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Movie Audience Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

6 Feb

Last week Nate and I went to our local movie theater to see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  As we searched for seats we noticed that we were the youngest people in the audience by about 35 years.  I was also the blackest person in the audience by about 100-fold but that is an unfortunate reality I’ve come to accept in Tampa (maybe everyone else went opening week). We settled into our seats between two sets of seniors.

Tinker Tailor is about British intelligence agents seeking out a mole during the cold war.  The movie opens with John Hurt giving an agent detailed and specific instructions for an operation.  The agent is soon at an undercover meeting with a Hungarian spy.  Between the details of the operation, real names that sound like code names, code names that sound like real names, and subtitles, I said to myself, “Alix, you’re going to have to pay close attention to this movie or you will be lost in about 5 minutes.” I sat up in my seat and focused intently on Gary Oldman.

Shortly thereafter, the couple next to me started to speak to each other.  The wife was confused by the plot.  The husband tried to help but he was equally lost.

Who’s that?

Huh?

What’s he doing there?

Who?

Is that happening now or before? 

Now! It’s now!

They had the courtesy to use a “whisper-like” inflection but were still speaking loud enough for everyone around them to experience their conversation.  Kind of like walking though an intersection but pumping your arms in a running-like motion to signal to the waiting cars that you have the courtesy to hurry but you are still going to walk at normal speed.

The talk-whispers continued as we moved further into Gary Oldman’s mole hunt.  Tinker Tailor is a movie that is quietly intense and intensely quiet.  The score is quiet and understated.  The dialogue is rich with details when there is dialogue.  Otherwise, the film is filled with intense stares, glares and glances.  Oldman stares suspiciously over his shoulder.  Colin Firth glances furtively across the room to Toby Jones.  Toby Jones crooks an inquisitive eyebrow towards Ciaran Hinds.  (Poor Ciaran Hinds only has about four lines in the movie, but his annoyed frowns are the best.)  Hinds frowns at Oldman.  Oldman frowns disapprovingly at Benedict Cumberbatch. Cumberbatch glares at Tom Hardy.  Hardy stares longingly at his Russian lover.  She stares back at him with sad desperation.  You get the idea. These looks stand in place of dialogue that turns out to be unnecessary with top-rate, quirky-looking actors.  Characters are never greeted with words.  They just look at each other and sigh.

.

This is a great movie and it didn’t end up being too difficult to follow on its own, but the chatter next to me was distracting and beginning to piss me off.  In addition to an endless tide of pointless questions (what’s that on her face? Who? Her face? What? I think it’s a mole.) the husband spent a good 10 minutes trying to moisten his mouth. Any saliva-related noises make me nauseous.  I wished my friend B. was there.  She would not have hesitated to tell them to shut their pie-holes before the end of the opening credits.  The couple couldn’t see my own disapproving glares in the dark.  I missed my chance to be diplomatic and my frustration was boiling over into anger.  I signaled to Nate that we needed to change seats.  After relocating we soon learned that the couple next to us was also engaged in Mystery Medicare Theater 3000.

It’s official.  Old white people have replaced black people as the most annoying people in movie theaters.  Or maybe independent international movies are to baby boomers what Tyler Perry movies are to (some) black people – a community experience meant to be shared and overshared with your compatriots.  I recommend seeing Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and I highly recommend seeing it after 10:00 PM.

New Look New Purpose

3 Oct

I have had this blog for over 5 years.  It has taken many forms and directions that have served several temporary functions (journaling a trip to Paris, my wallet detox, my TV hiatus), but never had a permanent identity, theme, or purpose.

lixlove.com will now function as my home website and blog.

