First in line

I don't usually go to see movies on opening night. But when I do, you'd think it would be a movie I was really jazzed about. You know, like the tweens who had their parents drive them to the theater for the 12:05 a.m. screening of Twilight: Eclipse, or the geeks who camped out for weeks before Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

Nope, not really. In fact, last night was just the latest movie I saw on opening day/night despite having only mild interest in it. I should say, I had mild interest going in, and heavy interest coming out. Yeah, Piranha 3D was "super fun," as I said to the friend who saw it with me.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I guess my thinking goes like this: If you go to see almost any movie during the primetime slot of its opening night, it's going to be a clusterfuck. Every movie has some subset of the viewing population that's interested in seeing it, and these are the people who will come out for that primetime Friday night show. That's nice when it means you're surrounded by like-minded individuals who plan to cheer and applaud; it's not so nice when you get stuck in the front row, because you bought unassigned seats earlier in the day, but didn't get there in time to claim something good.

And so I've developed something of a policy toward seeing movies on the day of their release: I'll see only ones I don't really care about.

Here are some recent(-ish), funny examples:

Surrogates (2009, Jonathan Mostow). Released: September 25, 2009.

I didn't even know if I planned to see this in the theater, but I'd written one of my Friday morning pieces about it, and I was hankering for an after-work screening, so I hit whichever one started in the 4 o'clock range. As might be expected, the screening was fairly sparsely attended -- the movie ended up grossing less than $40 million, and I think I may have liked it better than anyone else in the world, except possibly Jonathan Mostow.

Splice (2010, Vincenzo Natali). Released: June 4, 2010.

I had gone through a bit of a rollercoaster in my feelings toward this movie, at first thinking it would be an exciting genre buster, then thinking it would be a completely interchangeable startle-scare horror film. I ended up going Friday afternoon because my boss had failed to comp me the afternoon on the previous Friday, before Memorial Day weekend, as he usually does, but had forgotten to this time. So I got out around 1 o'clock that day and took myself over to the theater. I don't know that the movie actually busts its genre, but it is unforgettable in a number of other ways -- some good, some I'm not so sure about.

The Last Airbender (2010, M. Night Shyamalan). Released: July 1, 2010.

This one doesn't quite count, because I actually saw it on July 2nd. The whole time leading up to it, however, I thought they were releasing it that Friday. Then for some reason they moved it up one day to Thursday. This was a similar situation to what was supposed to happen with my Friday-before-Memorial-Day early release, except on the Friday before July 4th, it did actually happen. This screening was also sparsely attended -- maybe everyone already knew that the movie had been ripped to shreds. Me, I thought it started out abysmally and then improved enough in the last 45 minutes or so that I thought it was fine. But because my failure to hate The Last Airbender is not what I came to talk about today, I'm not going to say any more about that.

Piranha 3D (2010, Alexandre Aja). Released: August 20, 2010.

And then there was last night. A friend and I had been trying to find some common ground on a movie -- a movie my wife didn't have any interest in seeing, at that -- and Piranha was what we came up with. We were trying to jam it in before my wife goes into labor (could happen anytime in the next 10 days to two weeks) and before he goes to Burning Man (next weekend). Plus, yesterday was his last day of work on a gig that was located down near where I live. So he got off work, we met for dinner, then went to the movie. In fact, we dilly-dallied enough that I thought we'd shot ourselves in the foot, getting to the theater only 15 minutes before the show was scheduled to start. But instead of having to crane our necks at the 3D from the front row, we hadn't actually needed to buy tickets in advance at all. Strangely, the theater was only half sold -- and this was a prime location on the Santa Monica Promenade, albeit a theater that probably hasn't been renovated in 20 years.

That could have been some kind of forewarning about the quality of this movie, but it wasn't -- at least not for me. My friend wasn't as enthusiastic about it as I was, but I was enthusiastic enough for the two of us. It was a rollicking good time -- exactly what I wanted it to be. Awesome piranha carnage and lots of hilarious gore -- stuff that made our audience howl, squirm and grimace. Some of the gore was truly horrifying -- I can't get that image out of my head of the woman being scalped by the outboard motor, pulling her face right off -- but Aja's tone was such that it was "all in good fun." Besides, the idiotic spring breakers who had come to the fictitious Lake Victoria were portrayed as so vapid and so obnoxious, it all really seemed like their just desserts.

A movie like Piranha 3D really argues for that opening Friday night showing. Even though we were only half full, we were the ones who were really excited for that bloody mayhem up on the screen -- and we probably enjoyed it a lot more than we would have during that 1:35 showing next Thursday afternoon.

