Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Ink, no, not the kind you write with...

So the power went off last week at the place where I'm housesitting. Yeah, I'm still housesitting. Anyway, the power went off for a few hours right in the middle of the night due to outrageously high wind. Normally a power outage is inconvenient, but not anything wildly adventurous. The thing is, this place where I am is way up on a mountain. Like way up. Think Deliverance, only without the banjos or deranged Hollywood representations of hill folk. Okay okay, so maybe it's not that far out. But it's pretty remote. So a power outage means a generator. And I'm the girl who can't handle anything technological unless it has an Apple pasted on it somewhere... But the worst thing, was that I would never have known about the power being out... except that the carbon monoxide detector woke me up going off full throttle. Waking up in a pitch black house that isn't yours to the sound of a small machine that's designed to tell you that you're about to die either by choking on the equivalent of a fatal fart, or by participating against your will in a bad sequel to Backdraft, minus any hot firefighters, is not fun. Obviously, I did not perish. Turns out that the battery in the carbon monoxide detector had died. And it just happened to die in the middle of a power outage. Yay for adventure. ANYWAY, I woke up the next morning, or rolled over the next morning, since I didn't sleep at all, and the power had come back on. BUT, when I came in from work, the TV wouldn't work. And we're back to the whole, girl who can't fix anything technological thing.

The entire point of blathering all that was to set you up to hear about the movie I watched on my computer since I couldn't turn the TV on because the power went off in the middle of the night. While I was waiting for my sister's hubby, Chucky Duck to come and save me from the Zombie television, I was loafing around on Netflix. Now, I'd never watched any instant movies, but as I loitered, my eye was caught by an indie flick advertised on one side of the screen. Ink. I love 'different' movies. My favorite movie of all time is No Such Thing. Check it out, I implore you. It's not for everyone, but if you 'get it' you'll love it. But I digress. Ink looked promising. Almost anything indie is. Some of the best movies are indie. So I started watching Ink. My connection went out halfway through. I went to Amazon and bought the movie. That's how good it is. I didn't even know how it ended and I bought it.

I went and saw Avatar in theaters. It was 'okay'. I mean, it was amazing in many ways. But what did it say? District 9 said something. Avatar? Not so much...

But there are movies out there that speak in a language beyond mere words. Ink is one of those movies. I've since gotten it in the mail and finished watching it. I really cannot say enough about Ink. You have to watch it. And the soundtrack? I've downloaded it from iTunes, I've put it on my iPhone, I've listened to it nonstop. It lives in my head even when it's not in my ears. All of this adoration is for a movie that almost didn't get made. Double Edge Films tried to get funding, failed repeatedly and then made the movie on their own. They made it because it was a story that needed to be told. It was a story that touched me profoundly. And it is still touching me. Funny how something that has men running around in plastic wrap (not that you have any idea that it's plastic wrap in the movie, you have to watch the extras) can get inside your head and make you see the world differently. But that's the art of storytelling. Someone with a true gift for telling can transport you to other places and other times. They can burrow into your mind and live there forever. Ink is like that. It's in my mind forever now. I'll watch it over and over again. If I ever have kids, they'll watch it (when they're a tad older, there is some cursing), and I intend to tell as many people as I can about the movie and encourage them to watch it.

I think it's important, in a world where fart jokes and sex humor is a mainstay in most films, to seek out those movies who are all about telling the story. Like in the literary world, where vampire and werewolf boyfriends will eventually fade from the fad but the classics will endure, the big name, big affect movies might come and go, but those that touch people will live forever.