Weekend Watching

I had more time than usual to watch TV and video, so I availed myself of the opportunity.

I finished rewatching "I, Claudius". I'm glad that they apparently are going to remake this series. There's a lot you can do with Ancient Rome!

I watched "Sunset Cleaning". I watched it mostly for the Albuquerque filming angle, but it's a strong movie in its own right, and it was fun to watch!

Then my sister texted me that A&E was premiering "Longmire". It was supposed to be Wyoming, but it was clearly a New Mexico TV series. Locations appeared to be Tres Piedras, Valle Grande, and there was the West Mesa shooting range.

Then I caught the tail end of this documentary - "This Way Of Life":

A film about a family. Mum, dad, six kids and 50 wild horses, a beach, a mountain and a burnt down house. Against the stunning beauty of New Zealand's rugged Ruahine Mountains, Peter Karena and his wife Colleen struggle to instill in their kids the values of independence, courage and happiness. The family has little in the way of material possession but they possess a physicality most of us can only dream of. The children ride bareback as they hunt and play in the wild. Unafraid and untamed, they are supremely confident, as if risk is an alien concept. Shot over four years, This Way of Life is an intimate portrait of a Maori family and their relationship with nature, adversity, their horses and society at large. The Karenas cultivate the magic in the everyday, turning hardship into a meaningful and satisfying life. This complete immersion in another way of life reveals that the price of freedom is something that is well worth paying. (Director: Thomas Burstyn)

Since I caught the movie late I couldn't puzzle out the family vendetta aspect very well, nor why the house burned down. The adults were a bit stressed, living in a campground and trying to take care of the horses and the kids, but for the kids it was Perfect Paradise: reminiscent of what the American West was like a hundred years ago. After awhile, I became a little annoyed with the primary protagonist, the young paterfamilias. Young, headstrong, a little stupid sometimes: but maybe that's you get when trying to run a large family and run a bunch of horses from a campground. And Waimarama, and Hawkes Bay, New Zealand: gorgeous country!