Thursday was two movies: Chalk and Radio On. Chalk was a mockumentary of fictional high school teachers. Very amusing, if slightly superficial. Radio On is an old 1979 British art flick that has no real plot. The soundtrack was blarring and daring for its time--though not at all proper-appropriate for an 11pm to 12:30am choice. It was a terrible movie. It was a good film. It was saved on two merits:

1) The director of photography was brilliant and knew what he was doing. It wasn't "urban decay" like I was expecting, but pretty nonetheless.

2) I swear that a pre-famous Sting was in the film. The bloke looked just like a young version would.

Emily purposefully slept through Radio On and thought it was horrible; wanted to immediately leave. I'd asked her 3 or 4 times throughout if she was ok; she nodded and went back to using my shoulder as a pillow. This was a trend for later movies. I can't complain.

Friday consisted of just one film, where we'd originally made room for 3. I found out Emily has what I think is a strange aversion to standing in lines. Her reason is that one shouldn't stand in line for an hour where one may still not get a ticket. For one, 10-20 seats are usually available because various people don't show up. For another, there are some last minute seats set aside. She recently sent me a reply to an e-mail which had some things that'd stressed her out about the experience (after I asked her to elaborate), wherein she said most of her stress was probably just a neurosis about not wanting to miss anything good. She then cited not standing in line for these two friday movies. Being the fool I am, I have replied noting the above aversion.

That's longhand for we only saw Exiled. Exiled is a Hong Kong action film about 5 long-time friends who are members of the mafia. At first, two of them are gunning for the one guy with a family, on orders of their boss. Two others are trying to convince them not to. Through a series of events, they come together to do freelance work to get the hell out of Dodge--and then to kill their old boss after he kills the family guy in a nasty, foul manner. It was damn good. Not Emily's usual tea cup, but she really liked it too. I've come to find out she's got a curious mix of guy-type likes and woman-type likes. I guess I like Fiona Apple as much as I do the Dead Kennedys, so I can dig it. She slept through two small parts of it unintentionally, so we summarized the whole film together, with me taking the helm when she needed a section filled in. We were pleased we could remember an entire movie.

Throw in some post movie time together, some dinner here, lunch there, set to a boil, serve, wash. That was originally 'clean up', but this felt like a straight post.

Saturday. Saturday was in part a pain in the ass. It started out well, with us going to see In Great Silence. It's a nearly 3 hour film with very little dialogue looking at the daily lives of Carthusian monks in the French Alps. It's beautiful and somehow continually captivating. The peacefulness is palpable, and the scenes looking at walking through the nearby woodlands and mountains is fabulous. And seeing monks sleding down mountains using just their feet was funny.

The next part of saturday seemed simple: rather than seeing whatever we'd originally decided (a sold out movie, ooo, I know), she chose Radiant City as an alternative. I called the number listed in the guide for box office info. Fax machine noise. I called another number. No dice. We devised a plan. The following is a synopsis: I got to the box office at the Monona terrace, found out I needed cash, went to my local bank's ATM that'd somehow been surrounded by concrete, went to another one and found out my card was frozen (due to a security precaution on spending 300 bucks on clothes, I guess), tried out another ATM just in case, went to Emily's to complain, got comfort, tried straightening out the card thing, she got money from a friend upstairs (which in retrospect really should have felt more embarassing on my part), I went, got the tickets, and we went to see the movie.

Radiant City was really good. It better have been, right? It's another mockumentary on life in the new kinds of surburbs, interspersed with professors and writers who look at the social, economic, and other factors of people living in these places. It was funny and thoughtful. I'd say of anything it was the most informative for day-to-day living whatnot.

Between this and the next film, we headed to first the Brocach and then quickly the Old Fashioned (since there wasn't much at the Bro that interested her for eating). We met up with her friend Melissa there. We ordered a triumvirate of bad fried food: fries, onion rings, cheese curds. Cheese curds are like balls of mozarella cheese sticks. Wisconsin needs a better name for 'em. I stuck mostly to my fries. I did, however, blow 9 bucks on two vodka sunrises with Ketel One. Oh sweet Ketel One, like the quiet cousin in-between your rambling uncle Smirnov and traumatically wooden cousin Belvedere.

The last saturday film was Retribution. This was your standard Japanese supernatural flick. The Japanese have a strange obsession with people who have drowned at sea. It's kinda predictable: person drowns through cruelty; they come back, manipulate the living to kill people; kill people themselves; get put to rest or otherwise are neutralized. This movie mixed it up some with some good plot twists. Basically a police detective tries to tie together several murders with the same M.O., but then finds out the real reason why things aren't adding up in this or that fashion.

