Revisiting
2006-09-29, 16:24

Let me lead off by sharing a link to something that's near and dear to my heart, mainly for nostalgic reasons - The Big Snit. It's a 10-minute animated short film that came out in 1985. Go ahead, watch it, I'll wait.

...waits... There, wasn't that funny and cute? I knew you'd think so. It just goes to prove my adoration for all things Canadian. I recently noticed that I found myself drawn to Flickr users that end up being currently or formerly Canadian - like Out Of Tune, for instance. Who can say no to an attractive Canadian redhead that's awesome with a camera? I mean, really.

Anyway, my brother shared the linky with me - and it's really odd to me for some reason that my brother and I communicate in any way online; it seems to me like a collision of two very opposing worlds - and I'm happy to watch it again. I have a really degraded videotape somewhere in my house with that on it (along with, I think, Howie from Maui), but it's almost impossible to watch, being - ack - twenty years old and all. Back in the early days of cable, The Movie Channel used to (and maybe they still do, I dunno) often show short films of note between movies and sometimes in large blocks. I appreciated it because there were rally no other places one could get to see these short films, outside of trudging out to the local (if you're lucky) cinematheque if you managed (again, if you're lucky) to find out if and when they were showing any.

So seeing The Big Snit again after many years was a nice nostalgic experience for me, sending me back to the days when I spent a lot of time watching movies over the summer. As a matter of fact, I'm sure that I spent entirely too much time watching TV back then, but it certainly gave me a deep appreciation for the film process.

Speaking of nostalgia, I've decided, much to my internal purist geek's chagrin, that I don't care about the whole updating of Star Wars to make it look more in line with Lucas' original vision for the project. I used to rail against the idea, feeling like he was altering a piece of my youth irrevocably, tampering with precious memories of my childhood. But then I think about other things I used to hold dear in my head, and realize that some of it is better left in the dark recesses of my memory. Take 'Land of the Lost', for instance - there's something I wish I'd never seen as an adult, because it's pretty atrocious, though when I was a little kid that show was the bee's knees. When I look at the original Star Wars now, I can see how Lucas would want to spruce it up, because his main limitations for the production was money and time, not creative input. If he'd had the money and technology back then, I'm sure he would have made something closer to what he's trying to get now, rather than the boxes-around-the-tie-fighters look it had originally. Granted, I still find those boxes quaint, but I don't disparage him for wanting them gone.

Does that mean I'm growing up, in some pathetic, geeky way? I hope so.

-- End Transmission --