Ruby Jand’s
Movie Blog
The whys and hows
“C’mon,
kids, we’re going to the show.”
In
the 1950’s when I was a little kid, these were the words I waited for and every
time I heard them I got excited.
Translated
from Northern Minnesota English (or maybe Jand family English, who knows?) it
means, “We’re going to take the car and drive half an hour into our little town
on the Canadian border to one of the two movie theaters, the Grand or the
Border, to see a movie.”
I
loved movies. All movies. All movies.
Every movie I saw was the best show I had ever seen. Even things like Libel (1959) which is so not a kid film
and I couldn’t possibly have understood it. Ditto Twelve Angry Men (1957). And
David and Bathsheba (1951 – it must
have taken its time getting to our theater). Of course I really loved kids’ classics like Old Yeller (1957), Toby Tyler
(1960), Bambi (1942), Song of the South (1946) and Cindarella (1950– they really took their time getting to us but then we were in the far north), Pollyanna (1960). But I also loved grown up movies with kids in
them like Good Morning, Miss Dove
(1955) and Friendly Persuasions
(1956). There wasn’t a movie that wasn’t
the best show I had ever seen.
As
I passed the age of ten and made my way through my teen years my indiscriminate
consumption of any and all movies that came my way continued but I began
sorting them into several sub-categories of “the best show I’ve ever seen”:
- “made me cry so hard my parents were worried” – Shenandoah (1965)
- “must see again immediately even if I have to go alone” – A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
- “really truly changed my life” (and this is a milestone!) –Dr. Zhivago (1965). And it did. I date my involvement in the peace movement from the moment I walked out of the movie theater after seeing it with a hazily remembered boyfriend. Another example – To Sir with Love (1967). It took awhile but To Sir with Love was part of what inspired me to become a teacher.
It might have been after
seeing Fahrenheit 451 (1967) the first
time, or it might have been earlier, that I started having the Impossible Dream
– just think if I could own my favorite movies and watch them at home whenever
and however often I wanted…
Thank you, thank you, thank
you, all you technical people who invented the things necessary to do
this! The DVD is the best invention ever
(I’m old-fashioned – I don’t know how to download and besides it’s like with
books, I want to hold them in my hands).
I’m not the most extreme movie freak. I only watch
two or three movies a week, almost always on the weekend with my patient and
tolerant Hal who, while also enjoying movies, would not watch nearly as many as
I do if it was up to him. But for me, watching movies is a social thing,
something to do together. And it’s fun to discuss them.
So we come to another great
invention – the blog. I’ve been doing my Shakespeare blog http://rubyjandshakespearecalling.blogspot.com/ for over a year
now and the thought has been growing.
Why not a movie blog?
Why not indeed?
And here it is. Ruby Jand’s
Movie Blog. It’s going to be less literary and analytical than Shakespeare
Calling. It will more spontaneous. It will be a mixture of good and bad. I will
write only about movies we own or see in the movie theater (three or four
movies a year), not ones seen on TV. I’ll write about them as I see them but
I’ll also list them alphabetically. I’ll have a lot of lists on the side to
cover various things missed in the reviews. Usually I will rate them but in a
totally random, like-or-don’t-like and inconsistent unscientific way.
I started reviewing at a
random moment last summer and the first movie I wrote about was Equilibrium, seen on August 18, 2012.
Since then I have found myself in a sci fi and doomsday period so for awhile
they will dominate the blog along with Shakespeare movies. We’ve just done our Hamlet marathon so watch
out, about 15 Hamlet or Hamlet related movies are in the wings!
At this moment we own over 600
DVDs and somehow that number seems to keep increasing so it will take awhile to
get through them all.
Many favorites won’t show up
for awhile because we’ve watched them recently but before I started writing.
I’ll make a list.
One of the most enjoyable
aspects of having a blog is having blog followers and getting comments from
same, and from total strangers somewhere on the planet. I very much hope that
you who see this blog won’t be shy. You
are more than welcome to become a follower and comment on my reviews.
Discussions, debates, disagreements (“How could you trash this masterpiece???”
alternatively “How could you give ten stars to this turkey????”) – do it!
I’m ready, all you movie
lovers out there. Let’s go to the show!
December 2012 - March 2013
