Categories
Tutorials and Reviews

Bad Movies

I’m so tired of bad films. I used to watch everything that came out, good or bad, I’d go to the cinema at least once a week, sometimes alone sometimes with a gang of friends. Nowadays a trip to the cinema is a bi-annual event so if I waste one of my goes on drivel then I’m mightily peeved. This year I’ve already been a few times but I’m not counting last week’s trip because it was so awful, so gut-twistingly nasty and wrong, that Matt and I stood up and walked out before it was even half-way through.

I’ve not walked out of many movies in my lifetime. Something about wanting to give the film a chance and not feeling like I could properly judge it if I’d not seen it to the bitter end. In fact, the only other film I can remember walking out of is “Threesome” and that was just because the friend I was with wanted to leave.

These days I have so few to watch that I don’t want to waste my time on the bad ones. So, from now on I will be choosing my movies with care. If a trailer contains a sentence beginning with “This summer…” (As in “This summer, the coast is toast!” or “This summer, justice is blonde.”) then that film moves right to the bottom of the list. If it is a remake of an older film that was dreadful the first time around then I won’t be buying tickets. If it’s a remake of an older film that was perfectly fine the first time around then, again, I won’t be calling the credit card line and forking over my 8 Euros. If the story boils down to: girl and guy meet and hate eachother plus guy is hiding something from girl but then they have a montage scene where they come to realise girl isn’t uptight because she can play poker and the guy is not truly a chauvanist pig because he cares for his blind mother so they fall in love but then the girl finds out the guy’s secret and storms out and is going to leave town but at the last moment the guy’s nerdy friend tells him he’s being a fool so he steals a bike from a passing kid and a fun chase to the airport ensues where guy stands in front of a crowd and proclaims his love for the girl then everyone stands and does the slow clap thing and they kiss…the end **Deep breath** …well, I’ve seen that one a few times too many already.

So what was the film we walked out of last week? First, let me say that I’m no wuss when it comes to horror films…at least I didn’t used to be. I’ve never enjoyed gore for gore’s sake, I’ve always preferred intelligent scary films that don’t show you very much but suggest things to you and build the tension that way. That doesn’t mean I didn’t watch those standard slash films; to me, all that blood was just ketchup on the screen and nothing worth getting upset about. That said, since having a child of my own, it’s added a whole new dimension to how I watch any movies or television. If there’s a child in trouble or distress I can’t bear to watch, it’s just too close and I can’t remain detached from it.

Ok, ok, the film…it was “The Hills Have Eyes,” a remake of a 1977 Wes Craven film of the same name. It was pointless and disgusting and I’d summarise the plot but there was none. I knew it was going to be rubbish but I figured I’d just ride it out and perhaps laugh at the stupidity of it. That was until a couple of scenes into it when we are introduced to the hapless victims and one of the characters is a young mother with a baby on her hip. From that moment I could no longer laugh at the ketchup and consider this film from a distance. My eyes kept looking for that baby and a sick feeling crept into my stomach that this director wasn’t going to hold back and was going to have something happen to the child. As the violence started and the members of the family were being picked off in ever more gruesome ways, Matt and I stood up and walked out. It wasn’t funny, it wasn’t entertaining, it wasn’t even scary…it was just disturbing and I’ve made that deal with myself. No more money or time wasted on bad movies.

Categories
Eve Personal

Parents Be Scared!

I am realising that parenting and guilt go hand in hand. You make decisions and hope they’re the right ones but none of them seem to work perfectly. Right now the set-up at our place is I work in my little office upstairs from 10am to 5pm, Matt, my husband stays at home and takes care of Eve while I work. We take turns getting up in the morning since Eve wakes up at around 6am and neither of us likes to get up while it’s still dark. I usually bathe her and put her to bed in the evening. It’s a pretty even split most of the time and yet I still feel guilty. I can’t get over the feeling that the split shouldn’t be even, rather it feels like I should be the one that’s with Eve for the majority of the time.