The best food to act with

So I didn't heed my own cautionary warning about Splice, and went yesterday on a two-hour early departure from work. (Hey, I'm not the one who's actually pregnant.)

I'm still processing what I think about it. There was a lot to like, some to be puzzled with, and even a little bit to just plain laugh at. Overall, though, I thought it was a worthwhile effort whose strengths outweighed its weaknesses.

If you've read me much, though, you know that I probably don't want to talk too much about the movie itself -- but rather, one teeny, tiny, inconsequential thing that the movie made me think about.

That's right, Splice reminded me that movie characters staying late to work on projects always eat Chinese takeout from those little white boxes. Noodles, preferably. And they always use chopsticks.

Know what I'm talking about?

In any situation where movie characters are working late to solve a problem -- to go through legal briefs with a fine-toothed comb, to cram before the big test, or in this case, to try to splice human DNA with animal DNA -- the food of choice is Chinese noodles in a white takeout box. Adrien Brody's character was the one consuming them in this movie.

And I think it's a bit of an acting crutch, though a crutch I definitely enjoy. Acting with any kind of food is kind of a crutch in general, along with acting with a cigarette (which I wrote about here). In fact, I'd argue that Jeff Bridges chomped and chewed his way to an Oscar this past year in Crazy Heart. There wasn't a scene in that movie when he wasn't masticating a sandwich or swigging down a bottle of Bourbon.

It may not be a conscious thing, but we definitely notice it on some level. And it seems to add a certain vibrant quality to the performance.

But just any food won't do. Eating pizza, for example, is not very visual. It's just bite, chew, bite, chew. Nothing special about that. The sandwich can be a bit more visual, especially in the hands of someone like Bridges, or especially if it's an overstuffed cheeseburger. Commercial actors get huge mileage out of taking shark bites out of massive burgers.

But Chinese noodles ... they are an art form in and of themselves.

First off, they involve several exotic props. One is the white box, as universal a food-related prop as the pink rectangular box of donuts, or the blue coffee cup with the Grecian design you get in New York. Then there's the chopsticks. With a box in one hand and chopsticks in the other, the actor doesn't need to worry about what his hands are doing. If he chooses to gesture with either one or the other, all the better.

Then there's the food itself, noodles. The actor can eat them a number of different ways. He can stuff in huge matted clumps of noodles, or he can slurp them up like Meryl Streep in Defending Your Life. It's even better if he can eat them distractedly, while he looks at a monitor or examines the report being presented to him by a colleague.

And I think this last really gets at why the Chinese noodles are such a popular prop -- they seem to enhance and lend validity to whatever activity is going on. They are an efficiently packaged food that can be eaten in multiple sittings and reheated with only minimal compromises to their original desirability. They're the perfect food for a determined protagonist involved in serious work that just may save the world. Or at least, one small corner of it.

So bring on your theorems, your equations, your formulas and your fine print. As long as you make sure to also bring me a box of that lo mein, and a pair of chopsticks.

Ten movies not to watch when you're pregnant

Although we'd talked about how it looked creepy, and just original enough to be different, my wife admitted to me this week that she doesn't want to see Splice in the theater.

She didn't have to tell me the reason. I knew it was because she's six months pregnant.

See, Splice, the latest film from Cube director Vincenzo Natali, is about a couple scientists who recklessly create a hybrid of human and non-human tissue in their laboratory. The result is a fast-growing spawn that sprouts wings and has a nasty habit of disemboweling people. Or something equally unpleasant.

If this creature came on the scene as a full formed entity, that would be one thing. But it starts out as the slightly mutated newborn you see above.

Even if she'd had a completely uncomplicated pregnancy, I could forgive my wife for not wanting to see this movie before the baby is born. But there have been complications -- what pregnancy doesn't have complications these days? Thankfully, we seem to be past them, but I can certainly understand her being gun shy.

So that got me thinking about what other movies a person might avoid if they are great with child. When you're on an airplane, you don't want to watch movies about crashing airplanes; when you're pregnant, you don't want to watch movies about horrible things happening to babies. And there are some doozies out there.

Warning! Spoilers to follow! Read at your own risk!

