She’s also a woman who takes pleasure in knowledge and is generous with it and never prideful.  Out of the blue, I’ll come home to a reused manila envelope sitting on my stoop with my grandma’s address in the top-left corner.  It’s belongings: a small note on floral stationary and a clipping from the paper she thinks I should take notice of.  I save all the clippings in a box.  Sentimental, I know.   

Grandma and I have been talking on the phone a bit more than we’ve been seeing each other, lately.  I have a production job in television that lets me out into the night air after the sun has already set.  Grandma much prefers matinees.  We work around it as much as we can.  Grandma’s also been on painkillers lately, as her teeth problems persist, so her sleeping hours are irregular.  I’ll call on my way home from work to see if we can catch a movie and wake her up from an evening nap.  I enjoy the phone conversations.  I’ll duck out of my office during lunch and catch up on her profound sadness over the Lakers’ game and her dentist’s newest forecast: dentures a must. 

She’ll ask about my life, the details of it, because she always remembers them.  She knows the name of my co-worker and my landlady.  She remembers my latest bummer, and my latest happiness.  She could very well store these tid-bits in the same part of her brain that she stores her crossword answers.  I imagine my life as one of her puzzles.  She’s been filling it in year after year, skipping numbers that don’t have answers yet (45 ACROSS: Shauna’s life passion).   

She has some other friends that she sees movies with during the day and she likes to go to movies by herself, too, another idiosyncrasy we share, actually.  I can’t really ask her to wait on a film for me.  She likes to keep up and she doesn’t like to see movies twice.  She went to “Sex And The City” at 9:30 AM on its opening day.  She said she’s d been waiting eagerly for it but that she didn’t want to be crammed into the theater with a lot of other silly women.  Grandma is serious about going to the movies.  She hates to miss the previews and she watches all of the credits.  I had another obligation so couldn’t go with her… but she says she’ll go again, and I’m hoping that will be our next review.  

I’ve gotten so used to her being a part of my week this last year, that when we don’t see each other, I feel like I’m walking around with only one shoe on.  She balances me out.  Whenever I’m feeling too vain and flighty, too “twenty-something-ish”, with one hand-squeeze she brings me back to myself.

spring.mov 

To view this video, you need a QUICKTIME MEDIA PLAYER.   

Or watch the video on YOUTUBE.  

GJ & S

I am named after my grandmother, and we are both called Olaug. We took a trip to Geneva in Switzerland to visit one of my cousins.

We were out shopping and just seeing the city when our feet got sore, so we figured we had to get some new shoes. And to my big surprise we shared the same taste in shoes - we both got crocs!

from Olaug,

Norway

I had this whole thing planned.  We’d wear fancy dresses, drink sparkling cider, I’d ask Grandma all of her predictions, we’d be oh-so-charming… but I had work and an unfortunate hair-day and Grandma happily got into her PJs and her bed at 3 PM to watch the show by herself and my illusions of “Grandma Joy’s Exclusive Oscar Coverage” will have to wait till next year…

We did film a little, however, and Grandma was a little punchy.

We really hope if you visit this site often, you consider e-mailing us a story, some pics or a video for the “What We Do With Heart” page. We know y’all are hanging out with each other because you tell us you do. I think Grandma would love to know she wasn’t the only one with an overzealous grandchild.

Also, if you live in the L.A. area and are a senior citizen, I teach a FREE beginning video and editing workshop to seniors the first Saturday of every month from 11 to 1 at the Echo Park Film Center, www.echoparkfilmcenter.org

There is a class this Saturday. Come make a movie!

And sign up for e-mail notifications… that’s a NEW FEATURE! Happy March!

Link to trailer:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/focus_features/atonement/ 

I know I haven’t uploaded in a while and I am sorry.  I’ve had “Atonement” almost ready to go for a couple of weeks but sometimes, a girl’s gotta work a lot and a grandma has to go through some really long, painful ordeals at the dentist that leave her much more happy to stay home and cuddle up than eager to traipse around with her dorky granddaughter. I don’t want to put the pressure of the camera on Grandma every time I see her.   I am learning that this is one negative about starting this venture.  Every time we see a movie now, Grandma gets a little nervous.  She can see me reaching for the camera and her body stiffens slightly.  We still have so much fun and I am so glad that we are doing this.  We are elated and touched by all your responses.  But sometimes I feel like a Grandma torturer.  So I thought, for this Vlog, I’d get that feeling out in the open.  You’re privy to a small “behind the scenes” section in this “Atonement” review.  This was an especially unique series of days and movie going and visits with Grandma because the weather was so awful and we were both pretty sick and grumpy and it shows.  Usually, we giggle straight through the whole process.   

