight out of me. It is for that reason alone that I refuse to watch Steel Magnolias or Terms of Endearment. I hated Love Story. As many times as I’ve read Little Women, after my first reading, I skip the chapter where Beth dies.

As my bad feeling continued to grow, I picked up my iPad and googled the movie. Here’s what I learned….

SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT

In the title fight, Swank’s character trips over the stool that had been placed in the wrong position in the ring and BREAKS HER NECK. She becomes a quadriplegic. After months in the hospital, she develops such severe bed sores that she has to have one of her legs amputated. Her family comes to visit her ONLY after visiting Disneyland first, and ONLY to have her sign a paper signing all of her money to them. She apparently spends the last part of the movie begging Clint Eastwood to kill her, which he eventually does. The end.

I say “apparently” because it was about that time that I told Bill I was going upstairs to work on my computer.

“Why?” he asked me.

“Do you really want me to tell you?” I responded. He assured me he did.

“Well, let me put it this way,” I said. “It makes Road to Perdition look like a comedy.

And that, my friends, was the end of that. Life’s too short to go through that kind of movie-watching misery, even if it’s an excellent and award-winning movie. Bill put on his jacket and went outside and found some yard work to do, and I wrote this crabby blog post.

I’ll take Doris Day and Rock Hudson any day of the week.

search