Chronicles of Junior Misssy
Aslan: Always “Happy to Help”All of a sudden I have become acutely aware that my little girl is growing up fast. Little teeth are getting wobbly, she’s finishing nursery and moving on to school and she’s becoming a lot more independent.
The kids and I went to the cinema tonight and my girl showed there was still a lot of baby left in her, though. Jnr Misssy just can’t sit still in the cinema, and within ten minutes of the film starting, I had taken her to the toilet, taken her for a drink, had to retrieve her shoe from the floor of the row in front of us and had to pick up her spilt sweets from all over the floor to the soundtrack of her wailing.
After fifteen minutes she had given up her seat for my lap, as she always does.
She also talked to me throughout the whole film. Normally, I hate it when people talk through a film but tonight, watching Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, I enjoyed Jnrs commentary immensely. This was, in part, because I realised that I’m not going to have too many years left when my daughter wants to sit on my knee whispering to me, with her arms round my neck and her little hands buried in my hair.
The other reason was her commentary was hilarious. If only it could be an extra feature on the DVD of Prince Caspian.
Highlight One: “Where’s Asda?”
“It’s Aslan”
“Where’s Asdan?”…..
Highlight Two: “Who’s that beaver?”
“It’s a mouse”
“Well, it looks like a beaver to me”……
Highlight Three: “Are the bad men good yet, can I open my eyes?”
“I’d give it a minute”…..
Highlight Four: A little centaur with blond hair and a beard walks on screen, he says nothing, just blows a little horn. Junior Misssy absolutely cracks up laughing in an otherwise silent cinema. Really cracks up. The shot changes to something else, then returns to the little centaur and Jnr Misssy cracks up even more.
I’m reviewing Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian on the radio this Saturday…better read some newspaper reviews beforehand so that I can pretend I was paying attention….
(Podcast here)
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No Sex please…
Carrie Bradshaw may get me into some legal trouble.
Anyone hanging round here for long enough will know that I review films on the radio. How I got into this lark is anyone’s guess but I think it might have something to do with me mentioning that I loved going to the cinema more than anything else and being a bit of nerd about it all.
It should be a film lover’s dream…but I can tell you, it is not.
I still love the cinema and I still love film, but it seems to me that as soon as you are obliged to do something, it becomes….well…sometimes it becomes a bit of a chore.
Surprise surprise; not all films are good. This is the curse of the film reviewer.
(Cue brattish ranting).
I have to go to the cinema every week no matter what is on. And watch big stupid films that I ordinarily wouldn’t choose to go and see. With other people I don’t want to be with. Who eat food I don’t want to smell, crunching and slurping loudly in my ears. And have their phones go off midway through the film. And talk during the film. And kick my seat. And breathe near me.
My station, Original 106FM, understandably wanting/having a large audience of ordinary people who like mainstream stuff, requires me to go and see “THE BIG FILM OF THE WEEK” even when I rather go and see the subtitled “Two Ducks Laughing” by Lars Svenige Arschbiscoot, in an empty cinema that eschews the eating of hot foods in its environs and that only employs staff that have bizarre bohemian facial hair and tribal tattoos.
Oh how I long to cry at the poignancy of the two ducks, to laugh along with them as they laugh, to be shocked by the violent tragedy that befalls them when the laughter stops, to wonder if the fifteen minute scene where a duck looks silently into his own reflection in the pond is a metaphor for the rise of fascism.
I want to be the first and only person to see “Two Ducks Laughing” so that when it finally gets an award I can say, “Well, I did say that ‘Two Ducks’ would be the cinema event of the year…when I saw it back in December in the original Swedish. But it is still not as good as Arschbiscoot’s earlier work, ‘ My Life as a Toad ’ which he shot on leftover film stock from Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander”, found in an abandoned loft in Stockholm.”
But no, cinema has increasingly become a poison chalice of widescreen multiplex mediocrity for me.
Take this week. I’m trying in vain to see “Sex in the City” as it is expected that I review it on Saturday. This is a film that has somehow been made when, in fact, it is a TV show and should stay a TV show. This is a film that is to cinema what Dido is to music. This is a film that is made for people who don’t like films. A film that will have people who don’t normally go to the cinema, taking up all the seats that film reviewers need to go and review the bastard thing. A film that is completely bloody sold out despite having about twenteen performances daily. It is a film I can’t get tickets for for love nor money.
What’s more, this bloody film, which will probably be utter dog shit, will have gaggles of girlies going to see it. Girls who will make an event of the whole thing by dressing up to go and see it and having a meal beforehand. Girls will have had a couple of glasses of wine before going to see the film which will mean that girls will talk throughout the film and will have stupid and loud conversations behind me that will liken themselves to characters in the bloody film that will enrage me.
So when I finally get to go and see Sex in the City, I will have to kill several people.
The audience’s feeble attempts to emulate the fashion crimes of Sarah Jessica Parker will be my weapons. I will strangle them with their chiffon scarves, I will gouge eyes out with fake Manolo stiletto heels, I will choke them with their over-sized corsages, I will asphyxiate them with their own boob tubes.
And then they won’t let me review films anymore. And I’ll have to watch films on a shared TV in the common area of a woman’s prison where being told to “Shussssh” will get me a kicking in the showers and a midnight visit from “Big Brenda” (who ironically will resemble Sex and the City actress, Cynthia Nixon’s girlfriend- Jesus, she might as well be straight…)
See what I mean?
Sex and the City will ironically force me to live in an all female environment and not one bedeckt with high fashion in any way. As Paris Hilton proved, prison jumpsuits cannot be accessorised successfully.
Hey folks, don’t forget to listen to the review on Saturday here!
*Sigh*
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