  • My blog: I will continue to write blog posts, hopefully more frequently now that I’m unemployed. These will likely continue to be project or theme based.  My next series of posts will be about my move from DC to Tampa.
  • Write Your Own Script: I’m changing my career, how I live my life and how I view my life.  It has been a crying-into-my-tumbler-of-wine, pounding-the-head-on-the-desk, and desperately-searching-for-answers-and-guidance-on-the-web kind of experience.  Listen to my advice, take some of it, leave some of it, and do your own damn thing.
  • Love Wellness: Short articles on a variety of health and wellness issues.

 

Links to all blog posts will be available here at lixlove.com.

How Did Jared Stand It?

22 Dec

With a beautiful day just on the other side of the glass, nothing sacks one’s youthful spirit for excitement and glamour, one’s boredom-borne impulse to start sucking the marrow out of life, one’s secret desire to be transplanted into the dead center of the life they were truly meant to live, than eating a Subway sandwich at your desk for lunch.

This sad little sandwich reminds me of everything I dislike about my life.

Yet another result of poor planning and oversleeping. I look forward to very little in my workday. If I managed to get to work on time the possibility of enjoying a lunch break exists. Even packing a brown bag lunch affords you the opportunity for some culinary creativity, and perhaps lends an air of retro-hipster irony (…maybe a Fraggle Rock lunch box).

Dull, ordinary and uninspired. I request my toppings with the same monotony I would use to rattle off the days of the week. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday. Onions. Olives. Cucumbers. Mayo. Mustard.

Oh so safe. Subway provides the affordability of McDonald’s without the guilty pleasure of eating something greasy, salty and deliciously non-PC among the ever-exciting McDonald’s clientele. In addition, you get an amalgam of nameless and homeless processed nutrients that is acceptable for the calorie-counting tips in the “your bony ass is never bony enough” women’s magazines.

Thrown together. My sandwich isn’t thoughtfully crafted by artisans. With too many onions on the end up by the slice, too few cucumbers down near the crunchy tip, and mustard only available when you happen to bite into the side of the sandwich with the condiment squiggles, my turkey and provolone (on white, of course) is slapped together such that it just meets the bare minimum standard to qualify as a sandwich.

I fear my life has become all these things: dull, safe, uninspired. A polo shirt with khakis. A Saturday afternoon spent watching Cast Away on TNT for the 10 millionth time. A silver Honda Civic. Those compartment-filled black work totes they sell at Filene’s Basement for $39.99. All perfectly acceptable and often practical, but all together begin to paint a portrait of someone that I don’t believe resembles me today and I don’t want to grow into in the future. A Portrait of the Artless as a Young Woman. I hesitate to make a Joyce reference since I have not read him – something I could have done instead of watching Cast Away.

Losing It: Part One

16 Nov
My friends will tell you that I’m a laid-back person. My temperament is generally even-keeled. Diplomacy is deployed to avoid confrontation. This has its advantages, especially in an office culture that survives on the unwritten rules of gender neutrality – where emotional outbursts are promptly frowned upon. A disadvantage is that an inability to express your emotions often leaves you unaware of their presence in the first place. While you don’t let them out, they linger inside waiting for perhaps the most inopportune time to burst through to the surface. This has not yet happened to me, but I fear it.

There are moments where I feel that I’m about to meltdown (usually when I’m being hurried) but I manage to place an Episcopalian choke hold on my emotions until I can dissolve them in gin, tonic, and a bit of lime. When I’m tired or upset, I have many of near misses. I’ll fear that I cannot control the fury as it rumbles inside, I’ll unleash my anger in a screaming tirade, and it will all be captured on a security camera where I’ll be publicly shamed on YouTube.

This is one of those near-miss moments: click here to read Part 2 on Wallet Detox.

Why I’m Blogging

14 Nov

Over a week ago I launched a new blog: Wallet Detox.  For now, I’m blogging about my experiment to see how long I can go on $100 spending money.  Later, I hope to maintain it as a lifestyle blog: getting more, spending less, living green, staying fabulous.  Something like that, though I feel the term “fabulous” has been beaten to death.

