Wednesday, July 01, 2009

life changes: movies

i knew that life changes when you have a baby. but here's one way that hadn't occured to me: watching movies. i had imagined watching lots of movies with tim when ben came along because we wouldn't be going out that much. i had pictured laying on the couch with my sleeping baby next to me...or in his crib...but it was definitely a sleeping baby. we have watched 3 movies since ben was born and never was he sleeping. evening seems to be a tougher time for little benjamin and he wants to be rocked to sleep. if you stop, he cries his little eyes out. and sometimes even the rocking takes awhile to help him calm down. so we watch movies with the pause button nearby. then, if he gets into a deeper sleep and we put him in his crib, we think, we should just go to bed before he wakes up again to feed. and the movie gets paused until morning. don't worry - we won't invite you over for a movie anytime soon. :)
but a movie that was well worth all the pausing and waiting until morning to finish: one week.

12 minutes into the movie, i said, "this is my new favourite movie". and my opinion didn't waver. it came out only in select theatres which for us meant vancouver. we didn't make it out there to see it before it was out of theatres but now it is on dvd. it stars joshua jackson as a guy who is told that he has cancer and he decided to take a road trip across canada to ponder life. it is narrated. i adore narrated movies. i love joshua jackson. and i love canada. there are many "world's biggest ..." things along the way and a number of tim horton's coffees. when he's riding in bc, you think to yourself, "i think i've been there!" even if you haven't. so good.

when i'm watching a movie that i am really loving, i begin to get a little nervous as it's coming to a close that the ending isn't going to live up to the rest of the movie. and this movie has a couple spots that you think is the end. each time i thought, "yeah, that's an okay ending." and then it would keep going and i'd be more nervous. but this one ends pretty well.

now i know that movies are filmed through someone's worldview...and i usually can't tell what it is so i just enjoy movies at face value and don't think too hard about them after they're over. then i tell my dad about loving a movie and he tells me that he thinks the underlying meaning was this and the message that the director was trying to get across was that and i'm sitting there with a blank stare. (one might call it the macdonald stare...) so for those of you who watch movies like that - i should warn you, i think there's an underlying meaning and message through some specific worldview...but i don't know what they are. i just enjoyed the movie at face value. it was thoughtful and beautiful and i loved it.

5 comments:

theRachel said...

Thanks for the review...now I'll know what to rent the next time we hit up the video store.

rachel said...

When I saw the title of your post come up on my google reader i thought - I know EXACTLY what that post is about. :) the movie thing only gets worse from here. we watched multiple seasons of ER and West Wing in the first weeks of Nevin's life - I was spending a lot of time on the couch breastfeeding. they hit an age where you realize they absorb all the sounds around them, even though they don't attach meaning to the movie music like 'ooh, a scary part' - just all the sensory input can be hard to take. Nevin would be fussing and I'd be like - why is the baby crying? oh maybe I should turn off the tv/music. and then he'd calm.

Anyways, I realized I've watched a total of 3 movies this year, and it's almost half over. I used to watch 30+ movies a year. Wow. The time and emotional energy required to sit through a 2.5 hour show - well when you start at 9pm after a hairy bedtime it just seems a bit much. Two hours minus commercials of SYTYCD is a bit much some nights. So I've started to love the little 43 minute getaway that is a good tv procedural, like 'Castle and 'The Mentalist.' (in the summer we're making do with 'Burn Notice') Peace to you (booked that ticket yet?)

Cousin Sarah said...

Hi Rebecca!
the macDonald stare!! ha ha! ;)

Lana Vug said...

Ok so I really wanted to watch this movie and after watching the trailer like 3 times I felt exactally about this movie the way you described it - I'm really going to watch it now. Thanks!

Lana Vug said...

Ok so I really wanted to watch this movie and after watching the trailer like 3 times I felt exactally about this movie the way you described it - I'm really going to watch it now. Thanks!