visit

A long-time friend (which is truer than saying "old") came to visit today and that is a great thing. Of course, since we talk fairly often, it's not as if we're not pretty much caught up on each other's lives. But there's something different about hanging out in person. Eating good food, going out to a movie. Totally good times.

The movie we saw tonight, Heights, was very enjoyable. I like this sort of movie -- several intersecting lives in a short span of time. Little slices of the human experience. There were only a couple of wince-worthy lines -- the worst when one of the characters said something like "you know, most places there's six degrees of separation but here in New York it's only two degrees" -- which sets you up for the intersections among the various characters, but seemed a bit unnecessary. It's a little New Yorky in that way, but not oppressively so. I found the characters interesting, their situations compelling. Relationships are complicated, and it's nice to see a film that tries to do justice to that complexity without subsuming everything to a traditional romantic plotline. There is a bit of that in the ending, yet it's not too heavyhanded. Some star names in this one (Glenn Close is surprisingly good) but it's the lesser-known people who really shine.

And, we saw some good previews. I really love watching previews in the theater -- and I hate watching them on those DVDs that force you to sit thru them before the menu. Odd. In the theater it's all about potential, the unlimitedness of the movies -- reassurance that there will always be more movies I want to see in the future. On the DVD, it just seems like wasting time to sit thru a trailer, whether or not I saw the film being advertised or not.