Funny? Yes. Interesting enough for MovieNight? Not so much. And the thought of Dustin Hoffman as a woman is still waking me up in the middle of the night. Yikes. It was, however, a good practice run to get the machine started up again after our summer hiatus. It’s good to be back.
The next feature will kick butt!
In the somewhat casually observed tradition of the MovieNight musical season finalé, we ended things for the summer with this riotously good/bad Russ Meyers piece. A good time was had by all, especially Tory, who made it three in a row with her raffle drawing win. Thank goodness we had the foresight to double up the prize this year!
Anyway, here’s how it played out: Each guest was asked to put their name on a slip of paper for a mini-pre-draw. The winner of this draw would win a small prize, and select the person to make the big draw. I made the mini-draw, and pulled Acacia’s name. Acacia decided to confront the “Tory problem” straight on, and designated Tory as the drawer. The first ticket drawn: #7107. It was Tory’s. The next 2 drawn were also Tory’s. Then came #7024. This belonged to Becca, who won this, her only ticket, as a “booby prize” from an early contest. This is pretty ironic, we think: Tory bought 27 tickets (out of a total of 111 sold) so it’s not surprising that she won. Becca’s win was one of life’s little surprises. Bottles of champagne were also won by Lynda and Lindsay.
BIG THANKS to all who supported us during the past season. I hope we can continue to deliver great Thursday night entertainment when we return in the fall. Bye for now.
In honor of our new puppy, Flea, we decided to do a repeat screening of the hysterically funny Christopher Guest mockumentary, Best in Show. In the end, we decided that Flea might be a bit overwhelmed by the substantial crowd. I’m sure he’ll introduce himself to y’all next season. He is heavenly.
It’s pretty safe to assume that you haven’t seen this, unless you were one of the 10 (yes, just ten) of us present at MovieNight. I’m trying not to take it personally… maybe you don’t like being scared silly? This well-crafted Spanish (what is it about Spain and horror movies that seems to work so well?) flick never had a US theatrical release, so we were excited to get our hands on a UK release. The US DVD release is set for July 14th, so if you like this kind of scary you should take a look.
Guess why it was never released in the US? Because an American version called Quarantine was released the year after [Rec] was made. And guess what; it blows, of course. The good news is that the original Spanish directors are making the sequel, [Rec]2. I can’t wait. The bad news is that Quarantine 2 is in development. I can wait.
Its http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1082868/
Let’s face it… more than enough has already been said about Blade Runner. It was a thrill to see it in HD on the new projector. More HD presentations to come!
You might want to skip this paragraph about our experience with HD disc formats, unless you’re a geek too…
Some of you may know that I scooped up a bargain Toshiba HD-DVD player for a mere $70, when the company announced that they were quitting the race against Sony’s Blu-ray (BD). Prior to that announcement, both technologies had entry-level players available for about $450. By nature, I felt bad for Toshiba, since the evidence pointed to their system being superior to Blu-ray, but that they had simply not been able to throw as much money into it as the giant Sony had… but then I remembered (showing my age here!) how Sony Betamax video tape system had been trounced by the inferior VHS standard and thought; maybe it’s Sony’s turn to win. The Toshiba player does a great job upscaling standard DVDs to near-HD quality, and it has proved to be a real asset to MovieNight. It’s hard/expensive to find movies in HD-DVD format, and rental is not an option, so a Blu-ray player will be coming soon. In the interim, prices have fallen dramatically. Sony has a good one for $250. Woohoo!
In other news… it has been brought to our attention that the invitation to Blade Runner was rather self-congratulatory in tone, and that I seemed a bit full of myself. Could this be true? I was certainly excited about the return of MovieNight after the last hiatus, and extremely excited to show this movie in its ultimate form, especially if there was the possibility that one or more of our guests might break their Blade Runner “cherry” at MovieNight. What do you think, readers?
Jeez, we miss having you here on Thursday night! In the meantime, we’ve been putting our time to good use… just for you! You’re gonna love the new, seasonal Watermelon Martini. It’s not quite perfect yet, but the experimentation continues. This guy is pretty nervous about it.