Far Fetched Nonsense

If you've been keeping abreast of recent blogs, you'll be in the picture about my recent experience of living in a communal house with 3 men. (https://lightlygreen.blogspot.co.za/2017/09/urrgh-men-and-commune-housework.html)

A further reminder of our differing planets was their movie collection. With no TV service in the house, we were reliant on the collection for electronic R and R at home and boy, was I in for a rude awakening.

Spoilt as we are with the darling Casterbridge Cinema in White River, and my perchant for heading straight to Cinema Nouveau when in Johannesburg, it's been years since I've watched anything on the main cinema circuit. Being Head of Purchasing for music and dvd's in our household, our collection mirrors my taste for Art house, real-life historical drama and biographies and it's never occurred to me that there is much different out there.

Wrong.

Silly, toilet humour comedies and bish, bosh, bash extraordinarily violent and loud crime dramas ruled the roost at 143 Fenniscowles Street. On the plus side, I had plenty of time to scroll through Twitter and Facebook, make a cup of coffee or replenish the wine glasses while senseless car chases and physical violence overplayed on the screen far longer than necessary.

Who watches this stuff? How many car chases have you witnessed in your life, and if any, did it involve multiple pile-ups and smashed vehicles, exploding into flame, falling off cliffs and multideck freeways? Were the 'perps' (or the goodies, who can tell?) careening in and out of oncoming traffic on the wrong side of the road, or through a series of red traffic lights that results in all other traffic crashing helplessly while the main contenders carry on?  How far fetched can this nonsense get? And it goes on for ages, accounting for a considerable percentage of the movie running time. Enough already, we get the picture!

Even worse are the beat-up scenes. You know, when the baddies have the good guy tied up and are busy torturing and thumping him? The sound effects alone are nauseating and the manner in which the director has the camera lovingly clasp the close up of knife / fist / bullet / rope deeply inserted / impacting bloody flesh indicates some serious sociopathic tendancies. Predictably, our hero always manages to escape, fight back and get to help and safety after spending the better part of 10 minutes screen time being carved and beaten into a red-fleshed mess. 

Is it necessary to linger on these revolting parts of the story and drag them out as long as they do? Show, don't tell, is a writing maxim and most people have heard 'less is more.' Plant the seed into an audience's mind and let them imagine far worse than you can show, at a fraction of the movie budget.

As you can imagine, when inveigled into joining the overgrown boys at a movie showing, those are the scenes which had me zoning out and finding reasons to leave the room. Try as I might, I can't get the attraction of watching them. Tune into the evening news for your portion of senseless violence, at least that is real life and, unbelievable as it sometimes seems, is actually possible.

Come on, fess up. What movie scenes drive you out of the room?