365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 330 (Friday 26 November 2010) - Birthday Movie Marathon Yeah!

One of the things my wonderful friend Jason and I love is seeing movies, and lots of them! Since he'd come down for my big birthday bash on Saturday night, we decided that my birthday weekend was crying out for one of our infrequent movie marathons - he lives in Brisbane making these events rare - and so I took the day off work, we selected the three movies and readied ourselves for a celluloid fest!

But before we did, we headed to South End, one of my favourite cafes in Erskineville with Fahmi and my lovely guy (Jason stayed the night at Fahmi's so my guy and I could enjoy our special birthday night out) for a yummy brunch; in my case of pea and haloumi pancakes and pineapple mint frappe. YUM!

Full as googs (they apparently overeat to an alarming degree) my beautiful guy dropped Fahmi, Jason & I off to Dendy Newtown on King Street and the flicker fiesta began in earnest at 9.30 a.m. with The American, an excellent slow burning drama starring George Clooney as a hit man on his last job who belatedly discovers, after a life time of emotionally isolating himself (his job didn't encourage warm and fuzzy socialising), the joys of love and intimacy with tragic results. It was one of those wonderful movies that you can immerse yourself in, so beautifully wrought was the dialogue, cinematography and acting.

We had 20 minutes between the end of that movie, and the start of the next one, Monsters, and so we dashed out to King Street, did some shopping in Fish Records, soaked up the busyness of the street, and then dove back into cinema land with a movie that isn't as obvious as it's title suggests. Instead of the usual monsters chasing down people with evil intent (I am no fan of those kinds of sci if / horror movies), Monsters tells the story of a NASA probe that breaks up over Mexico, spilling its contents into the biosphere. The creatures that emerge, rather like giant octopus, do not directly attack humans but merely react to their presence in their terriory. Interestingly the Mexicans don't have any choice but to stay put since they have no where else to go, but all the Westerners flee, and so it is that a young male journalist is asked to escort the boss's daughter back to safety in the USA. The movie, thus, is far more concerned with the growing bond between these two people, and their unusual road trip, than it is with the monsters who are background more than they are the central story. Beautifully crafted and well written and acted.

We dedided at that point that a reasonably substantial break was called for, and so we ate lunch at Sushi Train before walking home via all the furniture and second hand goods stores on the lower end of King Street before Jason and I crashed for a nap and some chill time. That meant that when my gorgeous guy turned up that night we were refreshed and ready for our next celluloid adventure, a quirky French movie called Copacabana, starring the incomparable Isabelle Hupert. She play s a quirky Bohemian woman who has spent her life doing as she pleases, with the result that when the movie opens she is broke, and shunned by her straight-laced daughter who doesn't invite her own mother to her wedding. Determined to prove her daughter's assessment of her wrong, she takes a job selling time share apartments in run down Ostende, Belgium, and to everyone's surprise does very well at it, while never quite shaking off her Bohemian sensibilities. It is one of those gorgeous character-based movies the French do so well, with lovely, but never, mawkish, heart and soul.

We followed our last excursion into cinematic escapism with a dinner of pizzas and wine at Cine (Fox Studios) before heading home and falling into a much needed dreamland!