Weekend with Too Few Movies

My nights fill up these days. I somehow seem to have plans for every night of the weekend nowadays. This started some time around the beginning of this month. The summer weekends it was exactly the opposite. It was a dearth of society, seriously. Naturally, now that I'm busy every night of the weekend, I wish I had a night to myself. Ah well.

The truth is, it will all get better when Valparaiso opens. When that happens, I'll be able to do banal things like going to the grocery, and doing my laundry during the week, which will leave the weekend free for sleeping in, reducing my Netflix queue, going wine-tasting in Temecula with my lush/friends and partying the night away.

I went to see my college friend Marcos Tello in a show called Boyle Heights last night in (gasp!) Boyle Heights. The show was kind of silly, but took itself very seriously. It was about an educated woman wanting to escape Boyle Heights and then learning to love it and appreciate it warts and all... she escapes the barrio and then moves back and celebrates the barrio. This seems arrogant to me, but perhaps it's just extremely earnest and not as presumptuous as I think. The acting was bad across the board except for my friend, who was wonderful. He even made me cry at one point. He was so good; I was very impressed. I don't recall him ever doing such good work. Afterward, I hung out with him and his new girlfriend (also in the show, and also good.. they were the only two) and a bunch of their other friend. We went to Lala's in Hollywood. It's Argentinian food... and it was pretty good and not over-priced.

Tonight, Elizabeth and I went to see Vera Drake at the Laemmle's Sunset 5. It was good for the most part: very sad. But it has some very powerful moments and has its heart in the right place politically. Imelda Staunton will be nominated for an Oscar for this movie. I don't think there's much question about it. Fine Line would have to really screw something up for it not to happen. I though the movie got boring in the middle: there are some long pauses that don't feel like they're merited. This is really my only complaint. I think the movie is overly long in places and not as tight a film as I would've liked, but it's powerful nonetheless. I think I'm going to put it right below Good Bye, Lenin! at number 19.