NYE Resolution: Mid-July Update

Loyal frustrated followers might recall that back in January, in the early days of 2019, which still felt a lot like 2018 to me, which felt oddly akin to 2017, and so on,  Cinema Romantico made one New Year’s Resolution and one New Year’s resolution only — that was, to rewatch “Once Upon a Time in the West.” And yet, while waiting for the righteous Steppenwolf production of Sam Shepard’s “True West” to start, when the pre-show music cued up Ennio Morricone’s “Man With a Harmonica” theme, I suddenly realized that to this point in 2019 I have not watched “Once Upon a Time in the West”, marking it as akin to most any New Year’s Resolution, made with a cocky gleam in the eye of winter only to realize in the heat and humidity of summer that, alas, the promise of the resolution has begun to wilt.

I have 162 days left to complete this resolution of course, plenty of time. But then, when you realize I have already wiled away 203 days in 2019 and have managed to watch “Valentine in the Vineyard” but not rewatch “Once Upon a Time in the West”, the pressure is suddenly on. See you in December.

New Year's Resolution

It’s early days of the New Year and, as everyone knows, it is officially customary to kick off the New Year by making resolutions. A New Year’s resolution, of course, is a tradition in which a person resolves to make some sort of substantial change in order to improve his or her life. Indeed, this plays into the notion of the New Year as a fresh start, a reboot, a chance to wipe the slate clean and begin again. This is why you see so many people in the gym come January (and why you hear so many people in the most obvious, annoying humblebrags of all time complain about all these people in the gym come January).

Perhaps. But I don’t know. 2019 is feeling a little 2018-y to me so far. Kinda like how 2018 felt a little 2017-ish. Kinda like how 2017 felt oddly 2016-esque. Indeed, I’m starting to suspect that much like, say, the Northern Lights were not, as the Lapps believed, energies of the souls of the departed but the result of collisions between gaseous particles in the Earth’s atmosphere with charged particles released from the sun’s atmosphere, that the New Year is not a personal, professional or global rebirth so much as, you know, nothing more than the start of Earth’s next rotation of the sun. As such, after re-noticing the “Once Upon a Time in the West” poster on the wall of our home office/spare bedroom, Cinema Romantico’s New Year’s Resolution is to re-watch “Once Upon a Time in the West.”

That’s it. That’s my New Year’s Resolution. Nothing else. I have [checks calendar] 348 days left to accomplish this goal.

Please stay tuned to this space for updates. #MakeYourResolutionAReality