Magic of the umm…pictures 04.09.08
I used to like going to the
movies. In fact I used to like it before anyone in
Ireland would ever have dreamed of using a word like
movies in a sentence.
When I was growing up we went to the pictures. Well
okay, when I was growing up we usually didn’t go to the
pictures because the nearest cinema was fourteen miles
away, but if we were going, we’d be going to the
pictures and not to the movies.
Come to think of it I still go to the pictures if I’m
going, but strangely enough when I watch films at home I
often watch them on a ‘movie’ channel.
Watching films at home certainly has advantages, but
it’s hard to beat the cinema experience to really enjoy
a film.
And that kinda takes me back to my opening line. I used
to like going to the pictures and during the wonderful
80s and early 90s I really didn’t care what I saw, or at
least looking |
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back now at what I saw I’m
thinking I mustn’t have cared.
Envious of older members of my family who told tales of
watching cowboy films every Saturday morning when there
was a cinema in my home-town, I longed to go and watch a
film on something bigger than a 14-inch television.
Of course we weren’t completely deprived of the cinema
experience. Three times as far as I can remember a man
with a projector came to the local hall bringing us a
kind of cinema of our own.
We saw ‘Grease,’ one of the Dracula movies and I think
Bruce Lee’s ‘Enter the Dragon.’ The top right hand
corner of the big screen pinned across in front of where
the stage was curled down a couple of times because the
tape holding it up wasn’t strong enough, and the
projector overheated once, but we didn’t care it was
still brilliant.
It wasn’t quite the same as the real thing though, a
place where the popcorn was salty instead of that
coloured sweet stuff we used to buy in wee crisp-like
bags and where somebody came in with a torch to show you
to a seat that wasn’t one of those old wooden hall
types.
And so when I got the chance I used to go to the
pictures whenever I could. I avoided anything spacey if
possible so out were all the Star Wars films and I have
still never ever watched E.T. but I did see some
classics like the Rocky movies and the Beverly Hills Cop
movies.
Okay, so there was a certain element of bad choice and
bad taste involved there, but I didn’t always choose
badly and also saw movies like Rain Man and Ghostbusters
and some of the other good ones made in the 80s. (I’m
sure there were at least two more).
That continued into the early 1990s and then it stopped.
With the arrival of my two girls going to the cinema
took on a whole new meaning and over the past decade I
have watched everything produced by Disney or Pixar
usually in the cinema and then again about twenty times
at least on DVD.
To be honest I didn’t really mind all that much. I like
cartoons anyway and have always had a fascination with
and huge admiration for animators. And the bonus is of
course that the cartoons are funny.
For ten years the full selection of whatever had PG
beside it was what I had to choose from. But all that
has changed again as I discovered to my peril last week
when I decided that a cinema visit might be a good way
to round off the school holidays.
There wasn’t much of a choice as far as I was concerned,
but then I had automatically looked at the listings and
ruled out three or four in my head that I shouldn’t
have. |
Anything with a 12 beside
it for instance until it was pointed out to me that,
well they could go to a 12 movie because, well, they
were 12.
The choices sounded horrendous, but it was their treat
so they got to choose. They did, I went with them and
I’m pretty sure that spending an hour jabbing myself
with a fork would have been only a slightly less painful
torture.
That said, there is a bright side and it’s very likely
that this watershed moment could mean that it’s along
time again before they will ever want me to accompany
them to a film of their choice again.
But I’ll still probably have to drive them there…and
pay! |
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A DROP OF
PORTER is
the weekly
column of
Inishowen
Independent
editor,
Liam Porter. |
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