Movie Memories
Movie Memories: I didn’t always get Star Wars
I’d like to think that the last two or three years of heavily dedicated movie watching have given me a fairly rounded view on cinema. I do still like my mix of summer blockbusters in among the more art house delights I’ve discovered as I’ve started to venture into middle age. But I think it’s taken a while for me to refine my critical faculties and to truly appreciate what was good. For evidence of this, look no further than my childhood.
Whenever I read about how people my age got into movies, it often relates to a Star Wars epiphany. Now I’m 36, which means that when Star Wars arrived in the UK, I’d have been no more than four. If I did go and see it at the cinema, then that memory is lost to the ravages of time now. So the first experience I can remember of a Star Wars movie when I was a kid was The Empire Strikes Back in the cinema.
Why I will almost certainly be disappointed by Inception – My top 50 of the noughties
It’s finally here. After months of secrecy, speculation and salivation (not to mention alliteration), the saviour of the summer blockbuster is finally upon us. And anticipation in my head is reaching levels not seen since the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phanton Menace, when, despite having a ticket, I queued for an hour outside the screening to get the best possible seat. (Despite the movie being satisfactory rather than spectacular, my flatmate and I still bought lightsabers and fought with them until the early hours. I was 25 at the time.)
The risk here is that I have built this movie (and Toy Story 3 to a lesser extent) up in my mind to such an extent that it can never deliver on that expectation. Christopher Nolan has succeeded in pulling together possibly the best cast for a major Hollywood release known to man (and the best ensemble I can think of since Heat), filmed in seven countries on four continents, spent a huge amount of money on realistic stunts that avoid too much CGI, but has one thing which makes it stand out above pretty much anything else I’m likely to see this year – Christopher Nolan.
There are a few directors whose movies I would go and see if I had been kept in a hermetically sealed bubble until the day of release and knew nothing of the movie itself; they include David Fincher, the Coen brothers, Michael Haneke, Brad Bird and David Cronenberg. But if every other rational human being had dismissed his latest opus, I would still give Nolan a chance.
I could sit and write a lengthy dissertation for this (because, being a blogger, I love nothing more than the sound of my own voice reading my own posts back in my head). It occurred to me, though, that it might be easier just to share with you, my readers (hello, both of you), my top 50 movies of the previous decade. I originally wrote this for my Facebook at the back end of last year, as a summary of my movie-going obsession of that decade; reading it through gives some clear indication of my Nolan-love and why my expectations are vertigo-inducingly high for this one.
Movie Memories: The last time I saw a movie when I knew almost nothing about it (it was 1995)
“I’m only doing it so I can poke your eyes out,” said my wife. How did it come to this?
From me reading blogs, for a start. I have read as much advice as possible as I could be bothered to before starting blogging, and one I found particularly useful recommended reading other people’s blogs. Seems sensible. Then an article on one of them caught my eye. Someone was attempting to see a movie without any prior information as to what the movie was about. In this case, an interesting movie called Five Killers, which has ended up as a rather anodyne looking movie called Killers, with Katherine Heigl and Mr Demi Moore.
Coincidentally, I’d been feeling a similar frustration, and had tried to think back to the last time I walked into a movie knowing almost nothing about it. The closest I’ve come for a long time was this year’s Exit Through The Gift Shop, mainly because I saw it before most of the major publications had gotten round to reviewing it, but I’d still seen a trailer and read some random bits on the internet before seeing it, so wasn’t totally cold.
A Night at the Opera
Went to see a touring company production of The Marriage of Figaro last night. I must be getting old, because I couldn’t stand opera when I was younger, and I’m seeing two this week, out of choice. (Also, because once in a while 3D is good, as long as it’s proper 3D.) And it was nice not to think about movies for the evening, to prove to myself that I’m not completely obsessed.
Indeed, I wasn’t thinking about any movies during the opening overture, especially not Trading Places or The Last Action Hero.
And I wasn’t thinking about The Shawshank Redemption during this aria.
No siree, I didn’t think about movies all evening. Not me.
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Movie Memories: The start of my cinema obsession, watching Speed
Sometimes in life, when things really matter, you can pinpoint in your memory the exact moment when they started. Your first day at a good school or university, the day you got your first pet, or the day you met your wife for the first time. In my case, I hadn’t been to the cinema for years, and I can still remember the first time I went back.
It was October 1994, and I was just starting my third year at Bath University. In the two years I’d lived there, I’d not really given cinema much of a thought. I was a complete sci-fi nerd, and rapidly becoming a Trekkie, but who wasn’t then at my age? Especially when the university student union was showing The Next Generation on a 200 inch projection TV at 5 p.m. every day.
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