Do you know the great thing about having grandchildren? No, I don’t mean the bit about handing them back at the end of the day – no, the great thing is you can take them to the pictures. It frees you to go and see Tangled or Shrek or Ice Age without any kind of embarrassment. You can become a kid again yourself. A trip to the cinema can still be as magical as it was when you were the grandchild.
Back at the dawn of time, aka the 1950s, both of my grandmas would take me to the pictures at different times but I really loved going at this time of year. You’d go in during daylight and when you came out, after being transported to strange and exotic worlds, it was teatime and dark. It was as though time had been shifted and you’d arrived into a completely different day.
With my Mum’s mum I’d go regularly to the Scala cinema. What a great name for a cinema, eh? Especially in Ilkeston! We’d go and see such stars as Norman Wisdom in classics like, Stitch in Time and On the Beat; or Fred McMurray as the slightly mad scientist in, The Absent Minded Professor and Son of Flubber Son of Flubber, it is one of Disney's few black-and-white films made after 1941, (much better than the re-makes).
Back in those days there was a whole programme to watch when you went to the ‘flicks’. You’d be presented with Pathé News or Look at Life, followed by a ‘B’ movie, then some Pearl and Dean ads, then some trailers and finally the main feature. But the odd thing was people came in and out all the time. Some people would even come in halfway through the main show. They’d see the ending and then watch the whole rolling programme until they got to the part where they’d first entered - a strange, disjointed way to view a film but it was the norm.
I took my grandma to see The Beatles first film in 1964 at the Scala cinema just before I joined up at Poperingy Bks . The Barracks was named after a small town in Belgium Poperingy I think . A Hard Day’s Night she fell asleep. Not wanting to wake her (yeah, right) I watched the film twice over; and when she finally awoke her feet were so swollen she couldn’t get her shoes on. What a great movie that was...
Oops, I appear to have digressed - as usual. Anyway... and so it was that last weekend, with no agenda of my own (cough) that I took my granddaughter to see Spielberg’s brilliant newish CGI movie from2011, The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of The Unicorn. I give it five stars folks, and thoroughly recommend it to all. The lasting appeal of Tintin will surely guarantee follow up films.
For those who do not know about Tintin, here’s the history: “The Adventures of Tintin (Les Aventures de Tintin) is a series of classic comic books created by the Belgian artist Georges Rémi (1907–1983), who wrote under the pen name of Hergé. The series is one of the most popular European comics of the 20th Century, with translations published in more than 80 languages and more than 350 million copies of the books sold to date.”
I guess Tintin was the forerunner of today’s graphic novels. The series has long been admired for its clean, expressive drawings in Hergé’s cinema graphic style. With engaging well-researched plots that straddle a variety of genres, Tintin’s swashbuckling adventures mix elements of fantasy with mysteries, political thrillers, and science fiction. The stories also feature slapstick humour, often accompanied by satire, and political and cultural commentary.
So, go on, head off to your local cinema, with or without a grandchild, and enjoy an afternoon of carefree childlike escapism. You know it’ll do you good!
Just one thing treat your kids well . They often choose your nursing home!!!!!!!!!!
Toodle pip Magic, keeping his shoes firmly on .
Message Thread
« Back to index