Movie Moment for Sunday, March 6, 2022

Just tuned into this movie on regular, over-the-airwaves TV channel 44-2, called Somewhere in the Night and it happened to be right at the beginning of this restaurant scene. The YouTube video should start at the top of the scene: restaurant scene 

At first I was fascinated by the shot tracking the waiter to the table. It's a (much) shorter version of the kind of scenes people rave about in Goodfellas, the new West Side Story and so forth where the camera takes you all the way down the high school hallway, or all the way from the street through the restaurant and to the table. 

In this movie, when they get to the table, the four actors at the table eat dinner (or maybe lunch?) as the scene goes on. This also was fascinating. I loved watching them all eat the noodle dishes and then the crunchy fried chow mein noodles, all while the high-stakes dialogue churns along. 

I once acted in a play, How the Other Half Loves that has a long dinner scene in which I ate meatloaf and slices of avocado and maybe drank water also (I forget.) It was super-fun but also challenging to know when to eat, when to chew, and when not to. Also, before one matinee, I had had a crazy day and had not eaten anything, so three-day old Safeway meatloaf was a God send! 

Another thing about the scene in the movie, they shoot most of it from one side of the table. But when the detective (or whoever) gets up from the table, they shoot some of the rest of the scene from his point of view and there is a brick wall on the side of the table that the camera previously had been "looking though." That was fun to see. Also, the the actors must have had to eat more as the shots moved from one POV to another. 

Anyway, as I was writing this, one of the characters said, "Why would anybody want to tie me in with Larry Cravat," which must have been a fun line to write and to say. 

This has been your Movie Moment for Sunday, March 6, 2022.

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