A Life in Movies

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That Fandango has done it again.

In other words, Andy over at Fandango Groovers Movie Blog has come up with another excellent community blogging event (it transcends blog-a-thon!) for us all to partake in. I would hope that you can tell from the banner what it's supposed to be, but here's the skinny from the horse's mouth:

Inception, Toy Story 3, Winter’s Bone, Sex and the City 2 - what was your favourite movie of 2010? That’s an easy question you probably know the answer without giving it a second thought. But what about your favourite from five years ago, or ten, or event the year you were born? Now that’s a little harder.

I am inviting fellow bloggers to tell us what their favourite movies are from each year of their life so far. You can put as much or as little effort into you list as you wish. It could just be a list of movies, you may with to add a sentence or two about the movies or what they mean to you, you can brighten it up with images, posters or trailers. The choice is yours.

So, below is my list. I went at this with the mindset: which were the movies that undoubtedly meant the most to me at that point in my life (if I even saw them that year) that STILL mean a lot to me. Sure, I might have loved Benji or The Black Stallion when I was a child, but I can't say that I've seen either in at least two decades.

Edit: I forgot to mention a component of this list - I've tried to make it a bit more fun than your typical list, in that it's somewhat of a guessing game as well. While many of the images you see below are bound to be iconic, others are either from less recognizable films or less iconic images from very well-known films. If you aren't sure what any of them are, just ask (or guess!)

Go here to check out everyone's lists.

1976
Perhaps this will change when I finally see Network.


1977
Duh.




1978
I could really give or take this year.



1979
This is when the choices start to get difficult for me.


1980
Duh.




1981
Duh.




1982





1983
Really should be Jedi, but we've had enough Star Wars.


1984
What an iconic "80s" year for the movies.



1985
Had to be. 1985 is stacked with movies I adore (BTTF, Better Off Dead, Goonies, Teen Wolf).

1986
Barely edges Top Gun.



1987
Barely edges Predator. I couldn't not choose TPB.


1988
With apologies to Coming to America and Bloodsport.


1989
This might be the year I can point to and say "this is when I fell in love with movies."

1990
Pretty easy choice, really.



1991
Yes, you read that right - over T2.



1992





1993
Makes up for not picking Reservoir Dogs in '92.


1994
Duh.




1995
With apologies to The Usual Suspects and Se7en. Tough year to choose from.

1996





1997





1998
With apologies to The Big Lebowski and Rushmore. That hurt. A lot.

1999
1999 is the greatest year in modern movie history. I heart it to death.

2000





2001
Wes Anderson gets the shaft once again.



2002
Not a great year for movies, overall. A lot to like but not looooove.

2003
I'm its champion. Tops the superior Finding Nemo due to my constant flag-waving.

2004
No contest.




2005
Why do I feel bad about this choice?



2006
I'm shocked at how many 2006 flicks I've ended up loving. We'll look back fondly on it.

2007
I might've pick Hot Fuzz, but Point Break kinda covers it, don't ya think?

2008
Can't believe I've still only seen this once.



2009
Was having a hard time choosing until I got to "I." Then - game over.

2010
We'll see what its staying power is like; I have a feeling it won't be this in five years…

2011
See it already! (Yeah, I cheated - this was only supposed to go through 2010.)

And then...

The State of the Cabins (3/2/11)

Between being sick over the weekend and spending Sunday and Monday nights buying a car, I've had little time for blogging (reading or writing) and movie-watching. On top of that, it's the busy time of the month here at work, so I'm afraid this will be a truncated version of the State. I hope to be back in the swing of things starting tomorrow. Also, there will probably be some thoughts on tonight's Survivor later today as well.

Movies watched for the first time (non-theatrically) since last week:

This Is Spinal Tap
Gonna make you wait on this one, too, as this was the feature topic on the latest episode of the LAMBcast, which ought to be hitting news stands on Friday or Saturday. Keep an ear out!

