03-12-2005

Today has not been a good day. I did my good deed for the day by helping my mom purchase and assemble an entertainment center. Our church helps out with this program that provides apartments for people that need medical care every day but don't need to be in a hospital, so they have these apartments where they can stay without having to pay for a hotel and a lot of the Sunday School classes volunteer to take care of one of the apartments and keep them clean and just do whatever needs doing. Theirs really needed an entertainment center because the TV was sitting on this ancient microwave cart that would have fallen apart if you looked at it wrong, so we went and got one at about 10 this morning and carried it down there and it turned into the biggest headache of ALL TIME. First, the instructions were incredibly vague and often times wrong. It had you putting the top and sides together first, which was okay, except the silly little brackets you were supposed to use weren't really strong and pulled loose the second you let go and so I wound up having to drill and put in wood screws to keep that together. Then it turned out that the instructions had me putting the side pieces on the wrong side so after all that I had to take them back off and switch sides and drill new holes. And the brackets for the fixed shelves? Created by Satan himself. Anyway, four hours later I finally got it all together and everything put up. The guy staying in their apartment right now is super nice though and he was thrilled to death about it and even cooked us a huge lunch so I didn't really mind, but I would have probably done better throwing the instructions out the window like I wanted to do in the first place. Then Bama blew it, AGAIN (shut up Steve and Donna) and my sinuses have been bugging me since yesterday so I haven't really felt like watching movies. Plus, we're cooking out tonight and that will be nice but that's just time away from the tube. Blah.

190) La Dolce Vita. After the first twenty minutes I was ready to put this off as another
"brilliant" depressing movie about depressing people, but I got sucked in and enjoyed it. Visually it was great to look at and I'm down with Fellini on that. Storywise, I really did find it ending up rather hopeful. The young girl from an earlier scene waving goodbye to the party as they leave, all fresh faced and innocent, was really a beautiful moment and seemed to symbolize (at least to me) Fellini's faith that the younger generation would turn from such decadence. And both Emma and Fanny were both such great characters and so achingly beautiful....I could go on and on, but the point is I really do think this is deserving of it's masterpiece title.

190 down, 810 to go.

03-11-2005

187) They Gave Him a Gun. There were several smart visual flourishes, and the plot had potential, but there was shockingly little crime for a crime drama and a lot of dull stretches so it was mostly forgettable.

188) Prairie Law. Stinking homesteaders, always getting in the ranchers' way...

189) Omaha Trail. There's always a hot sister...

189 down, 211 to go.

Bruce Willis is my HERO

Well done, sir.

03-10-2005

185) Gaslight. Oh crap, dude, Ingrid Bergman was absolutely bitchcakes CRAZY and Boyer was a total jerk. What an awesome movie!

186) The Iron Giant. I had heard this was one of those "make a grown man cry" kind of kids movies, so I thought I'd test my cold and lifeless heart against it. Black Heart 1, Iron Giant 0. It was actually pretty good though. If I had kids I'd buy it for them.

186 down, 814 to go.

CAAAALIFOOOoooorrnnnniiiaaa.....? I am not okay with this week's OC. First, Julie was in a porno? Give me a break. And like anyone would buy up a bunch of crappy 80s porn on the internet because some rich OC housewife was in it. Second, I'm with you Caleb. I miss Lindsey too. Third, I didn't watch the first season, but even I know Ryan and the bony girl getting back together would be a bad idea. Fourth, poor Alex. If only she had listened to my dire warnings about the bony girl. Fifth, stay away from Kirsten, Billy Campbell! You're Sela Ward's man, bitch!

03-09-2005

183) Virginia City. So the Yankees get Errol Flynn and the South gets Randolph Scott? I'd say the north got screwed on that deal. Anyway, Bogey was insanely weird as a Mexican bandit. His "accent" sounded like a bad impression of Peter Lorre and his little mustache was hilarious. What weird casting.

184) Jimmy Hollywood. The story is kind of ridiculous, but so much of the comedy lies in the details that it all works. Pretty funny.

184 down, 816 to go.

03-08-2005

181) The Oklahoma Kid. Do you know how much I love westerns? I love them so much I'll even watch the ones about Okies!

182) Santa Fe Trail. STARRING RONALD REAGAN! I didn't even care that there wasn't a shred of historical accuracy to be found. It's a western!