Eve will often position herself at the bottom of the stairs wailing up at me “Mooommmeeeee” or I’ll hear her wandering around and asking for me. Talk about tugging at the heart strings. At those times that feeling creeps up on me…I should be down there with her full-time. We tell ourselves that we live in such a progressive society now, it’s the height of modern thinking to say that it’s just as good to have a daddy stay at home with the kids while the mommy brings home the bacon and yet I can’t get over the niggling guilt. Do men ever feel guilty as they head off to catch the DART to work in the morning? Do they wonder whether they shouldn’t really give up their job to stay at home? Where is this guilt coming from and should I be listening to it?

On a sort of related note, there was a news story circulating yesterday about complaints of abuse and neglect in Irish creches. I noticed that on television it was only TV3 that reported on it (the main RTE news didn’t mention it at all) and the only paper I saw that had it as front page news was The Evening Herald. Other papers may have had the story but it wasn’t on any of the other covers that I scanned in the newsagents. This makes me think that it might be yet another “Scare The Parents!” story. Right up there with “Formula Feeding: Will Your Child Hate You?” and “The Internet Abducted My Baby!”

You see it’s that guilt thing again. Maybe it’s my cynical side showing through but I can’t help but think that news editors know we parents are wracked with the stuff and those kinds of stories are like bait on a hook to us. They’re tapping into our feelings of fear and inadequacy and telling us: “Yes, you’re dead right, you’re messing your child up for life and putting them in mortal danger.”

Well, I’m determined not to buy into it. I can think up far scarier scenarios in my head anyway.

Update: I see Omani has been thinking along similar lines as he has a funny post about the shocking state of affairs at his own *ahem* creche.

Categories
Ireland

Wanderlust

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, the day to celebrate being Irish and yet today I’m daydreaming about living in warmer climes. I had plans to go to the parade today, I was going to bring my camera and shoot wonderful shots of young children with painted faces and of giant papier maché heads. Then came the rain and the hailstones and the arctic cold wind and I said “sod it” I’d rather work. Now I’m sitting in my office, my hands frozen into claws, trying to animate and failing miserably. The view out of the window is grey, Eve is cranky and I can hear her wandering around downstairs whining because she’s sick of being stuck inside. I put my headphones on, fire up iTunes and Madonna is singing “I Love New York.” I guess I just can’t help it, I’m wondering what it would be like to live in Southern California, or Italy, or France. I even went so far as to look up house prices in San Francisco after seeing this photo on Flickr (pretty bloody expensive just in case you’re wondering).

One of my most vivid memories of my childhood is of when I was about seven years old (I think) and my parents decided we were all going to emigrate to Australia. It was the seventies and my parents were sick of the struggle of living in Ireland. There were petrol strikes and electricity strikes, unemployment was through the roof and things were bleak. My Dad had a job but money was always tight and, although I don’t have any memory of this because my childhood was nicely shielded, I see now that the Ireland of the seventies and eighties was a distant cry from Starbucks coffee shops and spa weekends.

I spent a lot of time trying to get my head around just how far away Australia was and I was sure it meant we were never going to come back and we were never going to see anyone we knew ever again. I remember when we went into the Australian embassy for a family interview at some point in the process. I don’t have a good memory of what we were asked, I just have a picture of us all sitting in a circle in a beige room on uncomfortable chairs. That was when it struck me that I was going to get an Australian accent and that would mean I wasn’t Irish anymore. In the end we were rejected. The Maguire family was deemed unsuitable for Australia for some reason. Although I was relieved I was also disappointed. There was something so exciting about the thought of living in a completely different country. That was the start of my hankering for other places.

I recognise this feeling, I get it every few years. It’s the wanderlust and I’ve acted on it enough to know the grass isn’t greener it’s just yellow in different places. Still, I wonder what the weather is like in New England, Vancouver or New Zealand.

Categories
Blogging Ireland

Soft Blogging

First I read something last Thursday on United Irelander. He seemed to be saying that the view held by non-bloggers that blogs were mere personal diaries was bringing down the image of blogging:

I personally feel blogs are let down with their reputation as being simply “personal diaries”. While there are alot of bloggers who talk about how Cindy was being a real bitch at school and pondering over whether Corey will take them to the prom, there’s a hell of alot of blogs which steer clear of the personal diary-esque style altogether and they need to be the ones who encompass the bulk of the blogosphere.

Oh really?

Then there was the piece by John Ihle in the Times just before the blog awards where the emphasis was all on blogs as an extension of the traditional news media and the whole “citizen journalist” slant and again wanting to distance blogs from the perception of them being just personal diaries.

