As we have a six-year-old in the house, and as it was Easter Sunday (read easter eggs) no one had much of a chance to sleep in this morning. For a six-year-old, Easter lacks the excitement of Christmas Day, but the idea of an Easter Egg Hunt is still enough to get him up early.

For the rest of us, it’s been a day of doing nothing much at all, though we did watch a couple of movies together, including Bran Nue Dae which emerged as a family favourite. Although I’ve been “wanting” to see it for quite some time I never have gotten around to it, mostly due to the limited cinema release, and because I never hire videos anymore. My sister does, and she hired it a few months ago and loved it so much she thought it would be great family viewing. And indeed it was. A great story with a sense of humour, wonderful music, and very well-told.

The other movie a few of us watched today was a replay of “Paper Giants” which I wrote about last week.

And all by myself, I watched “The Emigrants” the classic 1970s Swedish drama which screened this afternoon on the commercial television station, GEM. “Wow”, I thought to myself when I saw it in the program guide. Prior to Bjorn and Benny’s composition of the musical, “Kristina fran Duvemala”, I had no idea of the movie, the books, nor of the immigration to the United States of something like 25% of the Swedish population during the nineteenth century.

As a film, I don’t think it’s dated all that well, unfortunately, as there are moments when the acting is a little wooden. Still, it was an interesting historical document and still quite entertaining to watch. The best-known names in the film included Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman, but I was also impressed to see the Swedish jazz legend, Monica Zetterlund play the role of Ulrika.

The only disconcerting thing I found in watching the film was that it was dubbed, not subtitled. The dubbing was very good, but it was still recognisable, particularly in one scene where Robert went from his dubbed English into real English (with a strong Swedish accent).

So, as you can see, it’s that kind of Easter Sunday. Chocolates and film.

Meanwhile, we’re having gorgeous weather in Lismore.