So last night Sara and I decided to kick back, shake loose, and also do several other hip slang terms that I really don’t think anyone is using anymore…
Dinner at Moe’s
No, no – not the tavern from The Simpsons, although that would’ve been cool. This was the snazzy Mexican place that people too trendy to eat at Taco Bell go, and also where we went because although not necessarily too trendy, Sara just refuses to eat at Taco Bell because she says that it’s gross. Granted, I love Taco Bell and couldn’t care less what the food that I’m calling a burrito actually is, but such is life sometimes.
The food was ok, and I suppose not too bad for the price – it’s just that these kinds of places (like Starbucks, Cold Stone, etc…) confuse me because these days everybody has to make up their own nominclenture. I can’t just order a burrito or a quaesidilla – instead I have to order San Juan’s Conquest del Grande or whatever. I even tried just ordering a beef burrito at the counter – the lady had no idea what I was talking about. Worst thing was she looked at me like I was the weird one! All in all I guess I’ll probably go back if I ever want to have Meixcan cuisine with the woman in tow, but when I’m flying solo it’s Taco Bell all the way!
Happy Feet – IMAX Edition
Yeah, so from there I got talked into seeing, of all things, Happy Feet. We went down to Channelside to see it at the IMAX Theater because I’m of the opinion that even the worst of films still look pretty good on IMAX, and luckily this one didn’t even end up being all that bad. Granted, I could’ve done with or without the plot – it didn’t really impress me all that much, but the CGI in it is arguably some of the best that I’ve ever seen and the gigantic screen really helped to bring that to life. Oh yeah, and all of the singing penguins? It was amusing for a minute, but I did think that they totally overdid it … and I know that the singing and dancing was a major component to the plot. I guess it just felt like they were capitalizing on the idea that people would get a kick out of animals singing and dancing to pop songs, so they made an entire movie out of it.
Nonetheless, I certainly didn’t hate it and Sara just loved it, and at the end of two hours that was good enough for me.
Cold Stone Creamery intermission
Because Sara got to see the movie that she wanted to see, she also agreed that it was only fair that I got to see something that I really liked, too, but we ended up having about 45 minutes to kill while they cleaned the theater and loaded the new reels. It was an evening of splurging, so we went downstairs and hit up Cold Stone for a delicious, albeit very cold treat! I had something along the lines of pumpkin pie – pumpkin ice cream, graham crackers, caramel and whipped cream toppings – and it was great. Mind you, just a tad less delicious than the ginger spice that I enjoyed a couple weeks ago when I got Sara’s cake, but still very good. We sat inside because it was too chilly to be outside without a few drinks in you, watched the holiday festivities (Channelside already has lights up, a Christmas tree, and they had somebody taking pictures with Santa), etc, etc…
Casino Royale on the BIG, big screen
Now I was actually planning on just waiting a few weeks and catching this either at the theater near us or the screens at Downtown Disney, but they were running a special viewing for opening weekend only where they would show a late night viewing on the IMAX screen. It’s not an IMAX-formatted movie, mind you, but still the screen is considerably larger than your conventional theater screen and if anything, Bond is one that you’ve just got to see on the big screen, right?
Well, that’s what I thought, but unfortunately it didn’t end up working out that way – not for anything to do with the size of the screen, but actually more so the volume that those immense IMAX speakers were being pushed at. You know how when you’re young, before you really appreciate music for much more than noise, and it’s pretty much the louder, the better? It literally felt like they had a couple of teenagers running the sound booth (maybe they did, for all we knew…) and they were enjoying “playing” with the IMAX theater so much that they just cranked everything. It was almost unbearable, to the point where I leaned over to Sara and yelled that we might have to leave if it didn’t settle down. It never did, but I guess after my eardrums blew, I just got used to it or something. It was really too bad because any smart audiophile knows that you don’t have to blare the music to make it sound great – just backing things off a couple of notches would’ve done wonders. It’s pretty bad when Happy Feet was mixed beautifully compared to this one… 🙁
But anyways, as for the movie itself … I don’t want to say too much because I am going to do a column on it in a week or so, but for the most part I guess it was just so-so for me. I do miss Pierce Brosnan and was very disappointed when I heard that they cut him loose a film early because he was one of the better Bonds in my eyes. I’m not entirely sold on Daniel Craig as the next Bond, but he wasn’t horrible either. I guess it just wasn’t very eventful because it didn’t really have the explosions and car chases of movies past – a good portion of this one wasn’t much more than watching celebrity poker…with guns, that is. I will say that they definitely pulled off telling the origin of Bond’s “ways” so to speak (cold-hearted, emotionless, etc…) – even though I wasn’t crazy about it by the end of the movie, I will admit that I definitely can’t blame him for becoming the super agent that he did! Ultimately, for any Bond fan I’d recommend seeing it just because it’s the new Bond movie, but just don’t be surprised when it doesn’t exactly have the bang that you’ve come to expect from most Bond flicks.
All in all, it was a very good night – one that we both needed very much so at that point! We didn’t get home until sometime after 2:30am and pretty much crashed as soon as we did. Overall a great way to spend a Saturday night and I’m glad I’ve got someone as great as Sara is to share this kind of stuff with…