refined red wine is divine by the Rhine

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Did you ever notice how odd coincidence and synchronicity ends up being sometimes? For instance, you are thinking about a plate of shrimp and someone around you says “plate” or “shrimp” or “plate of shrimp.” Or you are fascinated with the number 5 and end up seeing it everywhere: 5 steps to the front porch, you work on the 23rd floor (2+3=5), etc. It’s all part of the lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything.

On Friday, I saw the opening of Spiderman. It was a good movie–not a masterpiece that will go down in history, but a fun action film with a decent dose of story. While out on Friday, I remembered that Kate and I had some DVDs at home that I wanted to watch over the weekend (thanks, Netflix!). On Satuday, I popped in the first DVD–Pleasantville. I had never seen this before and had only barely heard of it. The concept was cool, the effects were great, the ending was a little flat. It stared the guy that stared in Spiderman. Kind of weird. The closing credits ended with a Fiona Apple cover of a Beatles song that I like (and that They Might Be Giants snagged a line from). I ended up getting on AudioGalaxy and downloading several different covers of the song. Sunday, Kate and I popped in Goonies. Of course, you already know, this is a wonderful movie! The best of the best! The DVD had all sorts of extras. I had to watch every single extra bit while Kate rolled her eyes (okay, she was about 5 when it came out, so admittedly was not as obsessed with it as my friends and I were back then). The DVD had a wacky Cyndi Lauper video that was so incredibly 80’s–complete with WWF wrestlers. Going back to the AudioGalaxy downloads, one of the covers (I just blindly selected a bunch without taking special notice of the artists) was by Cyndi Lauper. The next DVD was Magnolia (another I had never seen and barely heard of–okay, so I live in a bubble). It had the William H. Macy connection back to Pleasantville, plus was about the weird bits of synchronicity. Overall, though, I think it sucked. Some of the characters were really well done, but the plot as a whole really did not do it for me. That, and the ending just kind of played the “deus ex machina” wildcard to magically tie all plotlines together. Sometimes that works. This time it sucked.

Yeah, so that was my movie-filled weekend of coincidence. Oh, by the way, one of the bad guys on The Goonies is Teddy from Memento or Cypher from The Matrix. He’s also on The Sopranos (which I am watching right now).

Posted in: Movies

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