Keep On Learning

The moral of this tale is, keep on learning new things, no matter how old you get.  Learning new things keeps the brain active and functional.  It keeps one more socially adept.  I learned this month about special bonus tracks on DVDs, which include background information, cartoons, out-takes, and interviews with people making the film.

To bolster a lagging social life, a New Year’s resolution for 2019 was to start a weekly “movie night”, Tuesday nights at 6 pm.  I’d tinkered with this idea last year as a part of the monthly book at the Guerneville Senior Center.  I scheduled the movie version of the book we were reading.  This provided a second view, the screen play writer’s and director’s version, as well as that of the author.

The bonus tracks may turn out to be more relevant than watching the movie, at least for we readers of the book.  Many people will have seen the movie based on a famous book, but no standard venue: theater, TV, streaming, or even most DVD watchers, see these bonus tracks.

The reading list for this year tends to the more classic stories and movies, as befitting a senior’s group whose teen years were the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s.  What you saw when a teenager is probably something from which you can still remember the lines.  So, I developed a list of sixty movies, mostly award winners, which included our dozen book club selections.  I ordered the sixty DVDs, as that is the way I play them on a large, six-foot screen.

I’ve watched three complete sets of these bonus tracks as I write this: Lawrence Olivier’s Henry V, Bogart & Bacall’s To Have and To Have Not, and The Sting with Redford & Newman.  I’m an old film buff, but I learned a huge amount from each one of these add-ons.  Tonight, it was The Sting, and to see interviews with all the participants gave me an awesome insight as I then watched the movie itself.  I never really understood all that shooting in the final scene(s).  I learned enough to appreciate every character.  With Henry V, it was the production background [1944]; and with Bacall, the real-time romance with accompanying Mel Blanc Cartoon; in summary, historical perspective.

I look forward in 2019 to expanding my passion and understanding of all those old classic books and movies, through these new-found special bonus features.  I will hopefully then be better able to discuss and inspire others to take a deeper look at why they’re called classics.

Tuesdays at Peter’s, downstairs.  Next week, Casablanca wrapping up Bogart.