Kyril's Journal -- January 28, 2005

A Late Night Movie

Friday January 28, 2005

I did some laundry and saw the maximum upper body exercise equipment in the basement that Steve had left, and played with it. It is an inclined platform with pulleys. One lays or kneels or whatever on the platform and uses the pulleys to pull one’s weight. It is a bit like a Pilates bench but inclined and not quite as versatile in my opinion. I knelt on the platform and pulled myself up hill 10 times. Then I did my exercises, talked with Tom while exercycling, switched laundry loads and laid on platform and tried to do an overhanded pull myself-up-the-hill but my hair kept getting caught so I had to hold my head up which was uncomfortable so I only tried that a couple of times.

I was feeling kind of drained so just finished the other half of the bathtub, did the dishes, cleaned the catbox, and puttered a bit. With a pre-made salad for dinner I didn’t even do any cooking. I sat down to watch a little TV and noticed that Andromeda would be on at 8 pm so planned on that. Faol called from work to let me know that there was a full night of SF shows with new episodes of Stargate-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Battlestar Galactica, all of which I wanted to see. So nothing else got done for the evening other than email.

He also said we were going to a movie when he got home for work and asked me to look them up, which I did. But I had some trouble finding anything interesting to me that was starting that late, partly because I am not familiar with all of the theatres we are likely to go to or where they are – moviefone is set up so you need to know the names of the areas you are looking in and I still don’t know L.A. that well. When Faol came home though, I had the website up and he found a movie that we thought would be interesting Million Dollar Baby.

And it was but (spoiler) ****************
***********************************
***********************************
***********************************

the ending was unexpected, kind of uncalled for from the way the movie was structured, and wrenching. It wasn’t exactly a tear-jerker but left us feeling kind of depressed. The million dollar baby was the female fighter that Clint Eastwood’s character trained. She was winning her early fights as she was getting to the point of bigger fights. He gets her a title fight with a woman who fights dirty and there is a pivotal moment where she is turning away to return to her corner and her opponent hits her from behind knocking her down. This is done in a kind of slow motion and we see her trainer running over to the corner where the stool is laying on its side to move it. He seems to hesitate with his hand on it and then she hits it, her neck on the edge. At the hospital she is on a respirator and is totally paralyzed from the neck down. We see her trainer visiting her every day, even helping bathe her. She develops bedsores and loses a leg to gangrene in one of her bedsores. And she begs him to kill her. At first he says he can’t but after the midnight call where she has bitten through her tongue and nearly bleeds out before they can get it stopped they sedate her all the time so she can’t do it again. He goes in when the nurse is on a coffee break and unplugs her air, shoots her with enough adrenalin to kill a horse, and walks out. He never goes back to the gym he owns and disappears. The story is told in voice over by his helper in the gym played by Morgan Freeman. It ends with a scene of a diner that she had taken him to for lemon meringue pie, leaving the idea that he had bought it as he mentioned in an earlier scene, and is living out his days there.