Departed Weekend

My personal cash savings were wiped out from comics shopping at both Comic Odyssey branches of the Robinson's malls during their weekend sale. (See ya soon, ATM.) Ah, the things we do for bigger discounts... Most of the books I got were to fill up holes in my collection (Supreme, Black Panther, The Demon, Planetary, JLA Confidential) and for eventual resale (Superman, New and Young Avengers, Ultimate Spider-Man).

Also caught The Departed at Galleria w/ Lola. We first drove to the Promenade, yakking away at the queue only to find out that it wasn't showing in their theaters! (That'll teach us to pay more attention to the Now Showing posters.) In the end it was back to Galleria, where we ordered takeout dinner for the movie: Party-sized stuffed crust Super Supreme Pan Pizza and two 22-ounce glasses of ice tea. For my first experience of eating pizza in the dark, let's just say it was an effort, as toppings kept falling off the pizza slice with each bite. Here's an idea, Pizza Hut: instead of filling up the crust w/ mozzarella why not place the cheese on top of the toppings so they won't fall off?

Yeah, she's probably had better belated birthday parties.

My 10 thoughts on The Departed, w/ spoilers:

1. It must be nice for Jack Nicholson to get to play a role that allows him to look like a slob. He could just wake up, neither shave nor shower and, voila, it's Frank Costello on the job.
2. If you're not a fan of being drowning in a cacophany of fake Bostonian accents, then this film is not for you. Wicked re-tah-ded.
3. I thought Mark Wahlberg's Sergeant Dignam and Vera Farmiga's Dr. Madolyn wassername could've been played by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, respectively. Mebbe it might've been too distacting a visual to have both Mulder and Scully in a project not related the The X Files, though not as distracting a scene as Scully doing the dirty deed with Leo DiCaprio's Billy Costigan.
4. Couple of plot points came outta nowhere for me, w/c is both good as bad. Frank Costello as FBI snitch? Oohh. cool. Dr. Madolyn falling for Leo while seeing Matt Damon? Where'd that come from? They coulda at least provided some backstory to justify her falling for the damaged psyche that was Leo's character.
5. What a star-studded cast. DiCaprio, Nicholson, Damon, Baldwin. I half expected Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci to just pop up and yell "Surprise! Where Marty goes, we go!"
   
6. Speaking of Alec Baldwin, the man can just chew up the freakin' scenery. It's like everyone else was given a script while he just got an outline and improvised his lines. Brilliant! And, boy, was he fat in this film.
7. Plot question: If the Chinese gangster/goverment rep was from the Mainland why was he speaking Cantonese? That's the main language of Hong Kong.
   
8. When the beatdown scences were first shown I thought maybe Scorcese was losing his touch in the Brutal Violence departmart. Thankfully he more than makes up for it near the end of the film. I was chuckling at the movie audience's reactions to the lead actors being offed one by one in a short span of time.
   
9. Oh, HA-ha w/ the rat walking across the balcony beam at the end. In terms of subtlety the movie title was more cryptic as to what the movie was about.
   
10. After seeing this film I'm now more psyched to watched Infernal Affairs I and II.