This year I was going to make the effort and go and go to the cinema. Okay, so that sounds a bit too easy, but over the past few years I've gotten out of the habit of movie going.
Six years ago I stopped commuting into the city and took a job nearer home, nice in certain respects, but it means the city stopped becoming part of my daily life, I'd make the trip 'into town' and discover favourite shops and restaurants had closed down, posters for events I'd love to attend but had just missed and sales that where over. But the biggest thing was no longer being able to leave work and see any film I'd like. There is a multiplex cinema in my town but, well can you keep a secret, its awful. They staff are hopeless, often its not showing the big release of the week but has 3 week old dreck showing on 4 screens and the number of times I've had to complain that the film is being shown in the wrong aspect ratio, projected on to the ceiling or out of focus isn't funny. So films became something that happened on TV, I got online DVD rental and started streaming films straight to my PC.
Its not the same - I might have convinced myself it was but . . . No. Cinema is an experience that is so personal to the viewer yet takes place in a public space. In a full theatre its reaffirming, a moment to be shared and when you're alone it can be glorious and seductive, something secret just for you. Sitting at home, you lose the time you get to meditate or mediate on what you've just seen. If you've had to travel somewhere to do something - like making a trip to the cinema to see a film - the journey become part of the experience and you get a buffer between the experience and the real world.
So This is it . . . my New Years Resolution, to make the effort to go out to the cinema once a week. And to help me do this I thought I'd set up this blog to keep record of these trips and to guilt me sticking too it. Wish me luck.
