Namely, the movies I've watched in the past week are organized around a theme of things ending. At first it was accidental, but for the next two nights it will be intentional.
You can go back as far as last Sunday night if you really want to stretch things. That's when I watched the terrible Dear Evan Hansen, which basically starts with a suicide. (Not Evan's, though I could have done with a lot less of him in the movie.)
The theme strengthens a little with Tuesday night's viewing of Passing -- if not in the subject matter, then at least in the title. While this very good movie is about Black people attempting to "pass" for white in Harlem of the 1920s, "passing" is of course also a euphemism for dying.
Then on Wednesday night I watched my final film in my Orson Welles series, as you would know from my previous post. The Other Side of the Wind was not only the final film in that series, it was the final film in Welles' career, and it had to be finished by other people after he died.
Finally we get to Thursday, when I watched Ridley Scott's The Last Duel, which I thought was outstanding. I'd like to properly gush about this movie at some other time, but I probably won't considering that it's Christmas and I'm moving. But not only does the movie deal with a duel to the death, it also has the word "last" in its very title.
It was at this point that I noticed the theme, and decided to pre-select my last two viewings in this house tonight and tomorrow night, which are both called, fittingly, Swan Song.
You might remember these films from another previous post about these identically named movies becoming available to me around the same time. The one starring Mahershala Ali has just yesterday become available on AppleTV+, and the one starring Udo Kier is something I rented from iTunes shortly after writing that post.
Then Monday, we'll be gone.
A lot of films have themes of death and endings, of course, and if I want to go back earlier in the month, I also note that I watched the final films of Humphrey Bogart (The Harder They Fall) and David Gulpilil (My Name is Gulpilil), the indigenous Australian actor who died of lung cancer just last month. So what I'm saying is, you can squint and fit the theme to any week-long viewing period.
But I write this today more as a recognition of the mental state I'm in as I prepare to leave the house where I've watched more movies than any other place in my life.
Sure, I lived a lot longer in my childhood home, but back then, I probably watched two movies a month. I've never lived anywhere else even close to the eight years and four months that I've called this old terrace house in North Melbourne my home.
There are a ton of ways I'm feeling sentimental, but since this is a movie blog, that's where I'm focusing today.
The first new-to-me movie I watched in this house was State Fair on September 2, 2013. According to my records, I have watched 2,251 movies since then, probably 75% of which were in this house, not to mention hundreds of repeat viewings. That includes my 4000th movie of all time, my 5000th movie of all time and my 6000th movie of all time.
It's probably true that when watching something at home, you remove the memorable environmental factors that color a theatrical screen at a particularly cool cinema, and all that really matters is your TV (or laptop screen, or projector) and your eyeballs. But I definitely remember the room where I saw certain first-time home viewing favorites, and that specific environment definitely contributed in some small way to my overall experience and memory of the film.
We have an outstanding living room in our new house, one that gets tons of natural light, and I'm sure this will be a very memorable location for most of my new viewings. I also expect there to be a TV set up permanently in our garage, which is attached to our house in the new house and doesn't have a leaky roof where it could get rained on.
But 23 Curran Street will remain, at least for most of the next decade, the place where I saw the most movies I've ever seen -- the most good movies, the most bad movies, and everything in between.
Tonight and tomorrow night I will see it out with my twin swan songs, and then this sentimental old fool can look ahead to the next thing.
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