182 down, 818 to go.

Random Notes:
At first glance I was really excited about this, but then I remembered Kill Bill and how it was such a long winded indulgence of all of Tarantino's creepy fantasies and got kind of scared. Leone got away with the whole "I can make a 30 minute story last 3 hours" trick once, maybe twice, but by the time he got to Once Upon a Time in America it was just pitiful. If Tarantino does it I hope it turns out well because I am such a big fan of Jason right now.

This guy gets publicity for leisurely filling in the gaps? I'm watching 1000 MOVIES! IN ONE YEAR! I've named Donna my new head of PR so I'm sure I'll soon be getting some much deserved publicity.

03-07-2005

179) Nights of Cabiria. Fellini is really depressing me. I can get the whole "triumph of the human spirit" thing, but at some point is it really worth being all triumphant over and over just to keep getting beaten down?

180) Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. Myrna Loy has gone from having a freakishly small head to having a freakishly wide head. Something's just not right here...

180 down, 220 to go.

I met with Col. Pepper...

...and his money he was counting...

So I was looking at the TCM schedule earlier and there are all kinds of westerns and crime dramas coming up. I'm so looking forward to this, especially after that awful 31 days of Oscar thing they were doing where I had seen practically everything they showed and wasn't interested in the rest. Do I need to sit through Warren Beatty's four hour love letter to communism? No. If there is any justice in the world Mel Gibson will decide to make The Gulag Archipelago one of these days and I'll go see that, but for now I'll take my commies at the end of Patrick Swayze's rifle.

03-06-2005

173) Friday the 13th, Part VI - Jason Lives. After the whole Matrix Revolutions debacle I was thankful for crappy horror movies and westerns more than ever.

174) Rachel and the Stranger. William Holden and Robert Mitchum? Hell yeah! Westerns on TCM are back, baby! This wasn't even really a western but I was completely into it!

175) Slaughter Trail. A disturbingly large amount of singing going on for a western, but who cares! It's a western!

176) Win a Date With Tad Hamilton!. If Kate Bosworth worked at our Piggly Wiggly I might actually shop there. This actually had a lot of great one liners. "Have her home buy dawn, and no cocaine, huh?" Heh.

177) Little Black Book. The day started downhill about here. Not only was the story bad, the entire soundtrack was Carly Simon. Blech.

178) Twisted. Yeah, this sucked, but you know what? I don't care! You know why? Because it's an Ashley Judd movie! That's right, MWOAEG! I'm watching Ashley Judd movies and there's not a damn thing you can do about it! You know what else? I DO THINK SHE'S PRETTIER THAN YOU!!!!!!!

A very liberated 178 down, 822 to go bitch!

03-05-2005

This has not been the best of days. I watched most of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (#171) when I woke up this morning and then went to work for a few hours, finishing it when I got home. It was all right, but it was more of an actor's movie than anything. Everyone got to go around and act the crap out of their parts and I get the feeling that making it was probably more fun than watching it. There was nothing wrong with it, but it was just one of those movies where everything is all about moodiness and atmosphere and acting that it just didn't turn out to much. Then I decided to move on with The Matrix Revolutions (#172), and boy was that a mistake. I wasn't 20 minutes in when I was deep asleep for a good five hours, and when I woke up the will to watch anything, much less the rest of The Matrix Revolutions, was totally drained from me so I went to a party instead and waited until I got home to finish. And man did I hate it. I've gone on the record saying that I have no problem with shallow action pictures or big budget sci-fi special effects extravaganzas, but there is nothing I hate more than one of those kinds of movies masquerading as a "you know, it's really deep if you think about it" kind of movie. I'll watch Total Recall a million times before I'll ever see one of these again because as shallow and silly as it is, it isn't trying to be anything more than a good action/sci-fi picture. I'm sure some jackass matrix disciple is going to find this and send me all kinds of hate mail and tell all of his trenchcoat mafia jackass friends about it and they will too because that already happened when I wrote a review on Amazon saying this exact thing, but I could really care less. And that's another thing! I can understand getting all worked up over religion and politics and arguing about that, but when The Matrix is all you have to hold on to? Open up both wrists partner, cause you might as well quit wasting air. A very bitter 172 down, 828 to go.