Janeen and I watched The Giant Mechanical Man tonight. It was a quiet movie about 30-year-olds figuring it out and falling in love. Joyous was a word I thought about after it. Not b/c the movie was so happy or stupendous, it was probably neither, but it was about a search for joy and the simplicity of it, of finding it in a single other person. Maybe only 6-7 thumbs up, but fit nicely into my thinking these days.

It’s been more than a year since Janeen and I went to the movies — having seen “We Bought a Zoo” a few weeks before A was born. So when I surprisingly got a day off for President’s Day as part of our newly bargained contract, we decided to go to the movies. Unfortunately we were left deciding between a Nicholas Sparks film that Ebert Roper described as “nuttier and cornier than the snack-food aisle”, a Zombie-ish movie (“Warm Bodies”) and Identity Thief. We went with the latter assuming it’d be the least risky. So after a tasty Indian lunch we used up the last our our AMC gift care we got as a wedding gift (2+ years ago…)

It was about what I thought it’d be: amusing, laugh-out-loud-funny in parts, and largely forgettable. But it was fun — and felt a bit decadent – to go to the movies in the middle of the day with my lovely wife. I’m guessing that now that A’s in school we’ll be back before a year — esp. when we have 4-day weeks in the summer!

Janeen and I went down to the Civic Media Center to watch New Low, which had been filmed in and around Gainesville (the old CMC, Video Rodeo, Northeast Park, Common Grounds’ Porch, etc).

New Low was an amusing, occasionally laugh-out-loud-funny, look at a drifting college kid and his romantic failings. Adam Bowers, the writer-director-star, reminded me of younger-sort-of-hipper Woody Allen (which is probably what he was going for).

There was nothing groundbreaking about New Low, but it was enjoyable and any movie that has the good enough sense to include Radon in its trailer and involve The Civic Media Center as a key part of the plot gets 8 thumbs up from me!

After the movie, we went home and I watched the Celtics beat the Spurs with Rajon Rondo dishing out an amazing 22 assists. This was a beautifully played basketball game that I can only hope is a preview of the 2011 NBA Finals.