where: CENTURY 14 VALLEJO in Vallejo, CA
when: Thursday, August 20th, 2009
show: 5:00 p.m.
costs: $7.25 Ticket + $3.75 small Diet ( w/ Barq's & Cherry flavors ) Coke + $2.05 bulk Chocolate-covered Peanuts Candy = $13.05
auditorium: 1
seat: 4th row, 6th column
synopsis: A supernatural wanderlust kind of love story.
Fate plays a cruel joke on Henry ( Eric Bana ), who suffers from what geneticist Dr. Kendrick ( Stephen Tobolowsky ) dubs "Chronal Impairment" which means that Henry cannot stay anchored in the present time as he uncontrollably teleports to the past and future times unexpectedly and in either the guise of his younger or older self. In other words, Henry finds the Present tense and the Past perfect; as for the Future ... let's just leave it for the movie to unfold. In one of his teleportations, he meets with his future wife, Clare ( Rachel McAdams ), in a creepy sort of way, since Henry only seems to teleport to his life's pivotal locations as if directed by Fate, itself. Through time, Henry and Clare bond and eventually get married. Soon, they have a daughter as Henry's teleportations become more and more frequent and last longer, and with a hint of urgency as their future slowly but surely approaches their present.
noteworthy scenes: 1.) Young and old Henrys meet for the first time; 2.) Clare and Henry at the library; 3.) Beau Thai Restaurant; 4.) Little Clare and Henry; 5.) The park; 6.) Clare's two room mates; 7.) The diary; 8.) The fight in an alley; 9.) The train ride; 10.) The visit with his dad; 11.) The proposal; 12.) The fateful talk with his future father-in-law; 13.) The wedding; 14.) The honeymoon; 15.) The picnic in the meadow; 16.) The lottery; 17.) The new home; 18.) The bad vision; 19.) The miscarriage; 20.) The genetic testing; 21.) The vasectomy; 22.) The first kiss; 23.) Dr. Kendrick's medical MRI finding; 24.) The final pregnancy; 25.) The museum meeting with Alba ( ? ); 26.) Alba's birthday party; 27.) The wheelchair; 28.) Picking a lock; 29.) The talk with Gomez ( Ron Livingston ); 30.) The deer hunt; and 31.) Alba, Henry and Clare in the meadow.
audience reaction: The women in the audience could be heard sniffling.
recommendation: You could earn "brownie points" if you take your significant other to see this date movie.
spoiler alert! If I were little Clare, I'd freak out and have nightmares for the rest of my life! How can one be in a relationship wherein "quality time" is capricious, at best? Only five million bucks? Come on, I'd easily do better than that if I were Henry. He never vanished whenever he was on the verge of or having an orgasm ( the movie implies this obviously enough ), so it was entirely possible for him to control his comings ( ahem! ) and goings ( Wham, bam! thank you, mam ...)--but, then again, he'd look like one horny pervert to all those around him if he were to employ this strategy ( it's bad enough that he teleports butt-naked, but to be "caught with his pants down and his hand in the cookie jar," so to speak, he'd most likely wish to just disappear into the woodwork right there and then ). He told his dad that he saw his mother die hundreds of times but was unable to prevent it from happening. Yet, according to this movie, a time traveler can interact with its younger self in physical ways so, by extension, can also physically interact with others physically located in the same area as his younger self. In other words, the time traveler can go back far enough so that an unpleasant event will be "set" in a Future Time in which case possibilities then become endless, i.e. if you change the circumstances leading up to an event, you alter that event in some particular way ( e.g. change the time of departure, change the mode of travel, change the route of travel, change the designated driver, alter the sequence of errands for that particular day, omit or cancel an appointment, add extra activities leading up to the event, eat or drink differently ( or abstain from either one) ,wear different clothing, carry different accessories, etc. ).
fyi: This movie reminds me of what the Germans call, Doppelganger , a body double that is supposed to be always behind you to prevent you from seeing it. Seeing one's own double is usually a sign of bad luck or even death, according to the Germans. In Norse mythology, they have a less sinister body double called a Vardoger who precedes a person and performs said person's actions in advance of the real person's actual performance. I guess this second example is related to Deja Vu, a belief that a person has already experienced something that said person is actually just experiencing for the first time.
If you've read my profile and/or followed my blog, you'd know by now that I am into meditation and spirituality. I started meditating over 35 years ago. When I was in my senior year of high school and for the next few years after that, I experienced countless unplanned out-of-body travels--easily in the low hundreds. And in those travels, I only saw myself clothed once--it was the only time that I looked down at my astral body--at other times, it "felt" as if I was just traveling about wearing only a pair of shorts. Out-of-body travels, scary for the most part as they were, I dreaded what would be the eventuality: Teleportation. I was afraid that it would just happen at the most inconvenient and unpredictable of times. I was afraid to use the toilet or take a shower for such reasons. Luckily for me, I never progressed to the teleportation level--knock on wood! Today, I can only have one out-of-body experience a year, at the most. A Taoist "monk" told me that I have relatively clean Chi to begin with and that such experiences do tend to subside and disappear the further along I go in my spiritual cultivation, and that I should just strive for stillness of mind and spirit as my ultimate goal.
word of advice: Life goes on.
"The best way to predict the future is ... to invent it!"
tidbits: Today, I went to Sir Speedy to check the proof on my second batch of movie reviewer business cards--there was a "typo" on the first batch, my eldest sister pointed it out to me--how embarrassing! I don't know how it escaped my notice these last four weeks. I had 500 made this time, not 1,000 as in the first batch. And the proof looks nice: My cards will be in green and red on a white background so that they will have a "christmasy feel" to them.
Tonight, I made Pesto for the first time even though I've known how to make it for years. Making it made me realize one thing: It is High in FAT, i.e. nut oil and olive oil! I don't think that I'll ever make this again.
