The Bucket List

Saw the Bucket List in the theater last night. I had taken Peter to a snowboarding slope and instead of driving all the way home just to come back soon I stopped halfway at a suburban multiplex. Four bucks for a matinée. Not bad, but I do like to use the neighborhood theaters usually. I miss seeing most of my movies in the theater. There's a different experience. The sound, the size of the screen, the audience comments, and oddly enough, I really like to watch the credits for the names and for the fonts. It's an art form. Watching fonts, I mean.

My earliest theater memories are from when we lived in Maryland and I would go into Baltimore with Dad when he got the car serviced. For some reason, we always seemed to get there when the show was half over. We would go in, watch the last half and then stay for the next showing and watch the first half. I wonder if that accounts for why I tend to write somewhat inside out.

I saw Kathie's name on a movie credit list years ago. I don't remember what movie. It might have been a Western.

I do like to hear audience reactions. I saw Akeelah and the Bee in Augusta with Mom and Alan. The theater was full and we were the only white people. There was applause, not at the end of the movie, but at the end of a particular scene. I asked people in St. Paul who had seen it in a suburban theater (meaning no one but white people) if they heard any reaction. They said it was quiet. No clapping. Interesting difference that would not get noticed in Blockbusterland. Me? I clap for fonts.

When we lived in Portland, we would go to a neighborhood theater that showed mostly foreign or independent films. People would stay to the end just to clap when the symbol came up on the screen indicating a union projectionist. It was a highlight.

The Bucket List was not exactly a highlight, although it was funny to hear one older audience member comment on the number of younger people in the theater. I know which group everyone else falls into. The movie is definitely a tearjerker and very funny in places, but sillier in too many other places. I did like watching Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson act together. There now, I just gave Freeman top billing next to a white, male actor. Will it happen in the theater in my lifetime?

Nicholson isn't a big draw with the two resident teenage cynics, I mean critics. Well, maybe not. But Freeman is. They loved him as God and as the Voice in War of the Worlds. They also liked him in Glory. I like Freeman, too. Not so much Nicholson who seems to have the same roles in every movie.

The hospital scenes were meaningful to me. Not realistic, but in that I had just spent several days visiting with an elderly couple in the hospital while the husband was dying, I felt awed by how important end-of-life issues are.