We put a ghost in a box

As a break from packing, I saw Paul Feig's Ghostbusters (2016) this afternoon with rushthatspeaks, gaudior, sairaali, and M. It was a sold-out matinée. I was seated next to three small girls—nine-to-eleven age range, I think—who frequently cheered. They didn't recognize any of the surviving original cast, but they applauded for Slimer. I approved of the bronze bust of Dr. Egon Spengler at Columbia University. Like everyone else with any appreciation for mad science, of course, I love Kate McKinnon's Holtzmann with her tinted goggles and her utter disregard for normal standards of personal space and workplace safety—why settle for Dr. Frankenstein when you can have Dr. Pretorius? Crossed slightly with Harpo Marx, or at least that's what the flying long coat and fizzing fair hair and cheerful leers reminded me of. Perhaps also the way her presence in any given situation tends it toward explosion. Holtzmann's not a silent character ("I would have used aluminum, but I'm crazy"), but she has the quick-change face for it, and the physical grace. I had never before seen anyone flirt by means of DeBarge's "Rhythm of the Night," two acetylene torches, and a fire extinguisher, but she makes it work; the script gives her the most unambiguously kick-ass action sequence ("You just got Holtzmann'd, baby!") and it is equally believable that she would neglect to mention until it was relevant that she'd effectively installed a pair of nuclear reactors on top of the car in which everyone has been tearing around Manhattan for the last month and change. With a starring cast of four women in this movie, I hoped at least one of them would be weird enough for me and Holtzmann delivers. She not at all phallically licks a gun she built herself. I was also very fond of Leslie Jones' Patty Nolan and her encyclopedic knowledge of New York history, although I couldn't help wondering what would have happened if she'd switched roles with Melissa McCarthy. Chris Hemsworth was very obviously having the time of his life as a man who needs the concept of everything except riding a motorcyle, looking handsome, and eating a sandwich explained to him very slowly in words of one syllable and probably a lot of gestures. He calls a fish tank "a submarine for fish" in a tone of delighted discovery and covers his eyes at loud noises. I could have wished for less action and more character time, but that's how I've felt about all summer blockbusters for the last five or ten years. It was very fun and I think that was what my weekend needed. I don't know the ratio of Boston to New York in the shooting locations, but I was delighted to see the team celebrating their ghostbusting victory at Jacob Wirth's.

We had dinner afterward at Sugidama, where I had a bottle of lychee flavor Ramune. I had never interacted with any flavor of Ramune before. It was totally artificial, but I didn't realize it would come in a Codd-neck bottle; I didn't realize anyone manufactured those anymore. I've taken mine home with me. I'm trying to decide whether to save it for the novelty or smash it for the marble in time-honored nineteenth-century fashion. I kept grinning at it all through dinner.

Back to packing.