A Coupla Good Movies
"Designing Woman" starring Lauren Bacall and Gregory Peck was on the TV yesterday afternoon. I spent most of the day in my bathrobe, either in bed, or on the couch where Michael and I finished off a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and ate the remnants of the broccoli soup left in the fridge from a few days ago. The movie was directed by Vincente Minnelli and it is really funny. I'm always surprised when I enjoy movies from that era because I can never get past the colorization--the orange/tan make up and the sickly pastels. After the movie's opening plot set up, we are brought into Gregory Peck's hangover, expressed through hyperbolic color and sound. It's hilarious.
Speaking of hangovers, I was wondering if it would be possible to just be a champagne alcoholic. If yes, I think enlist voluntarily.
We also watched "In Brugge" starring Colin Farrell. It's a clever, ilkish movie, however I was devastated when one scene failed to capitalize on an obvious but effective punchline. One of the lead characters is counting out coins to pay the entry fee into a museum in the center of this medieval Belgian town. The fee is 5 euros but the coins in his pocket add up to only 4.90. He asks the fastidious clerk if he can just be let in anyway. The questions is addressed with a curt and unnegotiable retort, "The entry fee is FIVE EUROS." So, the character slaps down a 50-euro bill and sweeps the coins off the counter and back into his hand.
What should have happened was this: He presents the 50-euro bill and then the guy behind the counter would have asked, "Do you have anything smaller?"
There is this constant struggle in this largely cash-only society between ATMs that rarely dispance anything other than 20s and 50s, and clerks and shopkeepers who hate making change . One of my many one-woman crusades here involves being impolite in my response to the question "Do you have anything smaller?" I never ever take back my 20s and 50s even if I could. I don't have a til in my purse to make change like the girl at the grocery store does now do? If anyone deserves to have a more varied range of bills in my pocket it is me, not the national department store.
