Mid-CenturyModernMoms

Twilight

It opens tonight. Twilight. The movie every teen girl is supposed to be looking forward to. The vampire love story that has captured the hearts and minds of teen and young adult girls. And quite a few women bloggers, if my reading is correct. I know people who saw it last night when it was released in the west. They waited on line to see it. Some for hours and hours. For a vampire movie!

Needless to say, my daughter has no interest whatsoever in this movie. Or the books. Or vampires. It's totally not her thing. Of all the teenagers we know, not one of them has any interest in the books or movie. It's like this whole popular culture phenomenon just passed over our town. Oh, I'm sure some of the middle school kids are going to the film tonight. But the high school girls? Nope, not really interested.

It makes me wonder what makes a pop culture phenom in one place and elicits total disinterest in another place. For example, in my blog reading I've seen many many young moms going nuts over the Twilight series of books. They speak rapturously about how the love story moved them. They couldn't wait to get through one novel in order to start the next. It was like the Harry Potter books, except that most adults talking about the books admitted they weren't that well written. It was just the story that kept them interested.

I am not a fan of the vampire genre. I don't like horror movies either. Even ones with a love story. So I didn't bother to read the books and I suppose that my disinterest caused a bit of my daughter's lack of interest. But the truth is, she's not a reader, she wouldn't ever pick up a book like Twilight, and this is so not a movie she would be willing to spend her hard earned money upon.

Which got me to wondering. Is this movie going to be as big as all the hype? Are your teenage kids panting to see it? Have they read the books? Did they like the books as much as the Harry Potter series?

Enquiring minds want to know!

What happens when your 16 year-old boy stays up all night

My son isn't the world's greatest sleeper during the school year, and during the summer he turns totally nocturnal, just like his mom. Most of the time he can be found in his room, playing with his XBox, watching TV or working on his new computer. God forbid he should do his summer reading or try to get some sleep. Oh mom, you're so STOOOOPID, he'd say.

Um, yeah. Such a lovely age, 16.

The other night he decided to do a bit of rearranging. See, he has figured out how to hook up his computer to the television to watch movies in HD. I know nothing about this.

I wake up and see the computer on the floor of the living room, keyboard on the coffee table, and the TV seems to be focused on his Facebook page. Of course, he's fast asleep on the sofa and almost impossible to awaken, so I just wait for the explanation.

Around 4 or so he rises from the dead and I ask him why his computer is now in residence on our living room floor. He tells me that he has figured out some way to connect it to the HD and we can now watch movies that he has <Del>illegally</del> downloaded off the net. At first I'm all, "That's a terrible things to do and I don't want any knowledge of your nefarious activities and they better all be on your external hard drive, blah blah blah."  You know, the mom talk.

Then he shows me the list of movies he's been downloading for the past year. And my goodness, how my animosity turns to admiration. He's got freaking great taste in movies, my boy does. Like right this second they are both watching "In Bruges" which is a spectacular film, if you haven't yet seen it.

And the boy downloaded the entire first season of Mad Men for me because I've been dying to see it and we don't have cable.  Not only does he have good taste, he also is a kind soul sometimes.

So now we're in this sort of impasse. I know that downloading is wrong, and so does he. But should we watch the movies before I make him get rid of them? What kind of horrible mother would I be if I did that?

You know what kind? The kind that has finally been able to see movies that I've missed over the years. That kind. Sigh. I'm so weak.

Heh.

Movies, television, and more movies

My son, who is almost 16, is a major film buff. Not your "I want to go to the movies today, can I have 10 bucks" kinda movie fan. He's more of a historical movie fan. But he has this habit that I find incredibly annoying. And between the movies he has seen (every one ever made, I think) and the TV he watches, I'm about to tear my hair out.

So what's this annoying habit?

He quotes lines from film. Constantly. Incessantly. If there is a line from a movie, he will find a place to insert it into any conversation. It doesn't matter what the topic is, he knows a movie or South Park quote that will fill in nicely.

I've mentioned before that he has a photographic memory. Well, it's more of an aurographic memory, if there is such a word. He remembers everything he's ever seen in a movie. Or on TV.

I thought it was a phase. If it's a phase, it's the longest phase in the history of raising kids. He started doing this quite young, but the first movie he ever memorized was Monty Python's The Holy Grail. I think he was maybe 8 when he learned the entire script by heart. Now, that's probably a good thing in some minds, but when he watches the movies he's memorized, he speaks the dialog about 1 second before the characters in the film. Talk about annoying! It can drive you right over the edge.

He's a kid who has always loved watching movies, even as a tiny tot. When he was very young I worried about him being so enamored of movies, watching his favorites like Peter Pan and 101 Dalmatians over and over and over ad nauseum. But movies are a real comfort for him. They are one of the few things that keep him calm and relaxed, and when he is particularly agitated, he'll go up to his room and watch a movie until he's forgotten what got him so annoyed in the first place.

We don't own a ton of movies, but when he gets birthday or Hanukkah money, the first thing he wants to buy are DVDs. When we belonged to Netflix, he took over the list and his sister and I never got to see anything we wanted to, because he would constantly move items on the list that he wanted to see up to the top. No more Netfilx fixed that problem.

Now we borrow DVDs from the library, which has a very extensive collection. From observing the way the library works, he figured out the optimum time and day of the week when the best selection is available. He's that dedicated to film.

I often wonder if he'll end up in the industry, but he doesn't seem really interested in the making of movies, more in watching them. If Ebert and Roper ever quit, I know a kid who has a bright future in watching movies for a living.