The Big 'Return'

Greetings there, fellow bloggers/readers. Long time no see. In the time I have been absent from the blogosphere, I have become an 18 year old, won a bit of money off some scratchies and have run around trying to find all of the R18 movies I couldn't buy until now. I have also just returned from a wee break in Sydney, which was amazing (I also caught up with Andy and Sam and watched Captain Phillips - more on that film later if I can be bothered reviewing it). It has taken a little while, but I must say that I finally miss blogging. It kind of happened around TIFF, when all of these fabulous movies were coming out and I went from not really caring about movies (August and September were such boring months for movies) to freaking out about every word written about films like 12 Years a Slave, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby and Don Jon.

But something kinda weird happened the other night. I went to the Dendy at Circular Quay (which is where the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge and all the ferries are) to go and watch Blue Jasmine. I sat down in the cinemas with a glass of wine - just to abuse my 18 year old privileges, but they didn't even ask me for ID - and sitting across the aisle from me was this girl who may have been around 16, sitting alone all ready to watch Woody Allen's latest. For all I know, she was probably 23 or something, but she reminded me of myself so much. I'm not saying that Woody Allen is the most obscure you can get, and heck, Sydney is probably a hell of a lot more cultured than Palmerston North, but I remember the good old days when I was a fresh young 16 year old going to Cinema Gold to watch films like The Tree of Life and Midnight in Paris. Films that my peers had never heard of, films that didn't have Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson or Vin Diesel in them. Instead of carting everyone to the cinemas to watch the latest blockbuster (though I did cart my whole biology class to see The Great Gatsby on a trip, but that's totally okay), my true happy place is alone at the arthouse cinema. And up until now, I had never seen someone of a similar age doing what I did.

When I saw that girl in the cinema I felt both happy and sad. Let's just take a moment so I can completely change lanes and talk about Lorde. By now you've probably heard the song Royals (which was big here back in February, but finally the rest of the world has caught on). She's this totally cool 16 year old from Auckland who is obviously making some big waves in the music world. Thanks to her magnificent album Pure Heroine, I have become so interested in her (she's like my Lana Del Rey for this year), particularly because of the way she writes her song. There's this song on her album called 'Ribs' (seriously, check it out, and the rest of her album), with one of the lines being "it's so scary getting old". Truer words have never been spoken. Right now, school is coming to a close, with my last official day at school coming in a month, and then my last official day as Head Girl coming a month later. I have had a lot of fun this year - despite some really crappy times, it has been actually so great working mind-spinningly hard on stuff. But it is kind of weird to think that there will come a time when I don't have this role, and even scarier, I won't see the people I have known for the past 5-13 years every weekday. Of course, I am excited to move down to Christchurch and study film for three years. But even though there's like, five cinemas down there and DVD stores that are filled to the brim with actual DVDs, it'll be weird not coming to Blockbuster every weekend or begging mum to take me to Palmerston North to see the latest Oscar hopefuls.

And even more bizarre is the fact that I'm getting 'old', and that was honestly the biggest thing for me when I was a more prolific blogger. It used to be all about "hey look, I'm only 16 and I love Shame!", and that was mostly because I was quite isolated in my movie loving in Dannevirke. For a long time, I felt like as I was getting older, I didn't have anything quite so special to say about film, which is actually quite absurd, come to think of it. Sure, there are films I understand a lot more now - like Atonement, which I first saw at the tender age of 12 and while I was shocked by the twist, it is fair to say that after studying every single detail of it in class I didn't understand half of it back then.  But the best thing about discovering film at a young age was that I've grown up with them. I have been influenced by them, and I can honestly say they changed my life for the better. I've grown up with the work of Nolan, Bigelow, Luhrmann, Linklater, have been in awe and shock by what they can do, and most of all, have been lucky enough to throw my thinklings on their work into the vast movie blogging ring. I admit to neglecting this passion this year - alas, there's truly not enough hours in the day, and I can honestly say I've been extremely happy in my leadership role - but it is nice to go back to film and laugh or cry, feel inspired and fall in love. And that's been the thing I've always had right from the age of 11 until now. Writing about them has taken me to some extraordinary places, and for some reason, seeing that girl in the cinema made me want to get my fingers back on the keyboard again.

I realise that like usual, absolutely none of this makes any sense but I guess that what I'd like to say is that I'd very much like to resume my place in the blogging world. I'd like to muse over the films that have been boggling my brain at the moment, like The Place Beyond the Pines and Spring Breakers. And if y'all will have my messy thinklings back in your feed, I'd very much like to give them to you. Of course, I don't have the time that I used to or the articulate thoughts that I used to put into reviews, and it's gonna be way too hard for me to keep up all the design work, but I just need to fill that void. It's not enough to rave about a film on Instagram. Sometimes you just need a few hundred words, y'know?

Of course, this all depends on if Blogger will stop being a grade A pain in the ass and let me continue on with my custom domain. But watch this space, because I'll be back to visit more often.