Music I'm currently obsessed with:
* I can't seem to get this song by the Black Keys out of my head. Which isn't all that surprising at all, considering how ubiquitous it is...



Book I'm currently reading:
* A little more than 100 pages into Divine Justice by David Baldacci, the fourth book in the Camel Club series, and wow, is it a step down. I won't bore you with the details, particularly because I don't know who besides Jess has read these, but let's just call it a devolution of the series. "Oliver Stone," the sexagenarian superspy star of the series, has gone from being intensely sharp and brilliant to the equivalent of a Jean Claude Van Damme character, with the bulk of the action moving away from the Beltway and into a rural Virginia coal mining town. Basically, the book is now less a 00s spy thriller and more an 80s action movie, with all the fixins' you might expect. This had better get better fast...

Things to Click On
See above. I've been a bad, bad reader in the last week.

* Actually, scratch that real quick. I did want to direct you to a post James wrote comparing The Village to Dogtooth. I haven't seen Dogtooth yet, but James did divulge some interesting info regarding his background (and of course, the writing is always strong). (Cinema Sights)

* Also, Aiden took my advice and has started purposefully watching some crappy movies lately - yes! He started with a big, bad, mamajama - Battlefield Earth. (Cut the Crap Movie Reviews)

* Uh-oh, the Oscars are over, so this post has already expired. Anyway, Andy asks "What's the point of the Oscars?" I had an answer, at least. (Fandango Groovers Movie Blog)

And then...

Tuesday's Things to Click On (4/13/10)

Another week, another programming note: I'm changing up the format I've been using for these Tuesday's Things... post these last few weeks. Starting this week, these posts will consist solely of, you know, the things to click on, and the other parts (non-theatrical first-time movie watching, music obsessions, and book reading statuses) will be moved to Wednesday's and deemed The State of the Union or some other, better title that I think of in the next 24 hours. So, here's some of them clickable things:

* Did you know that I've joined the Twittiverse? Well, you should, since I've had some widget in the sidebar for a couple weeks now. But in case you didn't notice (jerk), go here and follow me and if I like you I will probably do the same.

* Want more shameless plugs? I got 'em. Well, this one ain't so shameless, actually. I guested on the vaunted Matineecast this past weekend and talked Dragon Training and Desert Island DVDs with the Mad Hatter. I also schooled him on the proper way to speak Canadian. He was impressed...and rattled. Mission Accomplished! If you're not already a listener to his cast, then I don't know what's wrong with you - it's not like I haven't recommend it enough.

* It still needs some work, and with any young database like this (same with iCheck Movies), it will take time for it to be more complete, but the folks at Jinni have something pretty damned cool on their hands. By tagging movies with things like moods, time periods, places, and (coolest of all) plots (for example: "fish out of water" or "coming of age"), they've made a search engine, specifically for movies, that goes into the next dimension. A) Check it out, and B) No, I was not paid to endorse this. But maybe I will be eventually. ;)

* Darren at the m0vie blog took Andy's Desert Island DVDs blog-a-thon and went and somehow made it even better, doing some no-fun legwork and compiling all of the picks into a massive spreadsheet and compiling some other stats/interesting notes. Frickin' sweet! Only grumble? My post wasn't live at whatever time AM British time, so my picks have yet to be added.

* He Shot Cyrus might have forgotten to include the LAMBcast in his list of favorite podcasts (an oversight, I'm sure), but he did remember to participate in the Director's Chair blog-a-thon for Kathryn Bigelow. Sure, he was a couple weeks late, but it was worth it, as he hit us with another one of his Posters by Director breakdowns - always fun.


* Finally, Fitz of Nevermind Popular Film shares with you a link to watch the Academy Award winner for Best Animated Short Film, Logorama. It's worth a watch (at least for the first few minutes), but I'd much rather be able to watch (and download) Instead of Abracadabra, which was my favorite of all of last year's nominated shorts by far.

