perfidy

Once, in a brighter age, I was a movie afficianado. I saw everything. I loved good movies, and I loved bad movies. The badder, the better in many cases. (Evil Dead, They Live for example.) Today they announced the Oscar nominees. I have seen 1 (one) movie nominated for major awards. That's it. Okay, two if you count the Best Animated Film category as a major award. Ten years ago, I would have seen all but maybe one of the movies up for the big ones, and most of the movies up for the technical awards. This year, it's the exact inverse.

The one movie I've seen is "Walk the Line," the Johnny Cash biopic. And, of course, the Wallace and Grommit Curse of the Wererabbit flick. And "March of the Penguins," nominated for best documentary. Aside from those, I saw "Batman Begins," "War of the Worlds," "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," "Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith," which were nominated for assorted technical awards.

The real reason for this cinematic apathy is not a a decling interest on my part in movies. Or even the widely rumored decline in the quality of films produced. The reason I don't see movies is about three feet tall and named John Christian. Three year olds don't behave well in movie theaters. And the prospect of paying out the yin yang for a sitter just to watch a movie I may or may not like is simply inconceivable.

The only time Mrs. Buckethead and I actually go see real movies in actual movie theaters is at the big holidays, when we have family (read: free babysitters) to watch our spawn. The very limited opportunities for movie watching has had a drastic effect on how we choose which movies to watch. Generally speaking, we only watch movies that we can be sure ahead of time that we will really enjoy. And among that small group, we are likely to pick the movie that woould be the most impressive on the big screen - in order to maximise our movie experience. In other words, we'll watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire twice before going to see something like "Syriana" or "Good Night, and Good Luck." Not to pick on Mr. Clooney, but if he wants to see us watching his movies, he really ought to star in a big budget special effects extravaganza with lots of explosions.

As John has gotten older, his impact on our movie watching has only increased. For the first couple years of his life, we could watch more or less anything on video. He was simply unaware of what was happening on screen. This eased the process of accomodation - we were able to wean ourselves off the movie crack gradually. But after watching "Christmas Vacation" and having John ask, "Where's the Kitty?" we realized that even that option had been closed off. And since John is a night owl like Mrs. Buckethead and myself, the only way I'll ever watch my Sin City DVD is if I get up at five in the morning and watch it before I go to work. Which isn't really an option at all.

Seeing as we have another spawn cooking right now (she'll be done sometime around the end of March) it will be at least another five years before I can watch movies again. If we have another kid, that day will be pushed back to sometime after 2012. Hopefully by that time they'll be able to beam movies directly into my nob.