Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts

Monday, November 16, 2009

Follow Up to "Amelia Indeed" Posted by Harry

As a follow up to Sally's marital post, I was going to write about my own marital experience, but for now I want to take it easy (it's Monday after all) and talk about last night, and movies, etc. Way too much to ignore.

Sally's synopis of our conversation last night is brilliant. It really irked me that I could not remember (or either of us could remember) the last movie we had seen at BMFI (which was only a mere several weeks ago), though I could certainly tell you where and when I saw "Exterminating Angel", or "Apu Trilogy" or "Grand Illusion", or even "The Graduate" (I confess I was only 15) for the first time. The movie was "Julie and Julia" (or was it "Jules and Jim?" - No). At any rate, we had both enjoyed "Julie and Julia", but unfortunately "Ameila" was a movie we didn't enjoy a whole lot. No offense to Hilary Swank, who is a favorite of Harry's, who is now talking about himself in the third person!

I intend to fill in the gaps on the books and movies list. Sally and I agreed that it would be a futile and epic list if we covered all the books and movies we'd known prior to meeting, so I will stick with what we've both seen and read together since the miracle date of 12/4/2007 (do DVDs count? They're good enough for The Times) and may throw in the Leonard Cohen concert (a thoroughly transcendent show for me) for a little variation. Please indulge me --- I'm in the last quarter of my 50s. Not all the synapses fire like they used to do.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Amelia, Indeed!

Harry and I have just returned from seeing Amelia, which neither of us liked much.

In the car on the way home we talked about how hard we are both finding it these days, to remember movies (not to mention other things but let's not go there in this post anyway) anymore.

In the seventies as I segued from twenty- to thirty- something I saw about 300 movies a year, and this is NOT counting the ones I saw on insomniac late-night TV. I was living in New York City where movies were plentiful and cheap, I was going to film school and dating a filmmaker. . .(and of course my brain was younger and much more agile.) The remarkable thing is how good my recall of these thousands of movies was, and IS. I can hear a TV broadcasting a murky copy of "Dark Victory" in the next room and I INSTANTLY recognize it.

But ask me to identify something I saw, as Harry did in the car just now; something both of us liked? - just a scant two months ago?

I am forced to Google it.

My first impulse is to blame the internet itself. After all, before the invention of movable type in the 15th Century, normal human beings were routinely able to remember all the contents of a 30-minute-long song by the roving minstrel that brought them all the news that was fit to sing, WORD FOR WORD.

Before there was Google, I remember remembering all sorts of things I learned in school. The value of Pi, abbreviations of elements, dates in the Civil War. Before I owned a cell phone that stored the phone numbers I call, I could dial most of the people I talked to from memory. Now I am helpless when my cell phone is charging.

Okay, this has all been a roundabout way of saying that I am going to RECORD on this blog all the movies I see with Harry. Mostly so that when we are not able to remember what it was or when or where, we will have someplace too look it up!