Friday 29 July 2011

Film Festival Plans

I have become too precious about this blog, waiting 'til I have something really brilliant to say, and pictures to go with it. As this blog is really about keeping friends and family in touch with what's going on in my life here in New Zealand, I'm going to try for regular (perhaps weekly?) short, and imperfect posts about what's going on with me. So here goes.

I'm watching an orange-salmon-electric pink sunset over the hills of Johnsonville, and sipping my tea, and feeling self-satisfied for having gotten my Wellington International Film Festival tickets sorted this year.

Last year we were in 'hibernation' mode, exacerbated by the fact that we'd moved to the suburbs but hadn't yet accepted that we needed to buy a car. We ended up missing the Film Festival entirely, and this made me sad. So this year I got myself organised, reading the festival guide and picking out films ahead of time. I bought my tickets today, the first day of the festival, and still struggled to find good seats, and twice had picked something that was sold out and had to go with my second pick. Now, for some this would be considered leaving it to the last minute, but it was far more organised and planned out than anything I'd done in the past.

I love the film festival because I've never lived in a place that has one. Actually Wellington has more film festivals than I can keep track of, but this is The Big One, the one everyone looks forward to, a bright spot in an otherwise cold, rainy, windy antipodian Winter bereft of holidays. Loren and I don't tend to see many movies in the theatre the rest of the year. Movies are so expensive, and so often not worth the money. But the film festival is a far better bet; any movie you pick is likely to be quite good, even if it isn't your kind of movie.

I've picked four films this year. A Japanese animated film based on the children's book The Borrowers, which I am looking forward to seeing by myself. A rom-com about a son and father and their respective romantic entanglements, which I will be seeing with friends. And two documentaries - one about the portrayal of women in media, the other about the nefarious things corporations do to protect themselves from lawsuits - which I will be seeing with Loren next weekend.

I ended up with a range of genre, which I is a good thing. It was hard to restrain myself from buying twice as many tickets. Indeed there are folks who take weeks off of work to see as much of the Film Festival as they can. I am not that crazy, but flipping through all the possibilities on offer, I can understand the urge.

Despite the fact that we don't go to the movies much, I like the move theatre experience. I am looking forward to spending some time eating popcorn (or scoffing jaffas, or sipping flat whites) in dark theatres this weekend.