Wednesday, May 5, 2010

A couple of weeks ago we got the Netflix for Wii disc that allows us to watch streaming movies on our TV. Best. thing. ever. We really need to bite the bullet and get rid of cable. We've been talking about it for a while and just haven't gotten around to it. I do want to make sure we can still get local channels once we drop it. The Netflix Instant Watch selection is so well-rounded I think I could watch things on it for a long time without running out of things to watch.

I realized a while back that I'm way out of the movie loop. That makes me sad. I also don't read nearly as much as I used to. Growing up, I devoured books. I think that internet time has replaced a lot of my reading and movie-watching time. Now that I have a Ipod with wireless internet, even at times when in the past a book would be a given, like in a doctor's office, I'm more likely to be on Facebook. Jason and I used to love going to the movies and spent way too much money hitting the Lefont Plaza, Landmark (which was called something different back then), and Tara Theaters when we first moved to Atlanta.

Recently on Netflix I saw the movie Doubt, which stars Meryl Streep, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams. I found this character-driven film to be food for my atrophyed-by-reality-television brain. The pace of the film was slow but tantalizingly so, building towards a brilliant climax and denouement that's left me pondering for days. I don't want to give away too much of the plot, but the primary plot deals with possible abuse of power in a religious situation, specifically a Catholic sex abuse scandal; how our faith guides us on the continuum between doubt and certainty; and what we cling to and to whom we turn in the absence of certainty. As I watched the movie I found myself thinking about my own instincts and the times that I do and don't listen to them. I really related to Amy Adams' character, who found herself unwittingly tangled in a web of scandal when she, an optimist, desperately longed for peace. In one memorable scene Meryl Streep's character accused Adams' character, "You just want things to be resolved so you can have simplicity back." I thought, "That's so me!" There are times in my life that I'll do almost anything to avoid conflict. It doesn't always serve me well.

I have been bursting to talk about the movie, especially since I've been Googling and finding that there are a variety of interpretations of almost every scene. I wanted to talk about it so badly that I actually recounted the entire plot to Jason on a car trip the other day, essentially ruining the entire film for him. But I know he'll never get around to watching it, anyway. That's the way it goes with us. We're trying to watch Mad Men together and we've managed two episodes over the past eleven weeks. For us that's one of the realities of being in a relationship for nine years and having two young children. It's a bummer, but I feel really good about our relationship overall and look forward to one day in the future when we'll have time to sit around and watch movies all the time again. A full time housekeeper would free up a lot of time for those pursuits--just sayin'--not that that'll ever happen. ;) If anyone reading this has seen the movie and wants to chat me up, please do so while it's fresh in my mind! I'm so foggy these days that I'll probably forget the details in a couple of weeks. If you haven't seen the movie yet, you should. I love a juicy dramatic movie.

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