Movies

16 September 2022

A solid weekend of working on assessments got me feeling like I might actually finish this certificate. Go me! I'll add a caveat that I applied for, and was granted a one month extension which takes the pressure off a little bit, especially since the marking turnaround is 21 days (but please allow up to six weeks - are you serious!?)

After two days of square eyes I thought I'd relax and treat myself to some time on the lounge in front of a movie with my boy. The square eyed irony was not lost, but it was good not to have to concentrate quite so much. Cody would disagree with this, as he can get a little annoyed with my questions about the plot and characters if I haven't been paying attention. A little more irony here because he barely stopped prattling while we were watching The Bridge, and I was constantly winding it back to hear what I missed. How fortunate that it wasn't on the free-to-air television of my youth where there was no opportunity to rewind unless you were recording it to watch later. Is that even a thing now? Do people still "tape" things off the TV? How many times did people who were trying to be tricky and skip the ads forget to press record again after the ad break when the program restarted? Happened to me a few times. The best option was to set and forget, then use the fast forward button on the remote during playback. Then, I'm sure we all wished we could do that to the ads while we were watching regular TV... unless you took the opportunity to go to the loo, or to the kitchen to grab a quick snack.

As a kid, television ads were a bit of a novelty for me until Normanton eventually got more channels than just the good old ABC. We used to watch things that had been recorded for us by relatives who lived away, and we wore out the tapes watching movies and the same couple of episodes of shows like The Dukes of Hazzard and the over-dubbed carton Lucky Luke over and over again. There was also this pearler... (the subtle puns peppered throughout are quite witty and cleaver, although, I'm sure it didn't take off due to its cultural insensitivity.)

The shared experiences of these TV shows and movies became part of our family culture. We seem to remember lines, and reciting them to each other is kind of our thing. Out of context it makes no sense, but to us it represents shared understanding and in a way it bonds us.

When commercial television came to town we were taping shows and movies ourselves. We had videos before that, and there was a local Video Shop from which to hire movies (and let's not forget, where we could also buy enough lollies to send us into a hypoglycaemic coma).

I don't know if it's because of the sheer volume of opportunities for audio visual entertainment now, or the fact that I have less free time than I did way back then, but I don't tend to re-watch movies the way I used to.

As a kid my favourite movie was a little Australian film that we had on video called Blue Fire Lady. I watched that over and over. In one of the scenes at the race track a punter asked, "Whadda ya reckon about Black Knight?", and when I saw a horse with that name was running in the 1984 Melbourne Cup that was my pick (I've been having a flutter on The Race that Stops a Nation for many years), so Mum put money on it for me. It won. I don't know what it paid, but I may have bragged about picking the winner at such a young age anyway.

There were a couple of other kids' movies that I loved as well. Pete's Dragon and Black Beauty. I was so pleased to discover that a live action version of the animated Black Beauty was made in 1994 that replicated the story exactly. It's worth a watch, especially if you enjoyed Warhorse, Seabiscuit and Secretariat. I don't have as high a praise for the Pete's Dragon remake unfortunately.

The movies we had videos of (some of them taped from the television) that we watched over and over (in no particular order) were:

Young Guns,

The Golden Child,

Braveheart,

Romancing the Stone,

Silverado

Robbery Under Arms,

Tombstone,

Willow,

Jumping Jack Flash,

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

and the John Wayne classics The Cowboys, True Grit, Rooster Cogburn and Big Jake, but our family favourite, that we watch together every Christmas is Lonesome Dove. Cult classics like The Neverending Story, The Princess Bride and Dirty Dancing didn't make the cut.

Most of these movies I haven't seen for ages, so when it came time to introduce my son to them it was interesting watching them through different eyes, especially since the special effects, cinematography, and even acting has improved exponentially over the years. Cody's review of the fight scenes in North to Alaska was particularly scathing. He was keen to watch it after realising that there was a movie about the Johnny Horton song we had been singing in the car (or vice versa, I'm not sure which came first). I haven't been able to find Jumping Jack Flash on a service that I have access to, so I haven't had the opportunity to show him why "the key is the key". My Dad had a thing for Lawless and Hell or High Water for a while, and has watched them several times. Cody has now seen them, so I can imagine that they will converse in movie lines for at least some of the upcoming school holidays. "Have you met Howard?"

Last week's 52 Frames topic was "Golden Hour", and I didn't make it to the dam for a sunset portrait session. There was an impressive mackerel sky one afternoon, so I looked around my street for something interesting to put in front of it, but couldn't manage that. I did notice the Jacaranda across the road had a different glow in the afternoon light when looked at from below.

This week is "Portrait of a Stranger", and I'm trying to think of the least weird/creepy way to ask someone if I can take their photo... because photographing a stranger unbeknownst to them, from a distance, paparazzi style is definitely weird/creepy. I wish it was next week, and then I could have used a photo of a Wildhorse Cutting competitor that I don't know. As it is I have to think of something for "One Light Source" for next week. I'm at Week 37 of 52, so I feel like I have to stick with it. It's certainly forcing me to think outside the box.

It's been quite a party, ain't it

Purple Fairy