MOVIE MAGIC
- 4/7/2012 <--Prev : Next-->
The last time I went to a movie in Bulawayo was probably at a premiere held by Girls' College for a fund raiser, and that I believe was in the nineties !! These days they show some excellent DVDs at the Academy, but somehow we never ever seem to go to an actual movie at a movie house!
Do we even have any movie houses left I ask myself?
We used to have the Rainbow Seven Arts, The Monte Carlo, the Kine 600 and 400 amongst others and then later on there were a number of those intimate movie theaters in the Bulawayo Centre? Do they even still operate? I must make it my civic duty to case this one out !!
Going to the movies was a big big part of our lives as youngsters. We had no TV remember, (if you can remember back that far) and our Saturday mornings were spent blissfully watching Tarzan Movies and swopping Ritchie Rich, Archie and Jughead, Casper the Friendly Ghost and Little Dot comics .
The Drive In too was a big part of our lives, at one stage we even had two Drive In Cinemas in Bulawayo. This were balmy days, as children, sitting in the Old Morry with Mom, that tinny speaker emitting scratchy sounds occasionally as were sat transfixed by movies like Ben Hur, Doctor Zhivagho, Love Story and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
As teenagers we would be allowed sometimes to take deck chairs and set them out under the stars on those strange humps, and a real treat was to be allowed to get popcorn, cokes and cooked chips from the restaurant. However being Baby Boomers, funds were generally short and we would usually have to eat the sambos that Mom made lovingly.
Remember those long lines of queues whilst waiting for the first sitting to come out, the intense excitement as we were allowed in to drive over those incredible bumps, to our favourite location. There were the back rows for the lovers, the middle rows for the rowdy and the front rows for families with children, close to the swings and slides in case the movie was boring.
The biggest fear was driving off with the little speaker attached to the car, and the biggest excitement was trying to sneak in when the movie was censorship rated "ages 2 to sixteen" !!
I will always remember as a young mother, when HeeHoo and I were refused entry to a "2 to 18 "movie as we had a baby in a carry cot who was under two tears old. !!!!
These days we only seem to see movies on airplanes and in other people's countries and I have to admit that the culmination of my movie watching career must have arrived last night when we went to see "Prometheus".
Now in Greek Mythology PROMETHEUS was the Titan god of forethought and crafty counsel who was entrusted with the task of moulding mankind out of clay. But Prometheus the movie was nothing of the kind.
I should have been forewarned when they took us to an IMAX movie house, and at the door, we were handed some 3D glasses !! But nothing could have prepared me for the noise!!
Now old age has its blessings and one of those is one misses a lot of the unnecessary noises of life, but the Prometheus sound effects were definitely an assault on anyone's ears !! The whole movie theatre was moving and shaking as though an earthquake was passing by!
We must have been a source of either amusement or irritation to the regular IMAX moviegoers, as the visual effects with the 3D specs on were so real that we Third Worlders were shrieking, and ducking, and jumping and almost falling about the place.
It was an assault on the senses, an annihilation of the nerve endings, an Armageddon of the eardrum, my senses were ravaged, my psyche was literally devastated, and my mind was almost desecrated!!
I know I am being a tad over dramatic now, I really only went to see the film because I love Charlize Theron and I liked the name Prometheus. Sci-Fi is wasted on me, but this was the most incredible visual and aural experience I have ever been through.
I hate to say this for fear of being called an Old Doris, but give me the old fashioned Drive In movie any day.
