Ticket stubs

After hearing the /filmcast discuss movie ticket stubs not too long ago, I feel like retelling the fascinating journey I have had with my own. After a long and arduous search many years ago, I managed to find every stub I have ever collected from the age of 10 till around the age of 18. I had them all neatly and safely packaged into card wallets, and were even sorted chronologically. Nearly every weekend my dad and I would go to see two films back to back, often quite stunning pieces of cinema such as The Peacemaker or Mouse Trap which generally ended in a discussion about how shit the films were, but these expeditions significantly expanded my collection. Anyway upon opening the wallet, after about 6 years of not even knowing where the damn things were, I was instantly reminded of my meticulous obsession with retaining these little flimsy excuses for a memory. This feeling was brief though. After pulling a few out to read the titles and dates, and laugh at how some of them were priced at $4.50 for an ADULT ticket in 1997 (now films here in Australia cost $18 for a regular ticket and $21 for 3D), I nearly started crying when I noticed that almost ALL of the stubs were blank. That's right, our cheap as fuck cinemas couldn't even print with ink that would last a decade. All of this collecting and storing had been for nothing. There were a few surprises though, as my ticket for The Matrix was quite legible, and all the Imax tickets were fine, but 90% of my precious keepsakes were completely blank. All that remains are the ads on the back. Awesome. Clearly there are a few things that have yet to hit our shores...

Understandably, for this reason I no longer keep my stubs...

*The photo you see is my ticket to the screening of Three Kings which aired at Southland, 23rd Jan 2000, for $9. NEARLY 11 YEARS AGO!!! That scares the shit out of me, but at the same time makes me realise that even at 14 I had a decent taste in movies. (Notice the film is R ;) Also it reminds me of why the film stuck with me, and of how long I've been waiting for David O' Russel to release another film since I Heart Huckabees (I have yet to see The Fighter but have read good things). Until next time...

Merry Xmas

I have recently emerged from a misty phase of viewing which has left me surprisingly moved, considering the clichéd genre of many of these titles. I started my convoy of films with Harry Brown, moved onto Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, then the much hyped Buried, gave myself an emotional break (if you know me, that's sarcasm) with 1994's The Last Seduction, and concluded with the very surprising 44 Inch Chest. What a better way to celebrate Christmas than to punish myself with a torrent of emotional burden! Even a true masochist wouldn't be so brave... I must say though, confrontational cinema has little to no effect on many viewers these days. If a film is popular solely due to it's controversy, it doesn't automatically make it a masterpiece. Now onto the films. Harry Brown was let down by it's unnecessary twist ending, which turned a beautifully shot heartfelt (revenge) story about the problems with broken youth in London's estates into a forgettable bloodbath. Buried, a story about a man trapped for 90 minutes in a coffin with a phone and a zippo, gave a very unlikely setting for a film a decent run, but fell short in terms of believability. Now to The Fountain. Here is a film that has slipped through many cracks however is a testament to the fact that Aronofsky is incapable of making a poor film. Ever since I saw Pi I have followed his film career and only after hearing the news about his intent to direct the new Wolverine film (drumroll for the epic title please: The Wolverine) have I been unsure of what to expect. If he is attempting to follow in Nolan's footsteps and reinvent a series in a more mature and artistic manner then fair enough, but I would much rather the money and resources going into a film that changed the way I look at the world such as Requiem for a Dream. But hey that's just me... Before my tangent becomes unrecognisable from the seed from which is grew, The Fountain is very hard to describe, but is essentially is a story about love and life, and the nuances within, on a grand scale. I'd rather not say more, as with many films I had gone in blind and enjoyed it more than having a preconception that more often than not, jades the outcome.

44 Inch Chest is an interesting piece. It begins as what I perceived (without prior reading) as a British gangster revenge flick, but it ends up as an introspective look at love and forgiveness, and to a degree insanity. Also I commend the writers on the fact that it holds the record for the most 'c' bombs dropped on screen. 44 Inch Chest also falls into my much loved category of minimalistic settings ala Richard Linklater's Tape, or Sydney Lumet's 12 Angry Men. (by all means correct me if you feel a film needs a terrorised airport or a world war to create tension).

I feel the need to mention that I have Quickflix (Australian version of Netflix) to thank for a number of these titles, a free subscription helped me with a long list of films that I would otherwise not track down. Having dvd's delivered to your door is great, but I can't help but think how lazy we are that we'd rather wait 2 days for a film to be delivered than to go and rent it... Oh well, soon everything will be streamed directly to our screens like most of the content available in the US anyway =)