Open Cinema under the stars, summer's here in Sydney

You can tell it is the first day of the summer holidays for Drama Queen No’s 1 and 2, the sun is out, towels draped on lawn and the bathroom seems to have taken on strange sci-fi like purple glow with magenta touches. This last phenomenon possibly not unrelated to the fact DQ no.2 and a couple of friends seems to have dyed their hair what could only be described as an interesting array of colours. Am now bracing myself for enraged calls form angry mothers. My own particular view is that so long as it is back to its normal blonde for the first day of school in February, a time that seems unbelievably blissfully far away, then that’s fine.

I am determined that 2012 is going to be the year that we get to the Open Air Cinema in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney. There cannot be a more spectacular backdrop to a film than Sydney Harbour with the bridge and opera house peeping coyly out behind the screen whilst the fruit bats from the Botanics spiral their way into the night sky. The film programme has just come out and I am dithering away red pen in hand. I’m a bit of a sucker for a suave older man so obviously the two George Clooney films, ‘The Ides of March’ and ‘The Descendants’ have some appeal. Alternatively I could go for my culture vulture side and opt for one of the French or Spanish films, and just hope my neighbours on the night don’t me muttering along in time with the subtitles. The French “First Love” sounds a winner, though based on personal experience I have no desire to find my first Glaswegian teenage love, as I am pretty sure we would both recoil in horror at the sight of one another – but foxy French teenagers obviously fall into a different category.

The modern silent film ‘The Artist’ is also one of the leading contenders. I think there would be something magical watching something that relies so strongly on music score and visuals in such a fabulous setting.

In actual fact I don’t know what I am doing, whetting my appetite in this way with a ‘which chocolate out of the box’ approach to film choice. The reality of the situation is that when the ticket office opens at 9am next Thursday there will be an online scrum worthy of a sell out pop concert, resulting in roughly a three minute space when it is possible to book tickets, so it will be less a question of choosing which film and more hitting the purchase button at random – knowing my luck I’ll end up with “The Inbetweeners Movie’ billed as the adventures of “a group of 18 year old boys in search of their first sexual experience”. Call me a boring middle aged woman but I’d rather remove purple dye from the newly painted white kitchen door - on which happy note …….