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Moonlighting
Posted by Tony on 24th February 2010 at 15:36:32
Whenever the opportunity presents, I try to leave the details of life open to chance. Being a Tuesday, yesterday was the day to decide when and where I was to see the two recent films still on my list (six in the first two months of 2010 after none in 2009). By the time I started looking, I'd already missed the day's only local screening of Bran Nue Dae, but have long noted it's on at The Astor Friday night anyway, it was finally time to find out what I could about screenings of Nowhere Boy which it turns out I had clearly missed when it was in the multiplexes.

Co-incidentally there were two options. One was for Cowes at 7:30 and while I imagine I might have made it via the ferry from Stony Point if I'd set about it, arrangements for afterwards looked far too hard to think about. Sorry Eric. The second was Moonlight Cinema at the Botanic Gardens and armed with some minimal awareness of Moonlight from the days when we were briefly trying to make waiv.com a leading portal, that was clearly the way to go, though with only a fraction of the preparations made by the more organised picnickers.

The film was much as I hoped from the minimal information I'd seen about it, providing a few not quite parallels to my own familial complexities of younger days. The only thing I had thought was over the top was the smoking, that is until I was doing my increasingly regular walk down William Street to my client's new CBD office this morning. The other plus was that the venue was at its best, although I failed to partake of anything away from the designated track in and out. Having claimed my spot but far from ready to move from the vertical and unavoidably observing the diversity of ground coverings already in use around me, I was particularly amused when Skyhooks' greatest hit came up on the shuffle. Almost LOL. But the great bonus was the bats, many clearly still using the gardens as a navigational aid long after their eviction and resettlement at Yarra Bend.

After sleeping on it, the take away message was that Moonlight is a consumate marketing machine, despite (or maybe including) its efforts to present itself as a fringe environmental cause. They pulled a vast crowd to a film that the regular cinemas had given up on, even before the boost from O week where they were no doubt promoting heavily anyway. How they managed to get my favourite chicken chain as a major sponsor defies imagination, even given some awareness from back when they were just getting started. They have clearly taken that vital step for any business of making themselves an industry where others can make a living on their periphery, from catering vans to hiring laid back bean bags. The connection to increasingly popular concerts "on the green" is also obvious, to say nothing of much longer memories of gigs watched from the lawn of the nearby Myer Music Bowl.

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