NZIFF ’12

For as long as I can remember being a cinephile, June/July is a time of excitement and discovery and anticipation as the New Zealand International Film Festival hits town.

Multiple copies of the brochure are hoarded (1 x library, 1 x lending, 1 x booking), and one of them becomes dog-eared with innumerable passes as various selections are made (1 x if I was rich, 1 x if I am poor, 1 x if I had the time, etc). The first pass is usually where several hundred notional dollars is spent as real-world rules are abandoned. The final pass is reached after considerable pain, and eventual, reluctant, acceptance of the world that I live in.

This year, I did my first pass and… I didn’t dog-ear anything. This is a first. The Boy has made his choice – having bored and traumatised him at the last couple of fests, I thought it only fair that he have some say this year. Even The Goddess has had some difficulty finding something to discover/anticipate/get-excited-about.

Is it me? I hope not.

Time, maybe, to consult with Someone Who Knows.

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Parenting with Dave #425

Last year, The Boy and I went to see the restored cut of Sergio Leone‘s Once Upon a Time in the West. He’s a child of the generation of Playstation, Wii and iPods so I half-expected him to be bored out of his skull. Aside from a couple of fidgety moments, he was in its thrall for the 165-minute running time.

This year, he accompanied me to the New Zealand Film Festival screening of Takashi Miike‘s 13 Assassins:

INT. CIVIC THEATRE – EVENING

The LIGHTS come up as END CREDITS scrolling slowly on the BIG SCREEN.

Our WRITER turns to his teenage son, THE BOY.

WRITER

What’d you think?

BOY

That was so...

WRITER

(V.O.)

‘Awesome’? ‘Spectacular’? ‘Cool’?

BOY

... violent.

Oh.

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