Tom Eppenberger Jr’s blog

Lane’s first movie theater experience was seeing Wall-E on opening night at Bayfair. It was a bit rushed as I had to hurry home from work to make the show time, and Shelly had to rush home from errands with Lane to make our own popcorn, fix dinner, etc.

We showed up at the theater about 10 minutes before the show, and the line out front suggested that perhaps we were too late. Luckily for us, everyone was there to see Wanted and not Wall-E. Shelly snuck all of our homemade snacks into the show, and we also managed to get Lane past the arcade without him being too distracted…

The theater wasn’t too packed, but there weren’t many decent seats of three remaining. We found some on the aisle about half way up and got comfy. Lane was really excited, but I made the mistake of telling him that they would be turning all the lights out. He didn’t like this and instantly started saying he wanted to go home. He finally calmed down by sitting on Shelly’s lap, and shortly thereafter the previews started. They were all age appropriate, and featured some bad Disney movies, but they made Lane laugh which really calmed him down.

Finally, the movie. It’s a great one, and everyone should go see it. Even without a lot of dialogue, the story that is told has some amazing detail, even with all of the dark doomsday apocalyptic stuff going on. You fall in love with Wall-E and Eve, and it doesn’t take much for you to really get wrapped up in all the emotion. And, I have to say that the mop character on the space cruise ship was one of my favorites.

Lane laughed out loud several times, talked about the rockets repeatedly, and thoroughly annoyed the thirty-something couple seated in front of us. Especially when he spilled his Tupperware container full of popcorn about 3/4 of the way through the show. Oh well. We had to remind Lane to talk soften a bunch of times, but he was amazingly good throughout the 90 minutes.

Since seeing the movie, he’s talked about it nearly on a daily basis, and points out every piece of Wall-E advertising that he sees. He definitely enjoyed his first movie experience, even more so than all the other Pixar/Disney movies that he has seen prior.

Oh, and I can’t forget the Wall-E watch he got. As part of the opening night celebrations, all kids got a Wall-E watch that looks like a blue “Live Strong” bracelet that just happens to have a small digital time piece on it. There are pictures of Wall-E and Eve, and a big Wall-E logo. It’s impossible to actually set the correct time on the thing, but I somehow doubt this is of much concern to Lane.

Can’t wait to see this movie…

Like every year in recent memory, we watched the Academy Awards Sunday night on fast forward. Really, it is the best way…

The only movie that we saw that was up for any significant award was Juno, and, well, I’ve already covered that here. What I didn’t know, until I saw it flashing before my eyes on 3x speed, was that Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova’s duet “Falling Slowly,” from “Once” was up for best song. “Holy shit!” was uttered, and likely repeated a few times by Lane.

Not only was I shocked that the song had been nominated, but I was absolutely thrilled that it actually won the award. How friggin cool!

If you have not had the oppurtunity to see “Once” yet, please take the time to do so. Gene recommended the movie to me a few weeks before I got it on Netflix, and I must admit that I wasn’t all gung ho to pop it into the Xbox. However, once the movie started, I was hooked. It really is a lovely story, with great music. Well worth 90 minutes of your life…

A few weekends back, we got to sneak out of the house (my Mom watched Lane) and go to the movies. We had to decide between seeing Juno, There Will Be Blood or No Country for Old Men, and as the title of this post might have suggested, we decided on Juno.

This is quite a film, lots of laughing, but a few tears. The subject matter is pretty intense, but it is delivered with lots and lots and lots of comedy… including some fantastic dialogue. A really good soundtrack too! I thought that the movie was going to be fairly predictable, but that turned out to be rather incorrect. If you have a chance, go check it out.