Now, don’t worry, I’m not going to review Infinity War here. There is a near infinite number of people on the internet who are going to do that today. No, what I wanted to talk about was opening night. I love the opening night of a big movie. I truly do. The atmosphere. The anticipation. The reactions in the room, after the lights have gone down.
Read More A few weeks ago, on Easter Sunday, we were flicking around and passed a rather intense looking programme. It was clearly a drama, being performed on a stage and in front of an audience. A well dressed, well behaved audience at that. I recognised a couple of faces in the cast and was relatively intrigued until I spotted a grave digger and heard the name Horatio.
“Alas…” said the TV.
“Oh, not again.” I said as I quickly hopped to another channel.
There are some people in the world of cinema whose name becomes synonymous with what they do. You can spot them quite easily. They normally get the word ‘esque’ stuck on the end of their name to tell you another director has tried to respectably rip them off. It’s a sign that their talent has sewn them into the fabric of the cultural landscape. Steven Spielberg is very much one of those people. Although, unlike so many other directors who share that honour with him, he’s transcend the need to be seen as connected to only one genre or style of film. When it comes to Tarantino, Hitchcock, Fellini, Lean or Kubrick, you know roughly where the movie is going to take you. Whereas Spielberg feels more of an iconoclast than the rest of them. Or, at the very least, he appears to have a few extra clubs in his bag.
Read MoreI’ve always loved the cinema. It started with the first movie I ever went to see. My dad took me to the grand old, art deco Odeon that used to sit in central Leicester to watch the newly re-issued Jungle Book. It blew me away. The deep reaching perspective of Kipling’s jungle in the credits. The moody atmosphere that seemed to lurk in the opening few scenes and the sheer, wild delight that took its place until a certain tiger cornered a boy amongst dying trees, the flames spread and I was made to believe a heroic slob of a bear had died.
Read MoreOkay, I want to talk about something in particular this week. Only, in order to do that, I need to make confession before we go any further. Are you ready? This isn’t going to be easy for me.
Here goes nothing…
I only book a stay at The Overlook Hotel occasionally. Every visit always leaves me with a different souvenir. I go in with pieces of the mystery set firmly in my head, ready to help me decrypt what I’m seeing. The native American mythology. The reference to The Donner Party. The many, many other theories the truly mind-bending documentary Room 237 has implanted into my thinking. Regardless of those intentions, by the time I get to the end I’m always too unnerved to think past the overwhelming sense of escape.
Read MoreHey, Internet, it’s good to be back amongst you. After a couple of chaotic weeks and some incredibly painful days without any sort of signal that belongs in the 21st century, The Blank Page is up and running again. I’d call it 2.0, but let’s not fool ourselves. We’re in for more of the same here. The overly long posts and occasional reveries that don’t quite add up to a bigger pay cheque. Still, that’s hardly the attitude to start on. The Longs have moved finally moved house. Let’s begin there.
Read MoreExpectation is a tricky thing. We generate it ourselves, but we don’t have a lot of control over it. We merely light the fuse. Our subconscious does the rest. It fans the flames and spreads the fire. It makes us crave what lies ahead. Before we know it, we’ve taken something we’re interested in and turned it into something so much bigger. Something that feels bizarrely pivotal to our happiness. Sadly, this process doesn’t always work out well for us or the thing we’re waiting for.
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