A Saturday night of forbidden love

My dance card for the weekend included three movies and a play, which I would say is about four times as much as the norm for me. Thought I would share what I saw, where I saw it and of course, what I thought about what I saw.

Underworld: Evolution Friday afternoon, a friend of mine straight out told me to skip the "Vampire" movie and go see Brokeback Mountain instead. When I got to the theatre. a mega-plex with the most comfortable seats in the city, I noticed that this flick was showing an hour earlier than Brokeback (and besides I was still a little reticent about seeing that movie anyway). It was a good choice. I really enjoyed the first Underworld movie, since bloodsucker movies are high on my guilty pleasures list. The sequel lived up the reputation of most sequels however, as it was confusing, disjointed and really a tad too long. Still, it was comic relief in comparison for what I was to view on Saturday.

Upon getting home, I ordered pizza and cracked open a new DVD I had purchased of Silent Running. This film, shot in 1971 on a million dollar budget, is considered by many to be a cult science fiction movie. It's the future and the people of Earth have managed to de-foliate the entire planet. What's left of the forests have been jettisoned into space in several glass domes on three space ships in the hopes of re-foliating the planet at a later time. When the company underwriting the transport (American Airlines no less) decides to bring the spacecraft back into commercial service, the crews aboard are ordered to dump and incinerate the forests before heading home. The story is about one man (Bruce Dern) who having been with the project for the eight years since its inception, decides to fight this decision and the movie revolves around what happens when he does. Other than the fact it's dated, the spacecraft look believable, even if the premise is not. Truly the only Sci-fi movie I can think of with a ecological message running all through it (besides, what other Sci-fi flick do you know has two songs performed by Joan Baez in the soundtrack?)

Saturday afternoon, I went back to same metro-plex and took in a matinee of Brokeback Mountain. I think almost everyone I know had viewed this movie already and so with that in mind, I will not go into too much detail about it except to say that I loved the film. The biggest reason for this being that the story was very believable, or at lease believable to someone who has never had to experience coming out to oneself on the plains of Wyoming in 1963. The audience in the theatre was made up mostly of young women, and older couples...and if there were definitively gay male couples in the theater I didn't see them. I can't help but wonder though, if any of the people in the theater remembered as I did, that at the time of the movie's ending (1983?), it would still be fifteen years before a 22 year college student named Matthew Shepherd would be beaten and then left to die on a fence outside Laramie, Wyoming. Some things unfortunately have not changed (or changed enough) since the time of Brokeback Mountain. Sad...

Finally, Saturday night, I went to a play presented by the First Coast Theatre Arts in Jacksonville entitled The Goat or Who is Sylvia? by Edward Albee. If Brokeback Mountain was about forbidden love in the sixties, it was a Disney film by comparison to The Goat. Needless to say, this play was about love of a far different kind, where even the gay character in the story is overwhelmed with disgust when he hears of it. The first drama I've seen at the FCTA, I doubt I will be seeing this play being performed anyplace else in Jacksonville. Hard to say if the play itself was good or back, since the subject matter seems to overshadow everything. The performances were top-notch and other than a bunch of gigglers in the audience who were a continual distraction through the entire production, I was glad I went to see it. The Artistic Director, who is a good friend of mine, played the lead, and I was happy to see him in a dramatic role, particularly such an interesting one as this.

After Brokeback and The Goat, I headed out to my favorite watering hole for a few alcoholic beverages and to surround myself with a number of good friends...the kind of drama which made for a happy ending to an interesting day...