8 Things

Thom at Film of the Year tagged me with one of the 'memes' doing the summer rounds, and prompted me to take a break from my usual strict capsule diet...

There are some rules, but I'm only going to partially adhere to them - and all my facts are strictly movie-related:

i. Post these rules before the facts.
ii. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
iii. People who are tagged write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
iv. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
However, I figure most people have been tagged by now, and if they wanted to respond, they would already have done so...

1. The first time I went to the cinema was to see a 1978 Disney opus called The Cat From Outer Space. I think I probably saw it that same year, from the balcony of a cinema in a place called Fermoy. In my memory, the cinema was a vast movie palace, and I was scared that I might fall over the balcony rail. Before the feature, there was a short film about a grizzly bear and some park rangers; I remember more details from that film than from the main event, which so affected me that my mother had to come pick me up - in the middle of the night, according to my memory - from my friend's house.

2. Despite the traumatic aftermath of The Cat From Outer Space (which didn't damage my fondness for cats), my parents developed a birthday ritual whereby I could choose a film on that particular day, with no input from the rest of the family, to which I would then be treated. For some years, my brother insisted that he did not, in fact, cry at E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, my 1982 choice; I was probably also in denial on this same point.

3. Like others, I keep a log of all the films I see; it probably says something terrible about the state of my mind. I started in 1989, and list the film, year, country, director and date seen (though early on, I mostly just listed the year). The first film listed is Cry Freedom; from what I can tell, I went backwards and added in a few films that I had seen in 1988, too. I mostly keep track of the format, too, but don't keep write down where I actually saw a film. A few years ago, working overseas and with many an evening to myself, I converted the whole thing to a spreadsheet with which I have much geeky fun, like figuring out exactly how many films I've seen from, say, France - or 1935.

4. I can probably blame my father for a lot of this: not only did he keep his own film log (until around the time of my birth, which makes me feel oddly guilty), but when an old film he especially liked would come on the box I would receive occasional bedtime extensions in order to watch along with my parents; that's probably why black-and-white movies still seem like an automatic treat as the opening credits roll.

5. I don't really buy DVDs: there are films I really love to see again, but for the most part I don't have the urge to have them accessible on a shelf near the TV. I think people who know me always wonder where the DVDs are kept when they come to visit. The answer is "in the Netflix warehouse".

6. My movie diary is accurate and honest: since I decided to review literally everything in about mid-2005, there are no "guilty omissions". I'm not sure why I should feel compelled to be ashamed of anything, as long as I give it an honest appraisal, and I think it gives a nicely rounded picture of what others choose - my wife, my family, my friends - and films I find by pursuing my own obscure logic (not a better or worse method, just different).

7. I used to subscribe to the British film magazine Empire. The very first issue I bought - in 1990 - had an article about film festivals the world over, from the paparazzi-infested to the obscure; as soon as I read about a festival called Fespaco, in Burkina Faso, I decided that was the one I wanted to attend - no Cannes, no Toronto, no Hong Kong, although at the time the festival's name meant nothing to me. It took me eleven years and a few diversions, but I made it in 2001, and I'd much rather go back than attend any of the others.

8. If I had to pick just one film to see over and over on a desert island, I'd have to go with Back to the Future. Sure, I know it's not the best film - though how we agree on that is beyond me - but it's one of the most perfectly enjoyable, no matter how many times I see it; it's also a wonderful example of Hollywood craft, made by people who actually care that a pop film also be a good film. The central premise is beguiling, too, though on the whole I think I'd prefer to inhabit Marty McFly's version of the past than my own, since Catholic Ireland in the 1950's sounds like a whole lot less fun.