Saturday, February 15, 2025
Super Sunday
As there is literally no escaping knowing in the U.S., it was Super Bowl Sunday last weekend. There was a time when that would have meant me awkwardly staring at a giant TV at someone's house, pretending to understand the basic premise of football and hoping to find someone who would prefer to go into the other room and talk about The Real Housewives. (Also me eating my weight in dips, naturally.) But in recent years, Ian and I have abandoned the pretense of wanting to be part of this particular social custom, and our friends seem to be able to live without our glazed-over expressions and frequent trips to refresh our booze. So instead we spend Super Bowl Sunday as just another Sunday, doing whatever we need to do or feel like doing. It turns out it is a fine day to stock up on light bulbs at the Home Depot or place your extra complicated order at the Mariano's deli. It is also a great day to go to the movies, if like us you hate crowds and can't silence the voice in your head that says someone might shoot you during Madame Web.
This year we saw "I'm Still Here," a the Portuguese-language film nominated for Best Picture. I will not say I enjoyed it, as its subject matter is forced disappearances during the dictatorship in Brazil. But it was exceedingly well made and it both impacted me emotionally and gave me a lot to think about. I mean, yikes, maybe don't drag people from their homes, interrogate them so ferociously they end up dead, and lie about it for decades, eh?
We also watched "Emilia Perez" last weekend, and god help me I liked it. Honestly, I was really nervous for like the first fifteen minutes or so when things were pretty manic, but it settled in to a nice semi-realistic groove and brought some really interesting dramatic scenarios into focus. I'm not cosigning anybody's tweets or anything, but it was a much better watch than I had feared it might be.
A lot of subtitle reading for one weekend, but that's still more appealing to me than watching the people knocking into each other for three hours.