And then...

My Desert Island DVDs

Fandango Groovers Movie Blog put out the call - send me your weak, your tired, your Desert Island DVDs. Eight of them to be exact. I am heeding that call. Additionally, he's asked me to include this link, so I done did that, too. Here's the setup, followed by my picks:

"The idea is a variation on the radio program Desert Island Discs: For those who don’t know the show has been running on the BBC for nearly 70 years. Guests are invited to imagine themselves cast away on a desert island with only eight pieces of music to listen to. Being a movie blog obviously we are having a twist on the idea. Simply pick the eight DVDs that if you were stranded on a desert island (don’t ask how you would play them) you could happily watch over and over again. For some people this will be their favourite movies for others it will be subtly different."

Ok. I'm on a desert island. I can take eight DVDs. For starters, I'm going with known quantities; sure, it might be noble to take a "classic" that I've never seen along for the journey - a chance to broaden my horizons, learn something, all that jazz. No way. It I hate it, or even vaguely dislike it, I'll be regretting said decision for my own personal eternity. So I've seen everything here, and in most cases, more than a few times. More than anything, these choices will make me eternally happy, and that's more important than anything else.

So I'm taking one of my all-time favorites; a film that, depending on the date and time, fills one of the top three spots in my list. The other two are Pulp Fiction and Fight Club, but a) I've seen them enough times that I can recall them at will, and b) they aren't tremendously deep. Well, Fight Club might be, but I've read the book as well, so I've gleaned as much of the meaning as I'm probably going to. Instead, I'm taking Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I know, original choice. It'll likely be on at least half of the participants' lists. I care not. I've purposefully limited my viewing of it in the six years since its release so as not to tire of it and retain some of the joy that's renewed upon each viewing. As a bonus, it's lengthy (sure to be a recurring theme for this list; given the choice of an 85-minute movie I love and a 140-minute one, I'm taking the latter).

Being on this island with not much to do besides swim, run around, build shelters, and whatnot, I'm sure I'll be in good shape bodily in no time. But what of the mind? This next section is intended just for that. I'll take along 2001: A Space Odyssey for its beauty, its length, its brain-altering content, its "How'd they do that?" special effects - the whole shebang. Additionally, I'm bringing two true mind-benders; Chris Nolan's breakout hit Memento, whose DVD houses not only a great movie but enough material on the menus to keep me busy for some time (double bonus: I can watch the movie in chronological order, which will make it seem as though I'm watching a different flick), and Shane Carruth's 2004 time travel thriller Primer, which I've seen just once, but already know I need to see about 100 more times before I fully comprehend it (and even that might not do the trick).

Of course, I will need to laugh while stranded, sans friends or family, on this island. I'll be stuck in a place with no entertainment to speak of, no one to talk to, basically nothing of interest to do (aside from movie watching, of course). In other words, my existence will be rote and monotonous for the most part. How meta of me, then, to choose Groundhog Day. I'm sure I'll take intense pleasure at watching someone else live the same 24 hours over and over again, though I suppose in this case, the end will now be a tad depressing, since Phil Conners will escape his prison and I won't be so lucky. Still, all I have to do is re-start it and he's back in jail with me. Who else could go for some flapjacks?

I'm cheating a little with my next pick, though not as bad as I had originally planned on. I'm taking a TV show. I was going to say that I would take the entire first season of Arrested Development with me (only chosen over the latter seasons due to more episodes), but that was going too far, since the package is comprised of three discs. No fair. Instead, I'll make myself a custom DVD, jamming on as many 22-minute episodes as I can onto a single DVD. If I'm going to be miserable at all on this island, at the very least I know I'll be better off than the Bluths, and no piece of comedy has made me consistently laugh more.

Two left, and they're both wild cards of sorts.

