The Movie Club

I am a member of a movie club - albeit a teeny tiny movie club in which there are only 3 official members: myself, Suzo H. (amazing painter) and Emma K. (amazing writer and soon to be PhD candidate). In fact, you can see the bottom half of one of Suzo's paintings in the background of this image. This painting is part of a triptych of paintings that Mister Man and I are lucky to have on our walls.

Here's a glimpse of another in the series and in it you can actually see Suzo and Emma. (Suzo is the one who is looking at you). They are fantastic paintings because Suzo is a fantastic artist.

Our movie club started many, many years ago. In the beginning, it wasn't a movie club at all! It was a TV club in which we gathered (along with Leslie, Denise and Bev) to watch "24" (the early seasons). Then when the plot line became stupid, we changed the channel and started watching American Idol. We even started betting on who was going to get kicked off that week and who'd end up in the bottom three. We devised an elaborate point scheme and everyone had to pay to watch the show. The money went into a jar, along with a ratty piece of paper displaying the detailed calculations on who was where in the points game. One year, I took home the jackpot of $134 beans!! I don't actually remember who won American Idol that season, but I do remember the meal the jackpot bought for our club.

When I moved out, the TV club became kind of homeless because Suzo and Emma didn't have cable, so we took our TV club to the streets and became the movie club. Over the years we have seen dozens and dozens of films. Some of them have been brilliant such as Michael Haneke's "Cache" and Sally Potter's "Yes". But the REAL attraction of the movie club is two-fold: we are in it for the movie popcorn and for films that are not from the "high art" school of cinema. Nope. Plain and simple, we are in it for the trash.

Let's be clear about something. We are a fairly erudite crowd. On a good day, we can all use the word epistemological in a sentence. I even have a degree in film and I LOVE reading books about cinema and watching art films in the middle of the afternoon. But I also love the guilty pleasures the movie club consumes on a regular basis. Essentially, we will see anything that features any of the Jennifers (Aniston or Garner), or Sandra Bullock. We are there in a heartbeat if Johnny Depp is in the cast. We will walk a mile for John Cusack and we also have a thing for Bruce Willis (Suzo's daughter calls him "Mr. Yum").

So does it come as any surprise to discover that, on this brilliantly hot and sunny Saturday in July, the movie club was holed up in our favourite theatre (Tinseltown) chowing down on popcorn and watching Ryan Reynolds (a real "bona fide" Canadian) and Sandra Bullock (playing a Canadian) in The Proposal?

Sad as that may be, we were there; chuckling, chomping and having a great time. Because when the movie club (or any of it's many satellite members) convene for such great trash, we are able to forget about all the crappy things that life has dealt, and we are comforted by the knowledge that, for a change, we know EXACTLY what's coming next.