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The upside to growing up with Asian parents, is that Film Ratings from the MPAA or other age suggestions are either unknown or simply not relevant enough to be exerted. Maybe that’s where my interest in movies came from: being exposed to challenging themes on the screen from a young age.
Things turned interesting when I moved from Germany to Indonesia. The regular family movie nights (that didn’t always involve family movies) were complemented with regular visits to the cinema with my brother and my cousin. I feel like I have to thank her for my ever growing enthusiasm towards cinema. While most people walk out of the theater after a good movie, maybe discuss it for a couple of minutes, we got really obsessive: we looked up the production details, cast and crew, read interviews, watched any special features we could find (when the internet connection back then allowed it) and spent hours upon hours talking about the characters. Better yet, we started writing stories. They may even qualify as fan fiction, but our crude writing style and the fact that they spanned over several movies simultaneously, has us convinced we opened a whole new genre. If they ever leaked we would be positively deemed insane.
Kids these days won’t know how illegal it was to get ahold of some movies then, when streaming services didn’t exist. Unlike Europe or the States, we didn’t have well stocked DVD stores with a good collection of movies. We had DVD bajakan. Those pirated DVDs were sold for cheap prices with the downside that some of them had unbearably poor quality, got stuck in several scenes or just didn’t work at all. Still, it was my favourite Saturday evening activity to leaf through the plastic covers of the DVDs while my parents were grocery shopping.
I had a system: I watched a movie, got obsessed over an actor or the director, researched what else they had done and went back the next week to look for those movies. I got through a lot of different genres like that. Back when IMDb had Message Boards and Flixster its 5-star-rating system, I was a pretty active member, considering I had to sneak around to get Dial-up Internet. That set me up with a decent basic knowledge on the industry.
With Netflix and Streaming taking over, it’s been easier than ever to watch movies. I’ve transitioned to occasionally binge watching series.
In order to start off this blog and establish a healthy writing habit that isn’t too overwhelming, I’ll start off with a 30 Day Movie challenge! Enjoy it here!
so nad amused 