To be honest, I can’t remember exactly what led me to a blog of Wallet Detox’s nature.  Somewhere along the way, I stumbled upon blogs by Justin Wright and other “lifestyle design” blogs.  The blogs are about how to live on less so you’re not tied to a 9-to-5 job and how blogging can financially support that choice.

How does a “tips and quips” blog fit into the pithy, irreverent, introspective, relevant, witty and humorous personal essays you want to write one might ask?  I’m not entirely sure that it does, but I can say a few things:

1. I haven’t been writing much the past year.  I’ve struggled on numerous levels and have lost inspiration despite semi-regular attendance at my writing group.  I’ve had a tough year emotionally and I’ve been mentally drained.  The ideas just haven’t been there.  Wallet Detox gives me something to write about.  I know the subject and the content.  I have a prompt.  Something to start with.  I just need to make it interesting.

2. While I discovered (or possibly rediscovered) that I enjoyed writing a couple of years ago, I’ve failed to develop a good writing habit.  Sitting down at the desk or the computer and just writing.  Already knowing what I have to write about makes sitting down to write easier.  I’m hoping that blogging will help shape a writing habit within me.

3. Wallet Detox may turn into a “tips” type blog: 5 Ways To Do This; 10 Ways to Make This Part of Your Life Better.  I don’t have a problem with that so long as I maintain my voice.  As my writing voice develops I want it to be present in as much of my writing as possible.

Taxi Cab Confession

7 Oct
One of the things I’m most embarrassed by is that I often take a cab the 1.1 miles from my apartment to my office.  My cab days usually begin with me waking up sometime after 9:00 am when I should be at my desk, professionally dressed, well-caffeinated, ready to work – not curled up in my blankets, head resting on pillows, cat curled up at my feet.  

While these cab trips are economic kryptonite to my budget, I do have the pleasure of “cabbie chat”.  In the past few months alone I’ve learned where to get good Eritrean food, how much of an idiot Fenty is, how great the 980 AM sports show is, and who to call if I want discounted diamonds from Africa.  

This morning my cab driver told that earlier this morning a woman was killed in a hit and run in Dupont Circle.  That is one of my biggest fears – getting hit by someone not paying attention while driving, perhaps while I’m not paying attention while walking.  Walking to work, or to Krispy Kreme, or both, and then gone.  If you have a few moments, after the impact, before the life fully slips out of you, what would you wish you had done? That morning. Yesterday.  You would not have long, so when I posed this question to myself I thought fast. I wished I had:
  • told my mother I loved her
  • found a way to change my career
  • tried to get writing published – really allowed myself to become a writer


Then I got to work, paid my fare, and headed to the office.

Just Cut Me a Break

28 Sep
“I was serving as a volunteer nurse to starving and ill children in [insert impoverished/disaster-plagued country].” “I was on a fabulous holiday in Europe filled with the best dining and shopping, completely financed by a tall, handsome, independently wealthy bachelor.” These are excuses I would like to be able to give for not posting to my blog in over 3 months but the truth provides a far less justifiable excuse:  I’ve been completely unmotivated.  

“Just write.”  “Just do it.”  “Just sit down and write.”  “Just doing it” is tricky.  Identifying “it” is the easy part.  “It” is whatever you’re supposed to be doing: exercising every day, eating vegetables, delivering a speech, dating again.  Involuntary pulses of “its” seem to constantly beat against our bad habits and lack of will power.  Finding “it” is easy.  Knowing how to do “it” is also easy.  “I will sit down for an hour and work on my blog post.”  “I will buy a bunch of kale and cook it for dinner tomorrow.”  Actually doing “it” is what seems inordinately challenging.  A mix of easily identifiable barriers (i.e. Chinese food delivery, the season premiere of Glee) and mysterious emotional hurdles; make “doing it” difficult.  

