I like having someone with me to hear my Observations. It's better if the person is so advanced and enlightened that they can actually Appreciate my Observations, but anyone will do, really.
I went to see Arlington Road Saturday night, alone, and was distressed that there was nobody to listen to my scoffing. I wound up scoffing to the lady sitting next to me, but I don't think she really Appreciated it.
The movie is supposedly set in Reston, a couple of suburbs north of here. But Arlington Road isn't in Reston, it's in Arlington. And Reston is a planned community, famous for it, so the houses were completely against the extremely strict Reston Homeowner's Association guidelines, and in Reston, the Homeowner's Association would have made the builders tear down the houses, or nuked them first. The Reston Homeowner's Association is fearsome. And the Good Guy figures out that the Bad Guy is Bad because the Bad Guy is supposed to be helping revamp Reston Mall, but his blueprints show office buildings, and "who ever heard of a mall with office buildings?" Well, agreed, except that the Reston Mall happens to have office buildings, it's the only one I know. If they had picked Tyson's Corner, or Vienna, or Oakton, or even Arlington itself, or numerous other suburbs, none of this stuff would have grated. But they picked the one place that it makes no sense at all. The movie was shot in Houston. And they used something like the University of Houston, a new, low-rise university with washed gravel buildings for Georgetown, which has distinctive Gothic buildings. So I scoffed a lot. And there was no one to Appreciate.
Thank you. |