Then Fiona deLondras asked once again why more women don’t blog (although I think there are loads of us and I think it’s one area in which we’re well-represented) and if they do is there a perception that they only blog on the “soft” issues. She did ask whether or not that would be a bad thing if it were true but I think that a lot of the time it is perceived as a bad thing as highlighted by United Irelander’s statement.

It is my opinion that this so-called soft blogging ought to be encouraged in Irish blogs. Why must we all go techhy or political with our blogging? Why should it be the majority as if the rest is a sort of embarrassment? We have plenty of hard topic blogs but the personal blogs…the ones that really talk in an honest and open and funny way about life…are thin on the ground in Ireland. Why are we Irish so scared about the personal stuff? The blogging I’m talking about is hilarious, poignant, thought-provoking and brave. It’s not just confined to women, there are men blogging in this way too. Unfortunately not a lot of them are Irish.

I think the question (that I’m asking myself too by the way) is not why more women aren’t blogging, or how to get everyone blogging about politics. I think it’s more why we Irish bloggers are so scared and intimidated about blogging about the personal stuff? Why is that seen as embarrassing or soft?

I’d also like to see more Irish shoe blogs…anyone care to try that one?

Categories
Blogging Ireland

And The Winners Were…

blog awards
Photo by Ryan of Rymus.net: Colm Bracken (In Fact, Ah); Me; Matt; Ryan.

I’m just now emerging from a dozy haze…no I didn’t overindulge at the Blog Awards on Saturday night, rather I was over at my parent’s house last night and complained that I seemed to be suffering some kind of allergic reaction. My nose was itching like crazy and I was being driven mad. My father offered me one of his anti-histamine tablets and I was so distracted by the itching that I gladly accepted. He assured me as I popped the little white pill that they didn’t make him drowzy, but I might find it hard to get out of bed in the morning. “No change there” I thought and happily swallowed the thing. What I didn’t take into account was, because of the breastfeeding which I’ve only just stopped and the pregnancy before that, I’ve not taken anything stronger than Panadol in about two and a half years. So I got home yesterday evening planning to write an account of the Awards but instead fell fast asleep at about 8:30. I slept the sleep of the deeply drugged until 6am when Eve woke with her usual ear-piercing screech. I positioned her in front of “Ice Age” and fell back into my stupor waking only long enough to press replay on the DVD when it finished. The credits were rolling for the second time when Matt rescued me and I crawled back into bed where I lay unconscious until 2pm. I don’t know what my Dad is made of but it’s of far sterner stuff than I am! Either that or he’s planning a little boost to the pension when the time comes and that first pill was free.

Soooo, since I’m way behind on posting about this I will direct you to the main site for the list of winners. Gingerpixel was not one of the glittering plaque-holders on the night but the Best Photoblog prize went to a very deserving Donncha. I had thought Ryan was going to be a shoo-in for it and he was the firm favourite but there was tough competition in our category. I got to meet so many of my favourite Irish Bloggers and I think I said hi to everyone I had wanted to say hi to. The only two I missed were Damien himself (but he was a very busy man on the night and I would have had to have stuck my ankle out and tripped him up to get to talk to him which I thought might have been rude) and JL Pagano who was standing behind me at one stage and I meant to turn and introduce myself but got distracted and missed him. Ah well, hopefully some other time JL. I’m also hoping that Paige will be coming along to some blog get-togethers in the future only telling us she wasn’t coming at the last minute. I was sorry not to have met you Paige.

It was a great night and Damien deserves all the cyber-love he’s been getting over the past few days and Rick O’Shea was the perfect MC. I will be adding quite a few blogs to me daily reading list now that I know the people behind them. Or in the case of TCAL, the large crowd behind them. Congratulations to That Girl and Sinéad, hard luck to In Fact, Ah and Redmum (at least as a “non-winner” I’m in good company). So many blogs have great round-ups of the evening Irish Blogs is a good place to go to find them all. However, I will direct you to Letter To America, the blog of the hilarious Jett. He has a podcast up and I’m off to listen to that myself. His blog, funny as it is, only does marginal justice to how funny he is in real life so I’m betting his podcast is well worth a listen.