i could have refused that offer, actually

it really sickens me that in this month of april, 2014, i have to pay more court fines for stupid shit than i have in my entire forty-two years of life COMBINED…

…to help ease my pain, i decided some hours needed to be dedicated cinematically, to several hours of cinema about a family that fought the law and, at least on celluloid, won:

the godfather series

to the surprise of most i’d never seen them. in truth, i still haven’t completed the series. i recorded these once i discovered they were running on cinemax and direct tv was doing a free hbo/cinemax trial weekend – but while the first one ran on friday or saturday, the second two didn’t run till the last night in the wee hours. the second one was recorded without issue, but the third was odd – while imdb lists it as one two hours, forty two minutes my dvr saw it as FIVE hours and forty two minutes and only recorded the first two hours and then i “was no longer subscribed” which might be what scrambled it into thinking it was almost a six hour epic?

either way, only two hours recorded so it wouldn’t have worked either way and, from what i’ve been told, i didn’t miss much on that one.

the first one i had started watching when it aired on amc in the last six months or so. actually, i had tried renting it once but i guess back then something needed to “grab me” more than it did, so i returned it rewound (that dates the story) but unwatched. THEN i tried it on amc, and got into it, but amc airs movies uncut but LOADED with commercial interruptions, so that slowed the pace down just enough to lose me again…

…strike two.

this time around all was commercial-free AND uncut so i made it through the first – even ate italian food and sipped on chianti while i did it. i enjoyed it.

the second one was okay, but i found myself wandering the house doing other shit while i listened, although it inevitably would lapse into subtitled italian and i’d have to go back in the room and rewind the dvr to read what i’d missed, so i guess if i even noticed that it’s a good sign, but it did mean it’s sub-three hour length took from 6:30 to 10:30 last night.

so it goes.

so while the first was really good, the second was only PRETTY good in my opinion, although it was nice to see de niro looking all young and fit and such. and interesting to see bruno kirby (did you know he died almost fifteen years ago? i had no idea!) who later reprised with brando in the freshman, which i always felt was under rated…

…and that concludes that cinematic journey.

as i’ve stated, if you want to know if there’s a movie i didn’t see you probably expected me to, just look up the vhs copy on ebay or something – if it was long enough to require two tapes (the patriot, braveheart, forest gump, jfk, etc) i probably haven’t because, in my youth, i just didn’t dedicate that much time to sitting still (which given my size back then is kind of surprising). some of these i never will see (“forest” for it getting jackson snubbed for best supporting actor, the mel gibson ones because of mel gibson) but at least the godfather ones, which were chock-full of actors i really dig (including my old drinking buddy, harry dean stanton) so i was happy to strike those off my “missed list”.