Movie Natters: June 2, 2009 Archive

A graduation day 'who woulda thunk it?'

Posted at 11:15 PM on June 2, 2009 by Euan Kerr (1 Comments)

It's been a strange cinematic day. It began when I bought a second hand copy of the complete second season of "The Wire." It wasn't the fact that I got it for a great price, but just that it's a total of 720 minutes and it all fits into a little box the size of a trade paperback.

It's graduation day today in the Kerr household and we just watched Malcolm-the-18-year-old flip his tassle. It is a moment of great joy, pride, and a little relief. Yet it's also a time to wax nostalgic, and inevitably I begin thinking of why own high school years and how it would be absolutely ridiculous to think of having 720 minutes of film in a little box.

I keep thinking about my grandfather who used to show movies for a living, and my dad whose first job was rewinding reels at the local fleapit. I wonder if my grandfather could have ever imagined a world where film was not on celluloid.

Anyway tonight I am heading off to the senior lock-in party, and I know there will be a pile of movies, which the new graduates will sift through and sample all night long, probably never finishing a single one. Again something my grandfather would find strange.

But it's the 21st century. Times change.

Congratulations graduates. I wonder what things you can't conceive of now will soon be commonplace.

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