I’ve reached the second Saturday of the COVID19 lockdown and I haven’t lost my mind. I am running a lot but that was a strangely timed coincidence because I’d been running for a few weeks before any of this started. I like to think I’m not the butt of the jokes about people who’ve started running all the time during the lockdown but I definitely am.

Up until now, I’ve been happy enough to just drift along and do whatever I want with my free time. I’m still working but I’m not commuting so there’s extra time there and I’m obviously not socialising outside of my home so there’s a lot of time there. So I’ve been running and playing guitar and doing the group Skype calls and playing games over discord.

Now, I’ve reached the point where I need a bit of order and structure to avoid getting restless and grumpy. So I’ve thought about what I always say I don’t have time to do. This blog is one of those things. I like writing about music and film but once my routine for writing breaks I always feel like I need to tidy the blog up before I go back to it. Part of that has always been trying to find gimmicks or niches and writing for themes. The plan now is just writing about thoughts and ideas on things.

Things in this case is “The Town”. I’m linking to Wikipedia for details because I love Wikipedia.

A couple of things came together for me to watch this on the second Saturday of lockdown.

Ben Affleck is an intriguing guy. He has the vibe of classic leading man but he has the ability to do gritty and interesting things and he has a real knack for fucking his own life up. He’s been in the back of my mind for a while. It all goes back to watching “Triple Frontier”. At the beginning, he’s a sad, washed up real estate agent going through some kind of divorce or separation and it really doesn’t seem like acting. He really was a sad man who couldn’t stop fucking up at that time.

I also went to Boston for the first time this year and my brother isliving there. America is so weird. It really is too big to be one country. The different states should be their own countries. I don’t really understand how places that are all so different can consider themselves one country. Makes no sense. Boston is fun. It was freezing cold and it snowed. We ate great food and we had a great time. It hadn’t been on my radar before but I think about Boston a lot more now.

“The Town” is very solid in my opinion. It’s not flashy and nobody seems like a hero. I think you can believe it as a film. Affleck is good and there’s a pretty decent cast. Blake Lively is good at being trashy. Jeremy Renner is good as a bastard. My conscious memory of him is Marvel based so he has always seemed really lame to me. It was fun to see him in this.

And there are nice details to it. I enjoyed the clothes and I liked the context of Boston – Townies, Toonies, Southies. I liked the robbery scenes. I loved the “We’re gonna hurt some people” scene. It’s so mechanical and they both know exactly what to do and how. It’s a good bit of character building.

I liked the whole thing. It’s not the best film I’ve ever seen and I’m not going to watch it over again but it’s solid and respectable and it’s good fun and that’s what I needed today.