OK, Shabbas is over, so here’s what I’ve seen:

• “Reservation Road”
  Not great–I’m perpetually worried about my son’s well-being and about car safety, so a movie that starts with two boys’ lives being endangered by one driver ought to have unnerved me. A dead child ought to have brought me to tears. I think the story had the right elements, but the dialog just didn’t work. A lot of what happened felt true, but somewhat predictable, although I admit to a bit of suspense. I found myself thinking that is was all rather movie-of-the-week.
• Moonlighting “The Straight Poop”
  Glenn Gordon Caron selected and introduced an episode of the show he created. The folks in the audience under 40 must have been baffled, but I loved it–especially the cameos by Peter Bogdonvich and Pierce Brosnan. I didn’t even mean to stay for the showing, just stopped by to fill a bit of empty time in the schedule and see which episode he was selecting. After, he showed the pilot for a seried that never aired. It was a bit hard to watch, not because it was lacking anything, but because the premise of a private investigator who is hired by rich husbands to seduce wives and provide grounds for divorce was way beyond cynical.
• “Numb”
  I missed it by staying at Moonlighting, but everyone says it was great and that Matthew Perry did a great job. A non-TV-watcher standig in line kept expaining who Matthew Perry was to people when he’d talk about the movie, which I found charming, because I’m the same way about cable. I frequently find that some little nugget of goodness that I think I’ve uniquely discovered is actually known by everyone else in the world, because they’ve all seen the actor or the clip or whatever on cable….
• “American Fork”
  I keep going back and forth on what I think about this one. It had charms, but was also distressing at times. Plot-wise, not quality-wise. It was well done, well acted, etc.
• “Day Zero”
  The draft has been reinstated, and goes as high as 34-year-olds, so we see three friends who are rather established in their lives get their draft notices on the same day and deal with the consequences. Sometimes felt very good, sometimes felt like it was wandering off.
• “Blood Car”
  Low budget ($25K) B movie made by Film School buddies from Georgia State. Plenty of humor and sex, not too much gore or suspense, so an excellent B movie for me. The premise is that it’s the future (two weeks from now) and gas is up to $32/gallon, so no one drives, except that this vegan figures out how to make his car run on blood. A couple of the makers were present and seemed to be really all about the humor of the thing, how they worked to hit important elements of the genre, etc. I was expecting something a bit more political, as we’re indirectly filling our tanks by shedding blood, but it never touched on that and wasn’t mentioned during Q&A.

“Chicago 10″ is still the clear winner. I wish I could find some release dates or distribution info to share.

In the middle of Saturday, I went to a house concert by Willie Wisely. Quite literally good times and noodle salad, as I enjoyed the performance and the audience full of friends and the potluck, which included my carrot and noodle salad. He seems to be sponsored by a winery, too, as he brought a couple of cases of House Wine. The red was good–I’d keep a bottle around–I didn’t try the white–probably should have. Washington State is about all the detail I can find on it; there’s more about the maker’s other products at K Vintners, but no info about the grapes in the red.