watch­ing movies with a child

Well, first off, I have to thank two of my read­ers, Helen and Sue, for point­ing out that in my lat­est post, I had the wrong BBC radio celebri­ty’s pho­to to rep­re­sent Matt Har­vey! He’s the prop­er man now, I’m fair­ly cer­tain. Gee, way to kick off a crush. I would­n’t even have known the man if he came up and bit me. Although that would be a clue.

Now then, we’ve been spin­ning down the days of the long Christ­mas vac by watch­ing movies. One was my new copy of “Hol­i­day Inn,” which made us laugh because it’s a ver­sion from Hong Kong, pos­si­bly not even a legal copy (I feel bad if so, but the sell­er on eBay posed as being from Britain, which my savvy hus­band tells me is com­mon for pirat­ed Hong Kong videos). Avery and I end­ed up watch­ing about half of it with Chi­nese sub­ti­tles and try­ing to catch what char­ac­ters meant what. I’m sor­ry to say it was very entertaining.

Then we made it all the way through one of my favorites of all time. Hon­est­ly, this made me laugh so I could hard­ly stop. I decid­ed that since I received a prac­ti­cal­ly gold-plat­ed DVD of “Gone With the Wind” from Jill and Joel, and remem­bered that I was ten when I watched it the first time, it would be a nice thing to watch it with Avery. There’s Ger­ald O’Hara, bleat­ing on about Tara and how Scar­lett should revere it. “And to any­one with a drop of Irish blood in them, why, the land they live on is like their moth­er. It’s the only thing worth fight­ing for, worth dying for. Because it’s the only thing that lasts…” I mused, “Maybe that’s why Dad­dy’s so obsessed with real estate, because he’s half Irish?” Avery snort­ed. “ ‘Because it’s the only thing that lasts’? That’s ridicu­lous! All Dad­dy does is sell it!”

Then, up comes the prison scene where Scar­lett is dressed in her cur­tains (remem­ber the Car­ol Bur­nett sketch, “I saw them in the win­dow and just could­n’t resist them!”) and pranc­ing about, try­ing to con­vince Rhett that all is hunky-dory at Tara and she has­n’t a care in the world. He falls for it, and is kiss­ing the backs of her lily-white hands, remark­ing on how love­ly she looks. Then he turns over her hands to kiss the palms, and there finds… Avery said, “Oh no! He’s going to see what she’s writ­ten on her palms: ‘Note to self: get Rhett to give me $300!’ ” After I stopped laugh­ing, I explained that what he real­ly saw were all the blis­ters and burns from her hard farm work. Silence. “Oh.” Then, “Plus, prob­a­bly they did­n’t have Sharpies back then. Because they’re the best for writ­ing on your hands.”

Well, we’re off to see “Casi­no Royale,” (since he helped Avery with her home­work!), despite my fears that it will be too scary for me. But every­one from Becky to my blog friend Lara think it will be fine. Avery is at “Flushed Away” with Anna, so we’ll all have cin­e­mat­ic sto­ries to tell.