Monday, August 3, 2009

Rules of Nostalgia

It's impossible to gage how others will react to films you loved at the age of 8. In many cases, you yourself no longer really like those movies, but the memory of how much you loved them carries you through. Case in point: Elizabeth *hated* Summer Magic, one of those twee Disney movies from the '60's starring Haley Mills, and I was rather flummoxed. How can you hate an old school Haley Mills flick? It has this fantastically ridiculous song called "The Pink of Perfection" and it ends with all the girls fancied up and on the arms of their beaus at a dance! But, unfortunately, my sheen of nostalgia would not transfer.

I may have mentioned this phenomenon before, but it was on my mind this week after I watched the new trailer for Tron Legacy. The original Tron was yet another twee live action Disney film from back in "the good ol' days" (you know, before Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers and Drake and Josh ruled the Disney channel?) about a computer programmer who gets stuck inside a virtual reality program inside, much like a video game. It was one of the first, real CGI films I ever saw (I mentioned it's lack of special effects nomination in my 10 Most Egregious Oscar Snubs post last year) and as someone who isn't really that into video games, I get a little stoked talking about the neon characters and low-rent computer games that comprised Tron.

This is the teaser trailer: for those of you who didn't know, Jeff Bridges was the star of the original - the computer programmer sucked into the game - so seeing his character again is supposed to be a big thrill to those who saw the original. The landscape of the game is especially exciting to me because it looks exactly like it would have in the 1980's if CGI technology were yet capable of it. And YAY for the neon bikes! Hope I'm not the only person out there who's happy to see you again!




In other nostalgic news, I'm currently hooked on season 7 of "Beverly Hills 90210" airing on Soapnet. Turns out I did have a little crush on Jason Priestly back in the day. But I'm only watching until he and Kelly get back together. I swear.