I think whenever you start a project, whenever you take an idea and make it a reality, something is lost.  In your head, the color blue you wanted to paint your walls elevates the whole room to a Parisian chic status.  In reality, you’re a bad painter and there are permanent drip spots on your carpet and the blue makes you feel a little like an eight year old.  You look at it and wonder whether you should go buy some glow-in-the-dark star stickers at the Discovery Store and just give in to the fact that you aren’t that realized mid-twenties superstar you thought you were.  The walls are painted and you can’t imagine anymore how amazing your room would look if only the walls were blue… 

That’s how I feel a little.  I’ve been talking about my grandma blog for years and now it is up and I’ve taken Grandma and made her a sort of art project.  She is such a good sport and in her own way, she likes the attention… I think.  But I want to make sure she still enjoys going to the movies with me, too.  It was always that simple.  We just went to the movies.  We liked hanging out with each other.  Now, of course it is MORE, a good more but more all the same…  I don’t want to just exploit her inherent cuteness (well, I do, but not ALL the time).  So we went to a movie a couple of weeks ago.  We saw “Untraceable.”  It was god-awful. We went to the Macaroni Grill.  Grandma got a pizza.  We were both incredibly disturbed by Colin Hanks being eaten by a tank of liquid acid and Grandma couldn’t believe how haggard Diane Lane looked in HD.  I was like, get over it already.  She’s superfly.  Grandma was like, well, it just makes me feel better that she has wrinkles like everyone else.  

I left my camera in the car.       

Written and Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano.  USA, 2007 

Link to trailer:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount_vantage/therewillbeblood/  

When I got to Grandma’s house, I found her curled up in bed watching a football game.  It was late on a Sunday afternoon.  I had delayed the outing a few hours for a work obligation and by the time we left for the film it was dusk and Grandma’s face, freshly-tanned-from-Hawaii, glowed gold in the front seat as we headed North on Los Feliz Boulevard.  It’s been brisk in Los Angeles and I was foolishly dashing around in a summer dress and light sweater that day while Grandma smartly donned a large black wool coat.  My goosebumped arms were envious.     

We decided to drive to the Vista Theatre in Los Feliz, definitely one of the more lovely places to see a movie in Los Angeles.  Grandma had never been before.  It’s very rare we travel to a movie theatre outside of Burbank or North Hollywood and I was excited to drag her out of her comfort zone. 

Although Grandma had a negative reaction to the film, its intensity has stayed with her.  We went to “Atonement” the other day (blog coming soon!) and she kept reminiscing about how disturbing Daniel-Day Lewis is in “There Will Be Blood.”  She said she thinks about his character when she can’t sleep at night, trying to make sense of his violent actions.  I like to think of her like that, scowling into the dark at 3:30 AM wondering — why… why Daniel Day-Lewis, why?  

When I first became obsessed with movies as a child, I would school myself by passionately over-dosing on whatever film icon I had most recently discovered.  I’d watch every movie made by Stanley Donen or starring Fred Astaire or Betty Davis in one crazed weekend and then dance around the next week dreaming of dancing sailors, top hats and Baby Jane.  Daniel Day-Lewis was the inspiration for one such weekend.  How my twelve-year-old heart skipped a beat when he painted with his left foot or ran barefoot as a Mohican.  So I understand his ability to stick with Grandma and her inability to shake him loose.   

At Bob’s Big Boy for dinner, Grandma kept watching the door… claiming that groups of single men were filing inside in droves.  “You should come here to meet men,” she said, “it looks like a hot bed of activity for singles.”  And while I muse over the ridiculousness of this suggestion, imagining myself coming back to Bob’s Big Boy alone and locking eyes with a mysterious stranger a few booths down snacking on his patty melt and Arnold Palmer while I munch on some fries with ranch dressing, I can’t help but appreciate the simple loves of my loner twelve-year-old self.  Who needed a real person when you could rent “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and swoon over Daniel as Tomas, the Czech doctor?    

Link to trailer:
http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/juno/trailer/

We went to the new Arclight Cinema in Sherman Oaks. We had lunch at The Cheesecake Factory. We sat on the patio. It was a chilly day but the restaurant had strong outdoor heaters and Grandma was so warm, she took off her coat. We sat in the theatre with one younger couple and a few other senior matinee watchers. We watched them chatting it up with the newly-hired Arclight ushers who enthusiastically imparted the wonders of the “Arclight experience”. I will say, I love the Arclights’ bathrooms. They have the best skinny mirrors. We couldn’t find my car in the parking lot for a good half hour. Grandma was teary-eyed from the film, so I sat her on a stump while I ran from floor to floor looking for the wagon with a rusty bike-rack. Back at her house, I assembled her new vacuum cleaner. I was late for choir practice.

We are on vacation now, in Maui. That’s where we shot Gram’s written review and did the reenactment. My parents and twin brothers are here, too. Credit to my brother, Casey, for shooting the reenactment. Sorry for the lack of anything better than an on-board mic for most of the sound on this blog but we’re basically a one granddaughter band here, people.

Link to trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/nocountryforoldmen/trailer/

We went to the AMC, Burbank 16. As always, parking was an issue. I parked on the street and got a ticket. Afterwards, we went and ate Italian food. Grandma doggy-bagged half her pasta and ate it that night for dinner. Just in case you haven’t seen the film, the review has a minor spoiler… But Woohoo! Our first blog!

grandmajoynew-nocountry-no-country-for-old-mentest2.mov

Lyrics to the song: 

She is 73 and I am 24. We go to movies once a week and maybe more. Movies with grandma. Movies with Grandma Joy. I drive while she supplies the tickets but I’ll buy the popcorn. I like the indie flicks but she prefers Jason Bourne. Movies with Grandma. Movies with Grandma Joy. She’s cuter than Ebert and sweeter than Travers and I think her opinion really matters. Movies with Grandma Joy. Movies with grandma. Movies with grandma. Movies with Grandma Joy.