We had been wanting to show this one for a very long time, and last week felt like a good moment to big-up the ladies. After the presidential campaign during which the glass ceiling (what, exactly, is this glass ceiling?) had been cracked big time, but not yet broken, Alice serves as a reminder that this job was started long ago, and remains unfinished. Of course, that she chose to stay with the guy who slapped her unruly juvenile offspring, disappointed on some level, but perhaps more positively points out the pragmatism of the single mother. After all, her son wasn’t exactly unhappy about the prospect of not moving on.

Also… we’ve been pretty hard on Sarah Palin in the past few weeks, but we just wanted to make sure you knew that there’s no sexism involved.  Men can be absolute idiots as well, and we’re the first to admit it.

And thanks as always to “The Loud One” for your enthusiastic heartfelt laughter! It makes us all happy.

How funny that so many references in this movie from 1967 should be ironic and meaningful today, particularly Sydney Poitier’s hope that one day, his (yet-unconceived) mixed-race child could grow up to be the president of the USA. Thanks to the bumper crowd who turned up to enjoy this one, riding high on a wave of post-election euphoria.

Other noteworthy events of the evening:
-The prototypical, home-made, fold-up sofas had their MN debut, and were reported to be comfortable.
-Clinton did “The Hustle”.
-Karlis’ wait time returned to “normal”, after a month-long surge of quickness. Sorry!

The champagne happy hour was so successful that we’re thinking of making it a regular feature. Whaddaya think, folks?

I must confess that I had never watched more than a few minutes of this wonderful movie before screening it here. What a gem! Apparently, the US theatrical release was so badly butchered by the Hollywood studio that Polanski demanded that his name be removed from it. Happily for us, the DVD version reverted to its original European edit. But you knew that, didn’t you?

In other news…

Sofas: We should have some better seating options by next week, and even better the week after, if things go according to plan.

Cocktails: The “Vampyr” turned out to be such a tasty delight that it’s going to be added to the menu full time. That’ll keep us running to Trader Joe’s for blackberries, I guess. Yummy.

Contest: Watch out for the contest, which will return next week, along with the MovieNight Season Prize Raffle. Tickets will start off cheap (to reward the early adopters), and go up in price as we near the seaon finale (as a lesson to the procrastinators). Also, just in case Tory wins AGAIN, there will be 2 identical first prizes!

Lost and Found: A scarf. Please describe it if it’s yours, and I”ll put it aside.

This was some crazy, lovely, French isht from days gone by. Godard is sometimes not an easy pill to swallow, but this one was always entertaining. Godard, however, is almost always a pill one longs to swallow, even if occasionally (in our experience), having swallowed the pill, one longs for the antidote. Woah! What kind of metaphor is this? Sorry. We LOVE French films in general… we love France, in general… just thinking of Parisian rain drops beading up and trailing from back to front over the sexy black, hyper-waxed curves of a Citroên DS as it speeds around a frenzied Place de la Concorde and swings into the Champs Elysee makes me thankful to have been alive long enough to know about days long passed.

There was, however, the unpleasant, foreboding pressure of having to catch a 7:30 flight the next morning (Hey, “anon”, am I being pretentious again?),  which somewhat dampened our party spirits, for which I apologize… we just thought that a MovieNight with somewhat dampened spirits, followed by No MovieNight, would be better than two No MovieNights in a row.

Please bear with us, and thank you for your enthusiastic support.

What a great start to our new season! It was kind of odd to find oneself laughing a few seconds after the depiction of a cold-blooded murder… but I guess that can be attributed in large part (and we do mean large!) to the presence of Walter Matthau in the co-lead as the good guy. Thanks to Acacia (a.k.a. The Loud One) for suggesting this one. She gets on the scoreboard with a half a point (woohoo!)… the other half point goes to Bob, who made the original recommendation a few years back.

The Throwing Out of Sofas Five Six Seven
As for the seating situation… dare we say so fa so good? Karlis was spotted sitting on a table, but there were a couple of empty stools available. We will try to address the situation soon. The plan is to make three or four very comfy sofa/benches which will fold flat during the rest of the week and hang on the wall. Just no time! Hey… does anyone know a good, inexpensive upholstery place? We’re thinking corduroy.