At the Oscars/ Academy Awards with the Perkins's

Feather on Water, by June Perkins

So it’s raining – and our wet season, which is deciding whether to arrive keeps threatening. Just a moment ago we couldn’t see the canefields across the road.

I’ve spent the morning trying to fend off a cold. As well as having all my kids at home sick with coughs that would drive their teachers mad and are consequently instead leading to Mum needing ear muffs. Poor little mites. Time to whip out that hot lemon.

They are settled in watching the Oscars, after eating some tinned spaghetti.

Wonder what they will be eating at the Oscars, Billy Crystal says there is a smorgasboard on offer.

So far we have been treated to some documentary and special effects awards. The beauty of it is that all the results are live, no more waiting until the actual night when it’s all a repeat and you just know the results. What’s the fun in an award night with no suspense, an awards day where results are unknown is much better if you can have it, which we can. With all the internet coverage they are now screening it twice, and those of us at home for any reason can watch it live on tv. I think they realise otherwise we can and will watch it somewhere on the internet.

Billy is a relaxed and genial host, who is funny but never upsets the establishment. Yet Oscar humour always has a mixed history, sometimes the jokes only work on the audience, well if you are to believe their laughter; around the world Oscar humour can fall embarrasingly flat, but does anyone tell the academy – only the savaging after the event critics. Perhaps though it is because the jokes can be ‘in jokes’ that mainly the actors, directors and writers get.

How cool Christopher Plummer from Sound of Music fame, a movie he reportedly did not like, as well as a few other films just got an Oscar. Now that’s brilliant. He’s only two years older than the actual Ocars themselves and after a life time of acting he finally makes it. The audience so appreciate his win it takes a while for them to let him speak. I am enjoying his speech. What a romantic ending, to thank his wife and give her the nobel peace prize for her patience and long suffering. A little cliched of course. Yet it’s so hearfelt and he seems to have been with her so long it’s not quite like the average celebrity marriage. They probably deserve an oscar for that one too – although it is his third marriage so who knows.

The romance continues with another awardee thanking his wife, and begging for extra time to share the love and give the love! I am remembering emotions more than names here but then if you want names just go to the Oscar Blog.

Now as well as the Oscars I am considering my blog and what it’s goal is. I am officially abandoning this month’s challenge, which was 8 interconnected story posts (I got to three) and considering my writing identity. Must be the rainy weather sending me on this writing identity quest. Or maybe I am just sick of that pesky bird – who is gurgling and singing and inspired my writing quest and then left me high and dry, but today is wet so I am paddling out with my writing again! But where it the bird. The bird is a footnote!

I love to read and write in so many genres. Where is my focus? This question keeps cropping up the last few months and I am finally getting around to answer it.

I blog anything that moves me to write, especially our country life, art, creativity, photographty and events that I feel inspired by local and global (hence my lack of discussing at any great length the antics of our country’s leaders and the fact we still have a certain red head as our Prime Minister. I’ll leave that to all the facebook forums. My comment was to post a picture of Ghandi! On my facebook page and say we needed some more spiritual ethical leaders to run the place). Key word ‘inspired;’ so what inspires me today – Billy Crystal

Billy Crystal is now making me giggle with impersonations. He is brilliant! Just so natural, I don’t think anyone can host the Oscars like he does. No wonder they keep asking him back.

Now there’s another thankyou speech of someone indebted to his wife, but who also grew up to work with the legendary ‘Muppets.’ Maybe my daughter’s dream of growing up to meet a dragon might just come true, all she has to do is meet a puppet or a blue screen with dragon on a screen.

Now Angelina Jolie takes to the stage. It’s the Scriptwriters turn to be acknowledged. Anticlimax, no speech as Woody Allen is not there to accept his.

Now actors share their favourite movies – and they are talking about the power of stories

What makes you laugh? What makes you cry? What are the moments of dignity?

Sounds like the pathway of writers, not just in film but in so many genres. The scriptwriters have actors to help them on their way, the writer of the story flat on the page, must transport the reader beyond the page into their imagination. The writer’s friends are words, their collaborators are editors. Writing about the art of writing, can lead to a maze.

Are you writing entrapped in the art itself? How are you going to climb out of that writing box?

Australia Day Award - Cultural Medal June Perkins - Taken by David Perkins

At the Academy Awards they are now speaking about high speed digital cameras and I am thinking about the power of my Nikon to collect footage for family films. I have entered a small film competition for the first time, with my movie about Pam and Joe. I’d love to win some extra money to make some more short films. Maybe I should aim for Tropfest, who knows?

What subject can I find in this rain, cane and spagetti afternoon with sick children who are looking for something to make them not feel blue?

So now the rain begins again, making the world outside invisible in shades of grey and the Perkins’s (minus one member) continue watching the Oscars punctuated by ads about consildating debt and so on.

Our town does not have a cinema, but only projection screens and businesses or the highschool who put on films. You have to journey more than an hour either direction to find a cinema. People do that and make a night of it.

One cinema at Babinda, I’ve heard from friend, is like travelling back through time. The old style has been retained and the town prides itself on this. I think I better make a trip there one day as that sounds fun, although too far back and I would be dealing with colour bars depending on where I lived. Not all of us want to live in the past where there was a lot of prejudice against migrants and those of ‘colour.’ I don’t like that term, the ‘coloured’ – aren’t we all full of some colour – and does that make others the ‘uncoloured.’

The challenges of country life – no cinema, no access to a gp for 6 weeks if you are sick (unless you head off to the hospital ringing it at 8.30am). I wonder if any kids out there- at home sick, watching the academy awards will grow up and make movies. Or become doctors, head on home and stop these 6 week waits.

Will they talk about the country environments that inspired them? Will they look back at history and critique it? Will they find novels about country life to inspire scripts? Maybe they will not look back at country life, but look forward – into the future? Will there be any country life left when all the farmers sell up because their kids don’t want to come home and run the farms? Larger farms, fewer owners, what does it all mean for the future?

Oprah Winfrey’s honorary Oscar for Humanitarian purposes brings a tear to my eye. What an inspiring lady! And it’s a trip down memory lane through all the parts of James Earl Jones. And now for the in memoriam section of the Oscars, farewells to all the buried actors, writers and producers…

Meryl Streep is slightly embarrased to be up on stage for the third time, best actress, for an invokation of Margaret Thatcher – but a deep breath and she’s away – beginning with thanking her partner, not ending with thanking him. She is celebrating friendship, new and old and with those present and those now gone from this life.

Do they make movies in heaven?

What is the best movie of the year? — The Artist, A silent and black and white movie takes it out, and it seems that movies travel back in time to achieve a dream for some film-makers.

So that’s the Oscars at home with the Perkins’s. A space to watch the rain on cane, dream, think about the wonders of writing and care for the beloved treasure of this world children. For a full list of winners if you are interested — read here. Now I end with a few questions.

Why do you go to the movies? What is your favourite movie? How far do you have to travel to the movies at a cinema?

(c) June Perkins, all rights reserved. First Published in Pearlz Dreaming