Sneaking wine into movies
The mood strikes on dreary winter afternoons and a like-minded, self-employed friend and I head to a movie matinee. We ditch deadlines and cell phones, put laptops to sleep and set off to indulge in guilt-laden hooky. Armed with contraband wine, homemade white truffle butter popcorn (nothing but Orville) and Slim Jims, we head into the dark theater and go AWOL. One caveat: We must match the wine with the movie.
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Before we smuggle our forbidden cache, we choose our libations carefully. The vino/cinematic challenge gets competitive. For “Brokeback Mountain,” is it “Goats du Roam” Red from South Africa? Zinfandel from California’s Black Sheep Winery? For “The Da Vinci Code,” is it Bonny Doon’s “Cardinal Zin” or “Blastphemy” from Canada’s Blasted Church Winery? A Tasmanian pinot for “The Devil Wears Prada”? To avoid embarrassing commotion, we pop the cork (and popcorn) prior to hitting the theater. Cushioning the bottle (bubble wrap works) is advised, as we learned one afternoon. An empty bottle rolled and clanked down towards the stage during “Tin Cup,” leaving us with devil-may-care smirks and giggles. -Barbara Travers
‘School Ties’ (1992)
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Paramount
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It isn't hard to understand why I might have watched “School Ties”
once — it's a cute-boy-fest. But every time it comes on cable, or appears in HBO's On Demand listings? Brendan Fraser looks good without his shirt on, it's true, but does he look that good? Yeah, actually, he does, and the supporting cast is mighty foxy too: Chris O'Donnell, Ben Affleck before he got all puffy, and the terminally underappreciated Randall Batinkoff. But the real appeal of the movie, I think, is its simplistic morality, the broad strokes in which it paints good (Fraser's character, benevolently beefy David Greene, standing up to ‘50s prep school anti-Semitism) and bad (transparently petty super-WASP Charlie Dillon, played with ferrety gusto by Matt Damon's uncapped teeth). The Very Important Lesson the movie wants to teach us is one most of us learned long ago; it's an overly earnest anti-establishment take on a bygone time, but that's exactly what makes it fun. It doesn't try to make its villains complex or layered. It just makes them prejudiced jerks I can enjoy hating. And boy, do I enjoy hating Anthony Rapp as supporting bigot McGoo Collins. Can't
stand that guy.
-Sarah Bunting
‘Shakes The Clown’ (1992)
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Sony Pictures
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Anyone can mock clowns for being creepy and weird. It took a special brand of insane genius to do it with the thoroughness, imagination and, yes, affection that Bobcat Goldthwait brought to “Shakes The Clown.” The comic’s directorial debut depicts rival clown gangs locked in a power struggle for control of their town. In a weird way, it’s a perfectly realized (if hermetically sealed) world, with clowns viewed by civilians as just another subculture to be dealt with, like punks or stoners. It’s also a sociological gold mine; the complex social pecking pits TV clowns against party clowns, rough-and-tumble rodeo clowns, constantly abused mimes and, possibly even lower still, milkmen. What keeps it from falling apart at its own cleverness is the fact that, within the skewed framework Goldthwait sets up, everything’s played more or less straight. Shakes is a womanizing alcoholic with enormous talent who’s on the verge of losing everything (and ending up in jail for a murder he didn’t commit, to boot). So why complain that a kid pees on his face in the very first scene? If that's not hitting bottom, I don't know what is.
-Marc Hirsh![]()
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