Let’s go Brendan

It all began with boredom and gluttony and an unopened bag of fresh, salted sunflower seeds.

I needed those seeds and I needed both hands to handle them with..one to lick off the excess salt and one to discard the shells ( I tried to think of a creative way to recycle them but could not)into a sandwich-sized baggie.

As fellow seed addicts know, you can't just eat one and you can't just  eat forty--you will devour fifty to seventy percent of the bag's contents, which will take approximately ninety to one hundred and twenty minutes to accomplish, so then you have to think of how to can kill that time and not use your hands for anything BUT the shelling of freshly purchased, salted sunflower  seeds.

I decided to watch--or in this case--rewatch--a movie that's getting Oscar buzz, mostly because I wouldn't have to use the remote control while viewing a feature-length film without commercials.

Because of the excellent Golden Globes showing and a half dozen friends advising me to give "The Banshees of Inisherin" another go, I decided I'd give this "gruesome and excruciatingly boring" movie  one more chance to change my mind.

I had time to kill anyway.

These sunflower seeds weren't going to eat themselves.

And the movie, on the second viewing, was..fecking FABULOUS.

I think it's because I have watched some remarkable TV since we first watched this film over a month ago, (namely, "Derry Girls") that I have gotten used to Irish brogues and insane antics..

I was fully awake with this viewing(which I obviously wasn't the first time I saw it, since I obviously  missed so many crucial plot points) sating myself with sunflower seeds and salty dialogue.

NOW I get that the movie is an allegory..a sick but brilliant satire, and I finally get why the HFPA put it in the "Best Film, Musical or Comedy" category.

It is a demented fairy tale, not  for the weak at heart but for  the strong at deranged thinking.

How did I miss this the first time around?

It's basically about a character who is driven to madness by..small talk!!

I might never have chopped off all my fingers(especially the necessary middle one) but I've bitten my nails to the quick after enduring excruciating conversations about returning tea towels to Target.

About the new car part you bought..I wouldn't care about that if I were your fecking mechanic..don't corner me at a cocktail party with details.

I don't give a hoot that your Aunt Gladys is getting her basement remodeled because I never met her. 

 Talk about that with her kids. 

 I bet they hang up on you within a minute or two.

I'm still rooting for Brendan Fraser to win the Oscar, but I won't be disappointed if Colin Farrell does now.  

(Austin Butler can wait..he's brilliant as Elvis, but we just had a musical biopic win a few years back with Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury)

Loved the scenery, the Irishness, the hilarious and shocking dialogue, the terrific work of the entire ensemble, particularly Brendan Gleeson as an aspiring songwriter who'd rather lose a limb then be subjected to inane conversation.

(I related to THAT more  than I did to fellow foodie Brendan Frasier)

I can't believe I changed my mind so completely, but I did.

I'm giving this movie two (salty) thumbs up.

Unless someone responds to this post with drivel and excruciating nonsense.

Then there won't be any thumbs left to lift up:)