How ironic that on the opening weekend of Twilight, which as everyone knows I’m dying to see, I ended up going to see a very different vampire movie on Friday night called Let the Right One In, a Swedish film of amazing lyrical beauty. The story is not so much about vampires (although it does focus on an aspect of the vampire legend that is rarely examined in any of the popular art forms) but rather about the relationship between two outcast 12-year-olds Eli and Oskar. The film is in limited release, so it may not be showing at a theater near you, but I highly recommend checking it out when it comes to video. P.S. – if you look at the IMDB link, don’t watch the movie clip, it gives away too much from a critical scene in the movie.
Speaking of Twilight, with its opening weekend of $70.6 million it joined a very exclusive club of Hollywood movies that turned a profit in its first three days of theatrical release (the film cost $37 million to make, and $30 to market). Best of all, the indie movie studio Summit Entertainment announced that it has green-lit a sequel to Twilight based on New Moon, the second book in the series. However, they’re going to have to do some major adaptation work to give the cast something to do, since most of the Cullen family is absent for nearly the entirety of the book, including reigning teen heartthrob Edward, played by Robert Pattinson.
Also on Friday, Polina (I’m going to start calling her by her nickname, Penny) came to see me for lunch at my office, and we shared a plate of eggplant and chicken at the local Chinese fast food stand, then came up to my office to have some of the leftover pumpkin pie from Thursday’s company Thanksgiving lunch. Saturday I took my family into the city for a museum day, which started at my favorite bagel store near my office where we had breakfast. Then we walked a few blocks to MOMA, where we saw the Van Gogh exhibit once more before it scatters back to the European museums the works came from.
We took the subway to Penn Station, and walked several blocks in the frigid wind to CoSM for a last look at the installation before it is shut down on Dec. 31 and moved to its permanent home in upstate New York, 65 miles north of Manhattan. I’d only been here once before on one of my early trips to the city with Tara, and it was a very moving experience to see this space again.
After our trip to the city we came home and had our family dinner, followed by a showing of Wall-E on the big screen projector. Every time I see that movie, I can’t help crying at the end, just like some of my all-time favorites, like A Beautiful Mind, Ben-Hur, and maybe one or two others whose names escape me. I hope it does well at the Oscars next year, as it deserves to.
Sunday I had a rest & recovery day, spent mostly doing laundry and on the couch in front of my 42-inch HDTV, watching basketball games and TV shows on my DVR and old 80s movies on DVD like The Final Countdown and Blue Thunder before my family came over in the evening for ice cream and watching Heroes and Saturday Night Live from the night before. I am so ready for the Thanksgiving holiday to start!