The first is Paul Thomas Anderson's masterpiece Boogie Nights. Why? Why the hell not? It's got it all - drama, comedy, soft-core porn, one of the best casts ever assembled, enough cheeseball (and otherwise) hits from the 70s and 80s to fill at least three CDs, Burt Reynolds - I mean, what more could you want from a movie?

Finally, a movie that I can guarantee will make no one else's list. No, it's not The Room, though that's a tempting option. Instead, it's the critically loathed and commercially ignored Southland Tales. Why on earth am I taking it, you might be asking? That's a very good question, and I'm not even totally sure that I know the answer. I know it intrigues me. I know that it, too, combines elements of action, comedy, and drama - even some sci-fi, too. I know that, of all the things it can be - poorly acted, byzanitinely written, overwrought with not ready for prime-time players - the one thing it never is is boring.

And the last thing I want to be on this desert island is bored.

And then...

Tuesday's Things to Click On (3/23/10)

Believe it or not, movie reviews will appear here again someday, though I've yet to decide if they'll be in the same format or not. I enjoy the discourse of writing and commenting back and forth on them, but something's....missing. To be continued, I suppose. It's certainly not for a lack of other content (I hope you agree with me there). Coming soon - the March 2 Box Office Madness game, and another long-delayed tournament of sorts that I'm anxious to get off the ground.

Movies watched for the first time (non-theatrically) since last week:
Um...none that come to mind. We sat down to watch A Streetcar Named Desire, but stopped about 45 minutes in and have yet to pick it back up yet (I currently have about 10 movies I need to watch the endings of...). Thought Brando was good (and damned if he didn't look younnnng), but that Vivien Leigh was laughably bad. Then I had the ending inadvertently spoiler for me - no big deal there, though. At least in doing so, it made her performance a few ticks better. Still, the acting style of ye olden days just turns me off faster than you can say "melodramatic." Please recommend old movies that contain what you might call a contemporary acting style...

Music I'm currently obsessed with:
* Not music - catching up on my podcast listening after a number of days without a commute (my prime podcast listening time).

Book I'm currently reading:
My trip to Washington left me with a lot of reading time, so I finished Chuck Palahniuk's "Snuff." A nice, short read (under 200 pages); not my favorite of his, though. There are very few characters and all of them speak a bit too much like a stereotypical Chuck character. The story is sparse, yet typically interesting/"shocking." If you're a diehard, check it out - it won't take long. Otherwise, don't worry about avoiding.

Having finished that on one plane trip, I was forced to head for the airport bookstore, where there were no copies of "The Girl That Played With Fire" (bummer), which left me perusing the store for something interesting. Came upon A.J. Jacobs "The Year of Living Biblically," a yearlong journal of a secular guy (born Jewish) attempting to live according to the rules of the Bible (all of them, no matter how minute) for 365 days. Jacobs is an editor/writer for Esquire, so I'm probably familiar with his work even if I'm unaware of it. It's not laugh out loud funny, but it's interesting, even if I don't buy some of his scenarios and/or how much commitment he made to the "transformation" (like many followers, he seems to randomly assign importance to certain rules according to the whims of the day).

Finally, the Things to Click On:
* First off, a salute and well wishes to Foolish Blatherings' Branden, who's headed off on a journey that's sure to be interesting (and who knows what else). Best of luck, Branden, and the blogosphere (particularly the movie portion of it) will miss you and await your return.

* I've had The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on the mind for some weeks now, but Fandango Groovers is ahead of the game (and not just because he's already seen the Swedish version, hitting U.S. cities any day now), putting out some casting suggestions for the U.S. remake, which is already in the works.

* Castor over at Anomalous Material takes an in-depth look at the recent theatrical market statistics released by the MPAA. Cool stuff.

* Jason finally sees Point Break. Will the B movie king give it his seal of approval or seal his fate in my doghouse?

* Finally...the answers are already in the comments, but The Cooler's 2nd annual Eyes of March post is the kind of movie quiz I can get behind (even if I would have scored pretty poorly overall).

And then...