Nerd heaven

I'm willing to admit that I'm a nerd. It's kind of chic now. My nerdiness lured me out of the house today, when I would have been content to stay home and watch my new Netflix. One of the art houses in Chicago had a restored 70mm print of my favorite film. I've been looking forward to this for weeks, since I'd never seen Vertigo on the big screen. Not that the Music Box has a huge screen. Theirs is about the same size as the screen at Film Forum, only in a beautiful Spanish Mission auditorium. And it's run by nerdy cinephiles with excellent ideas about programming. I don't go there nearly enough!

Tonight was one of those wonderful summer nights that you wish would last the whole summer. The weather was beautiful, and there was great energy in the air. The film was beautiful and thought provoking. Seeing it projected led me to think a lot more about the editing and camera movements than I do watching it on television. $9.25 well spent. There was even a cool breeze as I waited on the El platform for the ever-tardy Brown line, which lingered long enough to inspire me to open the moon roof on my way home. Remember those VW commercials from about ten years ago, with the starry night and Nick Drake music? It felt like that. That ad campaign inspired Zoe and her dad to buy a Cabrio and me to buy a bunch of Nick Drake albums, and we still remember it years later.