This weekend was uneventful except for a Saturday afternoon/early evening jaunt to catch Brokeback Mountain at Key Cinemas, and a trip to Indianapolis' Newish Saraga International Grocery (the link is for the Bloomington location) in my continued hunt for Coolish.
First, a quick review of Brokeback Mountain. We arrived at Key early, which is always a bad idea because the earlier you arrive at the theater, the more time you have to wonder if it ever served as an "adult" movie house. And then you get to wondering what those stains are on every other seat. But Key is the independent guy, so you've got to respect that. I guess.
Anyway, Gina and I sat down about 15 minutes early, which gave me plenty of time to think of inappropriate things to yell out before the movie started. I'm not above being juvenile, but I did manage to keep my mouth shut instead of yelling out "mount up!"
Surprisingly enough, I liked the movie more than Gina. It was better than most and deserves whatever awards it receives. As an added bonus, you can make all sort of gay cowboy jokes afterwards, like "if he really was a gay cowboy he never would have given her that pink cowboy hat back". I don't want to ruin the story, but I should point out that there are sheep in the film. Lots of them.
After the movie we headed north to Saraga, which reminded me of Japanese supermarkets in that it seemed like any moment the board of health would break through the doors and shut the whole thing down. Perhaps it was the fish smell. But I suspect that this gives it a more foreign vibe, and that's something I certainly can appreciate. In addition, they've got tons of Pocky, a huge assortment of nikuman and anman (meat and bean filled bun), and a freezer full of assorted green tea based ice cream treats (but strangely enough, no straight-up green tea ice cream).
I bought a kohlrabi, some chocolate-covered macadamia nuts that I last had while waiting for the Shinkansen in Kyoto station, and the horrible green tea ice cream treats you see in the picture to the right. Someone in Japan thought it would be a good idea to wrap green tea ice cream balls in a super-chewy dough, and then roll the whole thing in powdered sugar. I find the whole thing much weirder than any of those Japanese TV shows people find so bizarre. In the end, I had no Coolish, the kohlrabi wasn't what I remembered, but the macadamia nuts only lasted a day. And I swore my clothes smelled like fish.
3 comments:
Key cinemas will never win any awards for the decor, but they show great movies. My wife and I are going to go check it out this week.
I realize they're operating basically on no budget, so it's forgivable, but I just wonder why that's the case. Especially when you consider the new arts theater in Keystone Mall. Obviously there's money to be made in small art theaters.
But I suppose it's like anything else; you've got to have money to make money. And I get the feeling that they didn't start with much.
No, they didn't. He has weathered the storm for quite a while. Whenever a big independent film would come out, Castleton Arts and some of the other theaters would get first choice over the films and he'd get left in the dark. I like that he shows more edgier stuff. You have to admire the guy. When they were going to close a few months ago, I tried to give him some encouraging words, but he was kind of a dick. He's never been very friendly.
Post a Comment