Sunday, October 26, 2014

Men, Women, Children Movie

      This afternoon I went to see the movie 'Men, women, children' at the Lagoon in Minneapolis. This is a Jason Reitman-directed movie, and I like the ones he does. As we know, readers, he directed 'Up in the Air', one of my three favorites. This one is much like his others- covering real world issues, this time social media. There were some big-name actors in it, I quickly recognized Adam Sandler and Dennis Haysbert. I know the latter as doing Allstate insurance commercials, and much earlier he was the Cuban baseball player, Pedro, in 'Major League'. This movie did lead to some emotions coming to the surface, like one high school girl in it constantly dealt with her mom, played by Jennifer Garner. The mom was controlling her internet and social media profiles, wanting all of her passwords. It led to the girl hating her for it, and this is when I said to myself how one must let a teenager be a teenager. The setting of the movie was Texas, eventually revealed to be Austin, the capital city and home of their flagship state university. I know Reitman has done a teen movie before, 'Juno', and proves to be good at covering this demographic. I was doing my best to follow the inter-relation of all of the characters, how the teens knew each other as well as the parents. I am the type that stays for the closing credits. I liked some of the music in it and one of the songs was 'Die young' by Kesha. I do have one of her CD's. I am no doubt more impressed with this one than 'Labor Day'. The message of the movie in my opinion seemed to be that there was too much social media in our lives, it has taken over. At times we need to still have in-person contact. When one high school kid met with a counselor, the term 'RL'- real life- was used for this reason.
    Aside from 'Social network', which was largely about the rise of Facebook. I don't think there have been many movies about social media. This is why I sing the praises of Jason Reitman as a director, somebody I have called a 'Latter-day Norman Lear' before because both tackle some real-world social issues when few others are willing to. There were some movies covered in the previews that interest me, one of these was about the early life of Abraham Lincoln. Another was about women in the military, it appeared to be Israel. Still another was about saving Paris from destruction at the end of World War 2, called 'Diplomacy'. But when I go see an art house movie at the Lagoon or a companion theater like the Uptown or Edina, I usually like the previews a lot as those are movies I really enjoy.
   This was a busy day for me. I went to shop some more at the Rainbow Foods liquidation sale in West St. Paul. I got 17 items this week instead of 19, and a few non-food items like batteries for my camera and tall kitchen trash bags. And there was a DVD, Vince Vaughn's Wild West comedy show. Now I need to find the time to watch it, and unsure when this will be when I live 'The manic life of a comedian'. Then eventually it was on to some orientation for being an actor at a haunted house soon, the Soap Factory in Minneapolis. After the movie I went to the Hexagon bar and did a comedy set, mostly new jokes including one about being in Iowa City recently. I had dealt with somebody who was condescending to me. After the show I checked voicemail on my cellphone and noticed my dad had called. I had meant to call before so of course I called when I had the time. He said I was invited to Thanksgiving in Des Moines, IA, but I will likely find another place for dinner right here in the Twin Cities like last year.

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