Not so fast

Speaking of Saw movies, this may look like the poster for the next Saw movie, but the only thing torturous about Death in Love was sitting through it.

(Editor's note: Since this movie has yet to be released, for legal purposes, the above comment is hereby classified as a "joke" or a "play on words," and not any kind of judgment about the actual strengths and weaknesses of the film in question).

And so we see the other side of this fancy club I was so excited about joining on Monday, this League of Extraordinary Film Critics: Sometimes you see ponderous misfires (again, this is to be considered a joke, following naturally from the previous joke), and sometimes your name isn't even on the list. And sometimes you get to see the movie even if your name isn't on the list, which makes you wonder why there is a list in the first place.

Actually, Death in Love, which I saw Tuesday night, wasn't that bad -- no worse than any other movie about aging, the Holocaust, masochistic sex, mental illness, masturbation, vivisection, con games, suicide and self-loathing. Wait, there aren't any other movies like that.

But I really wasn't on the list. I actually looked at the list myself, and I wasn't on there.

It didn't prevent me from getting in, but I did wonder how it happened. Later on I realized that although I was cc'd on an email from one guy at the website to another guy at the website, asking him to contact the distributor about putting me on the list, I never actually received an affirmative reply from the second guy. Simple mix-up, but it did make me feel a little embarrassed.

When I told the woman my last name, she repeated it a couple times in that way people do when vainly trying to recall information. Then she asked me who I was with. She'd heard of us, but she said, "Aren't they, like, far away?" My answer must have satisfied her that I was not some opportunist coming in off the street: "They're in Michigan, but I cover things for them in L.A."

The rest of the screening was uneventful.