(Originally posted July 2002)

This’ll be an interesting movie column if for no other reason than my complete lack of movie-watching action over the past month. But hey – don’t use this as a reason to hate me, or to follow me down the nearest dark alley in order to assault me whilst my mind is on other things – because I AM NOT ENTIRELY TO BLAME FOR THIS SITUATION.

Here’s the deal, see: up until recently, I shared a house with two of my friends, and many a happy evening was spent watching videos, or going down to the cinema, or indeed simply sitting around discussing the post-modern Brechtian tendencies of so much of the work of Don Simpson as producer AND ALSO actor. Then, just as life couldn’t be any more perfect, one of my friends decided to move away down to Brighton, where the pebbles are smooth and the hair is styled, and as he moved out I came to realise exactly how many items of furniture, electrical equipment and cutlery in the house he actually owned. Can you see where this is leading? Correct. My video recorder – and I do consider it MY video recorder, simply as a result of having shared a house with it for about five years – now lives in Brighton, which means a three-hour train journey simply to watch crap like ‘Jeepers Creepers’ or ‘Dude, Where’s My Car?’, let alone the exciting new ‘Apocalypse Now Redux’ edit or ‘Psych-Out’ once again. And that’s like, too much, man.

You might be thinking “why doesn’t he just go to the cinema, like anybody else?”. But to be honest with you, if you’re thinking that, you obviously haven’t been reading all my previous columns and hanging on my every fucking word like I expect you to. Let me run through it once more, though, for those of you not paying attention: I live in Reading, where there are two cinemas within easy distance – one walkable, one not – but both of these cinemas show, pretty much consistently, THE WORST KIND OF HOLLYWOOD SHITE THAT EVER WASTED VALUABLE CELLULOID. So, are there any other options? Well, one: the local university has a film club kinda thing which shows your more art-house and your more obscure films, which is a short car journey away.

I know what you’re going to suggest: “stop your whining Minter, get in your car, and go see a good movie, and stop offloading your damn troubles on our shoulders”. But here’s the issue – the rub, if you will. Two weeks ago, my car was parked outside the theatre of that very film club, and in the two-and-a-half-hours whilst I was away having my life expanded with movie magic*, some fucker put the lock through and rooted about in ALL MY DAMN PERSONAL POSSESSIONS. And they didn’t touch a thing. They looked through each and every one of my tapes, and carefully put them all back where they found them. Do you know how much it fucks a car door when the lock gets punched through? Well, not terribly, but enough to make it a slight bother which takes about 10 days to fix up. And prior to “the break-in”, as it’ll now be known (in the same way that my leg-smashing fun last year is now known as “the accident”), me motah was playing up, just as it seems to be doing once again now that I have it back. So I’m kind of not using it any more than I really need to, which is basically for getting to work – did you know that I work? Oh yes, I don’t spend my every waking hour amusing you people.

So this has left me almost housebound, except for walking in an up-to-one-mile radius around my house, which is as much as my pathetic, tired legs seem to let me. SO GET OFF MY BACK. I like movies, and I’d like to see more. But I’m not about to lower my otherwise flawless standards by seeing ‘whatever’s on’ at the nearest multiplex. I’m prepared to wait. I’ll be moving to Oxford soon, where everybody’s intellectuals and all that, so it’ll be arthouse weirdoid movies all the way, 24-7, soon. And believe you me, you, my special, gifted children, will be the first I tell about them all.

* The film I went to see, as if you care (do you care? answers on a postcard, etc) was ‘The Devil’s Backbone’, and it was great. Very spooky. I’d tell you more about it, but I used up all my space already…

Posted: 09|26|08 at 10:00 am. Filed under: columns, film and video.
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