When someone tells you to “JUST do it,” it feels condescending.  “Just stop eating donuts.” “Stop eating donuts” presents the sheer facts: ceasing donut consumption will lead to a lower daily caloric intake which will in turn lead to weight loss.  “Just stop eating donuts” says, “hey you stupid dipshit, why aren’t you a. smart enough to know to stop eating donuts and b. why aren’t you smart enough to do it?”  “Just” makes absolutely no acknowledgement of how difficult getting rid of bad habits and establishing new ones can be.  “Just” pays no mind to deep seeded fears and anxiety.  “Just” makes me want to just smack the person saying it.

Dreams and My Father

9 Jul
I called my father for the first time in over a month.  We’ve only been communicating with each other for a couple of years – at first via letters and then finally over the phone.  Beginning a relationship with your father as an adult is tinged with sadness for the years lost, but a refreshing ignorance of some of those lost years.  I made a point of crawling into this new relationship visibly carrying minimal pieces of baggage and even fewer expectations.  Either our father-daughter relationship is doomed – incapable of catching up to the potential it may have had if we had been in touch all these years – or a nearer to perfect and unique opportunity to frame the portrait of our future.

My father was trained as a psychologist and now provides counseling to drug addicts.  Initially, I resisted when he made it clear that he wished for us to develop a closeness where I seek his fatherly advice.  While I can’t say that we’re close, the more we’ve spoken the more I see some of myself in him and his desire to help and advise people is admirable.  His experience and my quest for answers to the thousands of questions I pose to myself creates a comfortable safe zone for the start of our relationship. I’m getting advice from an trained professional – he’s getting the daughter who wants guidance from her Dad.  

During our last conversation I told him about my desire to write and how I feel like I missed myself for not pursuing it earlier.  He calmly asked why I wanted to write and what I hoped to gain from it.  He was encouraging and supportive. He also reminded me not to be too hard on myself – an insight into my personality that only a professional or a father would know.

Why Writing? Talking to the Person I Didn’t Become

20 Jun

As I’ve been writing this past year or so, I’ve had the opportunity to spend some time thinking about my childhood and my stories of struggling for acceptance.  These flashbacks and diary readings have brought a mix of the pleasure of revisiting a simpler time and torture of reliving unpleasant adolescent moments (mostly the latter).  With each decision I made to step closer to the acceptance I believed to be vital for my emotional survival, I now see I was taking a step away from I person I did not become – a high school drama club member, an English major, a film school student, a writer, a comedian, an artist, a hippy rebel, a New Yorker.

I didn’t become this person.  I don’t have much desire to try to start to become this person.  I know this person might be pondering why they didn’t go to graduate school and jump into a stable career in health policy.  But I’d like to get to know this person a bit and see what advice she has to offer me – a working stiff that craves a writer’s life.  Can she become a part of my life and inspire a commitment to writing?  Will my future look more like her future?

Under Reconstruction

2 Jun

To my dear, loyal readers (all 4 of you):

I started this blog in 2006 after my first trip to Europe and filled it with several posts about my experiences in Paris. Over the years, I’ve sporadically added posts on nothing in particular and nothing particularly interesting. While my posts may have been entertaining and fun to write, together they failed to constitute a blog that was worth following or representative of any particular aspect of my life.
Since then, I’ve discovered that I love writing and recently I’ve managed to tap into a well of motivation that I hope doesn’t run dry. At this time in my life, I’m committed to writing and making it a larger part of my life. My immediate goal is only to write. The future of my work is secondary to the process.
As I’ve committed to writing, I’ve decided to change the focus and subject matter of my blog. On my blog, I’ll be writing about writing; blogging about blogging. Inspirations and obstacles, successes and failures, trials and errors. My old posts have been archived and my new posts are on the way along with the essays I’ll be writing.
Sounds like you’re full of shit! Of course I’m full of shit. I’m hoping this promise I’m making to you, the reader, will create an illusion of accountability, and the preceding paragraph’s BS will nudge me towards proving you wrong.
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