Senior Scream!
Did you go to Saturday morning pictures when you were a kid? I used to love it. It was a great excuse to meet boys, yell at the screen and behave badly. We used to sing along with loud ironic enthusiasm to the song at the beginning -We come along on Saturday morning greeting everybody with a smile
We come along on Saturday morning
Knowing it’s well worth while etc. etc.
Can’t remember any more.
Many years later we come along to the Odeon on Tuesday morning to ‘Senior screen’.
I have mixed feelings about this. It is certainly an excellent (and inexpensive at £3) chance to catch up on good movies a few weeks late. You get a free cup of coffee as well. But I am still in denial about being a member of a pensioner club. So, along with several other lurkers, I creep in late when it’s all dark and put my usual curmudgeonly, unavailable face on.
The film had been running for 5 minutes and three grey perms in the middle were still having a loud conversation. If they’d been kids I would have done my ‘teach’ act but I just tried to forget about them and enjoy the film. 5 minutes later another grey wrinkly bellowed out ‘STOP TALKING PLEASE!!’.. And they did.
The film was ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ I wish they’d called it something different because it’s a very black comedy, which is both funny and edgy.
Do you remember the John Cleese film ‘Clockwise’, which was supposed to be funny but made you so tense you came out wanting a full bottle of Valium? Well it’s a bit like that - but very funny and very good and upbeat at the end. The critics said that it didn’t address the issue of American ‘Beauty Pageants’ seriously enough. I disagree - the denouement was much more effective than a heavy handed condemnation.
It’s an excellent film I recommend it unreservedly.
On the top deck of the bus home there were a few Somali youths playing Gangsta rap. I bet those noisy pensioners would have been ranting on about ‘The youth of today’.
KAZ
Labels: Little Miss Sunshine. Wrinklies
posted by KAZ at 7:58 pm
10 Comments:
My Saturday morning memories of going to see Childrens Film Foundation movies at Sunderland ABC in Park Lane, are of being pelted on the back of the head from the bad lads who sat at the back of the cinema and threw their winkel shells everywhere... ;-)
We used to see James Bond films and Flash Gordon.
I don't remember seeing any girls there.
My village was too small to have a cinema.
Ah yes, "Clockwise"...glad there's someone else out there that found it so stressful.
I was never allowed to go to the Saturday morning pictures. :(
Nora: Yes, but I bet you liked it didn’t you?
Geoff: Well Bond and Flash Gordon aren’t exactly girly films are they?
Flash was always dead at the end of one episode and surprisingly alive again the week after.
Mj: So was mine (it was called Heapey) but we caught the bus.
Nic: Never mind - you’ve still got ‘Pensioners Pictures’ to look forward to.
How old do you have to be to get 'Pensioners Pictures' and do I get it a the same time as I get my bus pass?
I was one of those unfortunate kids who wasn't able to go to the pics on saturday mornings. My parents wasted their hard earned money on other things and I was sent off to the Swimming Club, great in summer but coming out of the antique indoor baths in the cold of winter was an experience I'll never forget, although strangely the victorian baths had the changing rooms opposite each other down the side of the pool and the doors were like stable doors but placed in the middle of the opening so the chance of a quick flasy made it more fun.
...I'm counting the days Kaz....counting the days.....
4987 apparently until I can go to the Silver Screen club at t'local fleapit (it they don't raise the age for their club in tandem with retirement age).
Robin: I think you can go at any age - but you must be over 60 for the discount and coffee.
Sounds like our ‘Victoria Baths’ that won the BBC restoration competition.
Nic: You are indeed fortunate - new releases, £2.20 and a café - bar.
Hope it all survives for 4987 days.
I thought Saturday mornings were for shoplifting at Woolworths? Little Miss Sunshine is a good film, but on reflection possibly darker than it seemed at the time.
coolbuddha: I knew I was in the right film when the non talking Nietzsche fan on suicide watch wrote down ‘I hate everyone’.
Senior Screen makes you feel like that.
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