Little Miss Sunshine

I know two cinema sessions in one week is probably pushing the boundaries somewhat, but I went to see Little Miss Sunshine with a few friends today. It is absolutely brilliant. Totally my kind of film. Right up there with Igby Goes Down, Thank You For Smoking and Garden State. It's the kind of mentalness I find comforting. The kind of observational psychology that brings it all down to earth. Go see it!


Dwayne: I wish I could just sleep until I was eighteen and skip all this crap- high school and everything- just skip it.

Frank: You know Marcel Proust?

Dwayne: He's the guy you teach.

Frank: Yeah. French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he's also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he uh- he gets down to the end of his life... and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered- Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing. So, if you sleep until you're 18... Ah, think of the suffering you're gonna miss. I mean high school? High school- Those are your prime suffering years. You don't get better suffering than that.

Li'l Excitements

I have a pretty major translation deadline for tomorrow (some freelance work I do whilst being a perfect li'l bum) and this inevitably means my urge to procrastinate goes up ten-fold, hence the blogging...

I was invited along by MaTuVu and a very excitable, very cute 10-year old, to an afternoon showing of "Crusade in Jeans" at the local cinema. I'd read the book several times over as a child so was keen to go see it, despite it being predominantly aimed at a younger audience. There's something extremely endearing about watching a film with li'l uns. They are so genuine in their reactions to the film, regardless of how many people are sitting around them. And when they figure out the next sequence of the plot before it happens, you can see them getting all excited. I could almost feel myself slip back into that mindset.

I remember a particularly entertaining cinema visit when I was living in Stoke. Harry Potter's Chamber of Secrets had just come out and I'd gone to see it with a friend. At 2 p.m. on a weekday, we were - of course - surrounded by kids and stay-at-home mums. It became apparent that most of these kids had read the book from front to back several times over. They had clearly memorised all the spells, incantations and dialogues and were reciting them along with the movie. At one point, a clearly frustrated mother turned to her son and said: "Seriously Jack, why do you insist on me taking you to see this film when you know it all by heart already?!?". The kid turned to his mum, waved his hand as if waving a wand and said: "Silencio!". He then turned his full attention back to the screen as if the matter was now dealt with entirely.

The magic is still alive for them and I guess that is why I find is so invigorating.