Return of the Milwaukee #lunchwalks

Currently on Vinyl: 2Pac “All Eyez on Me”

Currently on Vinyl: “The Very Best of the Everly Brothers”

electronicsquid:

Hollywood Theater, Milwaukee

(George Skadding. 1950)

This movie theater closed in 1959 and is a car dealership now, I believe. Always saddens me, to see beautiful old movie theaters turned into mundane edifices.

This guy was [takes off sunglasses] … ahead of his time.

YEAAAAAAAAAH!

(Source: arcaneimages)

In the 1980s, the action comedy was a popular genre. Beverly Hills Cop. Lethal Weapon. And all their wannabes. But over the years, the formula changed - like New Coke - and it just wasn’t the same. The genre always seemed to go for the action first, but the balance became even more askew and the laughs were second rate and hacky as the 90s attempted their version of the genre.

But I like what Seth Rogan and his pack of friends have done with the genre, in films like “Pineapple Express” and this time with “This is the End” — the laughs are big, and the comedy drives the action, rather than the other way around. It’s over the top. Absurd. It’s rough around the edges, as you can tell that many of the laughs are discovered through improv and just letting the camer and actors run.

And most of the time, it’s absolutely hilarious.

If they keep making unabashedly stupid and hilarious movies like this, I’ll keep paying to see them.

Currently on Vinyl: Vanilla Ice “To The Extreme” (word to my mother for this birthday gift)

Worth it. So stupid. So awesome. (at Marcus North Shore Cinema)

Naming our new guest Echo. The rest of the Bunnymen have been hanging in the backyard.

I took the day off work yesterday, so I could see the first showing on the first day of release for Before Midnight.

Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are two of my five favorite films of all time. I’ve waited nearly a decade now, since seeing “Sunset” in the theater. We’ve gotten used to waiting nine years between films. But this makes it no easier.

Before Midnight was worth the wait. Since leaving the afternoon screening yesterday, I haven’t stopped thinking about the film. I keep replaying it in my head. This installment is much more real and raw than its predecessors - but it has to be.

After the first film, we’re left to wonder if these two twenty-somethings would meet when they said they would. After the second film, we know the answer to that question, but we wonder if these now thirty-somethings will learn from their decision. Those are fairy tale romantic stories, in essence. So how do you, as forty-somethings who met in the most romantic fairy-tale way, live up to that when every day life sets in?

The film is beautiful in its setting, like its predecessors. This time, with Greece as the backdrop. We get more of the philosophical banter that hooked us in, nearly twenty years ago. We laugh, smile, and cringe the whole time as we see that just as they had to work to meet each other in the first place, they have to do so at this point in their lives.

To think, I’ll have to wait another nine years, probably, to know what happens after the credits roll. I’ll be 44 years old. Their characters will be 50 by then.

I could go on and on. But I won’t, here. I’ll just listen to the (amazing) soundtrack on Spotify and continue replaying the trilogy in my head.

Currently on Vinyl: “The Classic Tom Jones” [I love that Elvis also covered 5 of these 9 songs]

Aimee got me a birthday tree to put presents under!

Birthday thoughts…