cool thing about the bus is I can use my iPhone. bus 1, subway 0

…well, not really. I just wanted peeps to know my IMDB profile is slowly coming along.

Got to catch a couple of flicks this weekend: Dark Knight in IMAX and The Wackness. Despite the annoyance of trying to get tix after about two weeks of sold out shows, it was definitely worth the wait. Pretty damn awesome. The photography was beautiful and holy crap, dude…Heath Ledger. Talk about full commitment. I am genuinely sad he’s gone.

The Wackness was pretty cool too. I liked it – about as much as I typically like hip indie films. But I’m starting to realize that even though I enjoy “New York” films, I sort of feel a bit left out. A suburban Cali dude can’t really relate to a high school kid who deals drugs to his psychiatrist. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the dynamic of that relationship and completely bought the progression of their friendship, but this type of world is so foreign to me.

And now that I’ve been living here for a little over a year, it’s given me a greater appreciation for New York indie films like The Squid and the Whale, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, and now The Wackness – which are all set a couple of decades back. I get why New York filmmakers want to tell the stories they’re telling. There’s a richness to the setting that I’m missing, and may never really understand. As an outsider, I see New York as the backdrop for these interesting stories. But for a New Yorker, the city is a character that influences all its inhabitants. As an outsider, I think “wow, what an interesting place to grow up”. New Yorkers think, “hey, that’s me up there.” There’s a connection the viewer shares with their celluloid counterparts.