Always Something New

If I've grown up with a movie and seen it repeatedly throughout my life, I don't really think about it when I watch it. I guess they've just ground a groove in my brain and have trouble getting out if it. Which means I don't always notice things about movies I've seen a million times. Then occasionally I will notice something that I'd never really paid attention before. 

For example, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Indie and Elsa go into the knight's tomb under the library, and wade through a petroleum well. While they're in there, someone drops a match and ignites the petroleum. Indie and Elsa have to swim to safety. But when I just watched this again, I noticed that Indiana is wading through the petroleum with a torch that's dripping embers all along the way! How come that doesn't light up the highly flammable liquid? 

Or Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (I read the book, but it was too long ago for me to remember many of the details, so this is just about the cartoon). As a kid, I assumed you were supposed to root for Ichabod, since he's the protagonist (even if I didn't know what "protagonist" meant back then). Eventually I kinda realized that he's not a stellar example of a hero. And I just watched it again, and finally put it in words. Do you really want to root for him? He wants the girl because she's pretty and her dad's rich. And the narrator says that Brom is a prankster, though there's no malice to his mischief. Except he's about to punch Ichabod's lights out at one point (and if he is actually the horseman, that's full of malice right there. Though we never know if it's actually him). So neither guy is much of a role model. But that's life sometimes. 

When I got back from Europe, I watched several movies set in places that I visited. It was a cool perspective!

Titanic was built in Ireland, so I decided to watch the film when I got home. I was crazy about this movie when it came out. I think that when I saw it as a kid, it just struck me as a really flashy movie that my best friend happened to love, so we loved it together. But this time, when I watched the movie it struck me that this really happened. Of course I knew it was true - Cameron does his research. But this time the details hit me as if they were real life. It's not just a movie. 1,500 people went into the ocean when Titanic sunk. And only 6 of those people were rescued from the water.

Sometimes I learn something new that helps me see a movie in a new light. 

In Paris, I saw some of the unicorn tapestries. The Last Unicorn was one of the films I watched on my return, because they use some of the historic unicorn tapestries. The entire opening sequence animates one of these tapestries. And now I can see that the unicorn's forest is illustrated to look like the foliage in the tapestries! Cool!