Quite good. Emily fell asleep for some sections here or there. It took awhile to explain what had happened because of the various plot twists, but she mostly understood by the time we reached her place.

I'll take this time to insert something none of you want to read, but I'd like to remind myself later on. You can skip this paragraph in case you'd rather not know or this is TMI territory. Regularly sleeping in the same bed with someone does take getting used to on my part, but I really like it. She tends to want to have sex more than I do. This has slightly annoyed me on a few occasions when I'd rather finish this movie or get out to this event on time than fuck. Yes, I really do mean that. The making out and sex is great, certainly, but I'm content with once a day. But as Brian and others have lovingly referred to it, apparently that's what new couples do a lot of. I still say I'd rather finish a movie first or get to a movie on time (which oddly enough was another stress point for Emily, even though she initiated near around the start time of saturday's film. She has a tendency to not be punctual. I'm on-time if I have to violate federal and state law both on and off-road).

Sunday was, to both our minds, the best day. It was relatively free of error and 3 of the 4 movies were good. We saw:

*Something Like Happiness. A Czech film where people are generally miserable and life is mostly fucked up. There are hopeful situations here and there, though. Some situations go straight to hell. Others stay golden, then go straight to hell, but then kinda come back toward the end but don't get resolved but may be resolved we don't know. Apparently foreign film makers have taken their directions from the French: you don't necessarily need an ending that makes sense, just a good place to stop the film and annoy Yanks used to kiss kiss bang bang. Fond as I am for lips and thick calibers.

*Israeli movie Emily picked semi-last minute. It told the story of two young Israeli soldier women. Basically a buddy film kinda sorta. I came away from this flick with two reactions:

1) The Israeli military seems unforgivably lax. Jerusalem is a war zone, yet these women carry on like they're serving guard duty at a Hooter's in Memphis. The superior officer is actually nice to them off-duty. At one point, one of the female leads leaves a post at a hotel of foreign folk helping in a festival to dance with some dude. She gets in the klink for a week and her parents come to give her cupcakes. The American military would court-martial and sue anyone who did something like that.

2) More as a general point of all the films I watched: young women in foreign countries seem to pick up on guys more than vice-versa. And rather aggressively sometimes. That is certainly not the case among Gen X. Gen Y or the Millenials may be different, but I guess my fellow cynics caught the proverbial dick caught in the car door. Young enough for the Feminist revolution, but too old for the glacially necessary 'doesn't that mean you need to, you know, not automatically take the submissive role' paradigm shift. I know, tragic. We can smoke paint chips and listen to In Utero on vinyl.

*The Lights before Dusk. Fucking awful.

*Ghosts of Cite Soleil. One of the best films I have ever seen. It follows the story of two gang leaders of Cite Soleil near Port-Au-Prince in Haiti, the most violent, crime-ridden ghetto in the world. The documentary follows their situation in 2004, from the good times of Aristide to when the rebels take over and basically begin hunting them down. They were Aristide's gangster militia, the chimeres (i.e. "ghosts"). Haiti has really been influenced by the rap movement in America. So it's no surprise that these guys have adopted the gansta look, grammar, vocabulary, and outlook on life. Even their names, as evidenced by 2Pac, 50 Cent, and several other soldiers bearing the name of famous rappers. Besides the fact that the film is fantastically edited, scored, and shot, the plot is amazing because it is real. How juvenile the leaders seem at first gives way to realizing that this shit is actually real; their situation actually happened. Every gun battle, tense moment, weapon shipment, food aid drop-off, and lots of interviews are captured. How the hell the film crew pulled this off without getting shot dead is beyond me. Absolutely awesome. Find this movie.

Afterward, I walked Emily home. She commented we were champions for doing 4 films in one day, and 10 films for the whole festival. I agreed and meant it. She had to get up for work so was going to bed around 10pm. I figured she could check out the framed prints sitting in the living room later, given that I need a second opinion about how good they look for showing. I did, however, show her the shots in my gallery online. First time I ever went through the photography spiel with her. She seemed to like them in general. Shortly thereafter, I climbed into bed with her. On weekdays when we see each other, there's been this standing tradition of mine to lay next to her until she's asleep. She falls asleep pretty quickly, where I meander back to my place shortly thereafter.

Monday was just fine, too, although Emily's going on in that e-mail about this or that thing that stressed her out some during the 4 days was slightly annoying. Granted, as I mentioned, she said most of it was just in her mind. I'm trying not to make much of it. I'll take overly fastidious and slightly obsessive with detail and plans over fucking insane any day.

Well at least for now, at any rate.

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