non-ecumenical ramblings

Thought this was a clever idea to gin up some business, so decided to check it out today.

Good touches:

• stroller area roped off in the corridor so mommies (and a couple of dads) could leave bring their stollers to the multiplex, but not have to bring it into the theatre itself.
• diaper changing table off to the side of the theatre
• no previews or commercials for KCRW or Coke

Two items to improve on:

• no trash can by the diaper change table
• sound too loud - one of the stroller or mommy matinees turns down the sound
• why have the movie start 15 minutes late? If it's just because folks assume that they'll have 15 minutes leeway with teasers, tough. The movie's already 2 hours & 11 minutes long.

Other observations:

• 2 single men were also in the theatre. seemed a bit odd - I would never go to a theatre with ~20 sometime crying babies to see a film.
• Flags of Our Fathers was not a good choice by us or the theatre for infants. Too many explosions that were frankly too loud even without infants. At 22 days old, Theo is too young to see the movie, but some of the kids there were 1-2 years old & a film with tons of explosions and amble dismembered bodies really isn't a wise choice by the theatres.
• Did over hear a conversation contrasting Huggies vs. Pampers.
• Once the film started, the mothers were good at keeping babies quiet - some moms would rock their kids in their arms by the entrance to keep them quiet.
• Bottom line - would try Mommy Matinee again, but would chose a film without bullets into necks or dismembered arms or gaping wounds in guts.

War & Film thoughts

• In my 30's I had wondered why the US had taken Iwo Jima as opposed to island hopping past it. A year ago Max Boot wrote an editorial pointing out that taking Iwo Jima was "a battle of choice waged on the basis of faulty intelligence and inadequate plans" - the benefits of the island "a useful base for long-range fighter escorts" were not worth the cost of 6,821 dead & 26,000 casualties. During war, these miscalculations are understandable and still sad.
• It dawned on me while watching that the top ranked films of all times do not include any WWII movies (by that I mean a film involving the war itself & not movies dealing with the aftermath or movies that take place during the war but never show the war itself). It then hit me that none of the "best" films are war films from any war. Given the inherent dramatic nature of war, it seems strange that the best films set during WWII are Angry Harvest and Wannseekonferenz (Wannsee Conference) - the first about a middle-aged German farmer hiding a jewess in his basement, and the second being a dramatization of the planning of the final solution. Angry Harvest was a wonderful character study of the moral consequences of decisions made during war, and the Wannsee Conference shows the banality of evil better than any film i've ever seen.