At the Movies

Last Friday I took the kids to see Toy Story 3, maintaining my obnoxious and completely arbitrary streak of seeing Disney or Pixar movies at the very first showing, on opening day. The movie was good and I even cried a little at the end. Not really a spoiler: Andy goes to college. Oh, and thank you Pixar, for pretty much ensuring that my kids will never EVER give away a toy or stuffed animal again. Because they were right all along! They do have feelings! They get lonely! And sad! So sad! Anyway, the coming attractions got me excited for Despicable Me and Megamind (Brad Pitt!). And despite my ho hum reaction to the last Narnia movie, I am super stoked to see Voyage of The Dawn Treader. They're really beautiful films, after all, and I appreciate form over function. But the one that really has my heart going pitter pat is Secretariat. Here's why.

At the Hood River Classic, maybe 1999.

That's me and my horse Robin, back in the day. Her show name was Intuition, and she was a Secretariat granddaughter. Now I'm not a big racing fan, but I do have a great deal of nostalgia for this amazing Triple Crown story. (Which happened the same year I was born.) From what the trailer suggests, the movie focuses on Penny Chenery, a housewife and mother (hey! I'm a housewife and mother!) who takes over her dad's stable despite her lack of horse-racing knowledge. So it's a woman-in-a-man's-world story, too. Secretariat lived to be 19, which is a ripe old age for a horse, so I know that the story has a happy ending. (Why are horse movies always sad?) Plus, when I told my kids (who've never seen me ride) that my horse was related to Secretariat, for a very short moment they thought I was cool.

At the Movies

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