Here are ten of those doozies:

10. Rosemary's Baby (1968, Roman Polanski). Even if you've never had sex with the devil, you still might want to avoid this story about a woman who is impregnated with the spawn of Satan. At least it has a positive lesson: If you should happen to give birth to the Antichrist, you should at least be a good mother to him. (See also -- or, also don't see: The Omen, The Bad Seed)

9. Trainspotting (1996, Danny Boyle). This probably taps in more to early parenthood fears than pregnancy fears, and probably only if you are addicted to smack. But there are a couple moments in this film a mother would never want to have to think about. Lesson: If you don't feed your baby, it will die. And possibly crawl on the ceiling.

8. The Butterfly Effect (2004, Eric Bress). This would-be trippy horror is more laughable than it is spooky, but one of those sort-of laughable parts is something an expectant mother would probably rather not see. Thinking that his life has caused nothing but pain for the ones he loves, the character played by Ashton Kutcher "reshuffles" time so he's a baby in his mother's womb. To prevent this harm to his loved ones, the fetus Kutcher strangles himself with his own umbilical cord. Hey, I suppose it's what we'd have Hitler do if it were possible.

7. Total Recall (1990, Paul Verhoeven). Having a baby on the inside of your stomach is one thing. Having it on the outside is quite another, even if your external stomach baby is as wise as Kuato, the external stomach baby growing out of Marshall Bell's George in this Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle.

6. Alien (1979, Ridley Scott). But what if that baby on the inside wants to become a baby on the outside? A pregnant woman probably wonders if that isn't the baby's intention, kicking at the walls of her womb and trying to burst through to the open air. Kind of like the nasty little alien (aren't all babies "alien," in a sense?) that rips its way through John Hurt's chest at the dinner table in Scott's masterpiece.

5. Freddy Got Fingered (2001, Tom Green). There are a hundred reasons not to see Freddy Got Fingered, regardless of your reproductive status, but pregnant women in particular will probably not enjoy the part where Tom Green severs an umbilical cord with his teeth, then uses it to swing the newborn around his head like a lasso.

4. Antichrist (2009, Lars von Trier). Although Rosemary's Baby is about an Antichrist baby, this is a whole different kind of Antichrist. Like Freddy Got Fingered, there are a hundred reasons not to see Lars von Trier's latest cinematic controversy (genital mutilation, anyone?), but the most salient one for expectant mothers is the opening scene. Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, distracted by graphic black-and-white sex, pay no attention as their infant son climbs to an open window and plunges to the street below. At least it's all very artistically done, with an orchestral score, dreamy slow motion, and a big grin on the face of the plunging baby.

3. The Fly 2 (1989, Chris Walas). The Fly 2 is the only film on this list I haven't seen, but I thought I should include it, because the reason I haven't seen it had everything to do with the process of delivery a baby. I remember seeing a trailer for The Fly 2 in which there was the horrifying suggestion of Geena Davis giving birth to a giant maggot, or something to that effect -- a mini Brundlefly. Perhaps this is one of those fears I need to confront (see this post). Though I'm sure the film is terrible, perhaps this one scene will really get me. After the baby is born, of course.

2. Eraserhead (1977, David Lynch). There may be no more chilling incarnation of the concept of "child as alien" than Lynch's pyschologically scarring masterpiece. The couple gives birth to what looks like the offspring of Admiral Ackbar, and the baby, which is really just a head swaddled in blankets, emits strange gurgling laughter and spits up funky liquids. Parents, beware -- you are bringing something into the world that is strange, and not always wonderful.

And the #1 movie not to see when you're pregnant ...

(spoilers ahead)

1. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007, Cristian Mungiu). Most of us will never be in the position of trying to get an abortion in Soviet-controlled Romania, but that doesn't mean it's not a terrifying prospect. The worst moment in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days -- an absolutely brilliant film in most other contexts -- is when the abortion is successful, and the camera pans downward to an aborted fetus lying on the bathroom floor, quite realistic looking indeed. Yes, they really go there.

Honorable mentions: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (elderly babies?!), Children of Men (infertile wombs?!), A Cry in the Dark (babies eaten by dingos?!)

If you know of any other movies my wife and I should avoid in the next three months, please don't hesitate to leave them in the comments section.

Bonus:

Best baby-in-peril fakeout: Speed (1994, Jan de Bont)

One of my favorite moments in an incredibly tense cinematic experience (my second favorite action movie behind Die Hard) is when a woman starts crossing the road pushing a stroller, and Annie (Sandra Bullock) can't avoid hitting the stroller with the bus. "Oh no!" she screams and covers her mouth, and we in the audience think the same thing as the stroller hurtles through the air.

When it hits the ground, it spews soda cans, waiting to be recycled.

"Cans," Keanu Reeves says with a huge grin and a sigh of relief. "It was just cans."