Movie weekend - Based on a True Story

I’m a bit rusty when it comes to blogging.

It’s just been too long since I updated regularly. Sad, considering I saw the two best movies of the year (decade), The Hunger Games and The Avengers in their opening weekends, loved them enough to shriek about them, and yet.

The entries are coming. Probably next year. Le sigh.

But in order to exercise my blogging muscles, let’s have an entry about the movies I’ve watched this weekend. Some newish, one older. I just finished the book Based on a True Story, which takes movies famously based on a true story, and dissects them. It added a rather large amount of movies to my must-see list, including the first one under the cut.

Without meaning to, the following three movies are all based on true (or could-be-true) events. It was an accident, but a happy one.

If nothing else, this entry may reawaken my love to ramble.

Lost

So, I have a list of shows I won’t watch, for one reason or another. Glee, is, as previously mentioned, high on the list. But another has always been Lost.

I don’t really know why I refused to watch it. It just honestly never interested me. Plane crash. Desert island. Okay. Gilligan’s Island without the wacky 60’s vibe?

However, I have a show that I demand people watch. At every available instant, I angrily insist that they are awful people for not watching Leverage. Awful. And stupid.

My friend Meltha is neither awful, nor stupid. And she and I worked out a deal, wherein she would watch my Leverage, if I would watch Lost.

Meltha has been converted, she is an official Grifter. So, that meant it was my turn to fulfill my end of the bargain. My librarian slid the DVD over the counter at me, and I headdesked. She offered to take it back, and I just smacked my hand onto it and said it was fine.

Over the course of the last many months, I’ve watched seasons 1 through 6 of Lost. At first, I intended to write an entry for each season, much like I did with Battlestar Galactica. But considering my lack of blog postings, I figured that wasn’t a good try. And considering that Lost is a very interwoven show, it was probably best to do all of them at once.

As of about 10 minutes ago, I’ve finished Lost. My thoughts below the cut.

Audience Participation: Coworker Education

I consider myself a pop culture buff. I love talking about pop movies and television shows, finding out random bits of knowledge that no one ever needs to truly know. I excel at the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game.

But I’m not a very good pop culture buff. For an example of a good one, please see RyAn. What I like, I really genuinely like, and what I feel too snobby to watch, I don’t bother with until friends strong arm me into it. See my future entry about Lost.

I am not above imposing my beliefs on others, though. Thus leading to the Great Coworker Movie Education of 2012.

A week or so ago, I discovered that my coworker, who we shall herein refer to as Tiffany, hadn’t seen the original Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. My question, quite naturally, was “Who raised you?!”Further discussion on the topic led to the fact that she had never seen Mommy Dearest. What? No more wire hangers? Tina, bring me the axe? This is insane.

Thus, she is being indoctrinated in the “Bunny will ensure I watch every movie she finds important” club. So far, only TBF and the niece are members.

What she has seen thus far:

Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Mommy Dearest

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Clue

Boondock Saints

Mmm.

Future titles will include:

Across the Universe

Donnie Darko

(500) Days of Summer

Party Monster

The Labyrinth

She’s seen quite a few that I consider crucial, Fried Green Tomatoes, Mean Girls, A League of Their Own, Bring it On, Moulin Rouge, The Neverending Story. But I’m not sure I can trust someone who hasn’t seen Mommy Dearest to have seen the important movies.

So I am now taking suggestions for movies that she must see. It is our duty and our responsibility to help the uneducated of the world.

No one's coming back from that

I have not blogged in a very long time.

Understatement? Possible. In my defense, I have three partially written blog posts raring to go, including one for Hunger Games that is yanking at the bit, growling at me for not releasing it to play.

You can thank RyAn for getting me out to play. He pointed me in the direction of Nathan's Hit Me With Your Best Shot series, which invites readers to post their favorite shot from the chosen movie. Seeing as how this chosen film was Serenity, it was highly unlikely I wouldn't come out of hibernation to make my voice heard.

I made a rather haughty statement on Twitter that I didn't need to rewatch the movie to pick my favorite shot, I knew it already. As Ry so accurately pointed out, one doesn't need a reason to rewatch the movie. He is naturally right, as I've just popped the DVD in to go to this specific scene to get a good feel while I type this hurriedly, as some of us have work in the morning.

Usually when I do something Ry has done before, he does it better than me. And while I agree that his choice of favorite shots is superb, I have to make a loud angry honking sound at how wrong he is. While he also chose a shot featuring River (or, at least, a part of her), it is nowhere near the best shot of the movie.

I saw Serenity twice in theaters, by the way. It chose a very inconvenient time to come out. September 30, 2005. Inconvenient because Hurricane Katrina hit at the end of August 2005, rendering the movie theater in my hometown of Slidell, LA fairly useless. I drove 30 minutes to see this movie. Then another inconvenience, my car being smashed into and being rendered fairly undrivable.

So much of the movie has stayed with me over the years. But more than anything was a single image, one that I even had as a Livejournal icon. Remember when livejournal was cool? I'm old.

I hope that in the short time I've been doing this blog, it's become apparent that I have a very deep affinity for strong female characters. You rarely get stronger than this. The doors opening on a partially lit River Tam, standing over dead Reavers with blood streaked weapons.

The battle scene that precedes it is amazing in its own right. Just the sight of her being dragged away by Reavers as the doors shut is powerful. Then the slow motion-sped up scene of her effortlessly killing the mentally damaged Reavers. Summer Glau's amazing ballet skills have never been put to better use.

The look on her face afterwards says it all. Yes, Jayne is a girl's name. Yes, Mal is latin for bad, and yes, your bible is full of false logistics. Do you have a problem with that? Because nothing in the 'verse can stop me.

And when I said I could kill you with my brain? You should have listened.

Yeah? You and whose army?

Deathly Hallows, Part 2. The end of a fandom era.

Reading Deathly Hollows was a swift blow. Tears and laughter and joy and all the more tears. No more books. But we still had the movies left to enjoy.

And now it’s done. The last movie has been released, and short of locking JK Rowling in a cellar and making her write more (and believe me, we all have ideas), there will be no new Harry Potter.

It’s sad. And it may explain why I cried more during this movie than I have at some funerals I’ve attended.

Many people, including TBF’s hubs, have said they were disappointed by the film. They expected more. I am rewatching the film as I write this (which accounts for the horrendous cam-quality pictures I’ll be interspersing throughout the entry), but I cannot see anything in this film that would cause me to be grossly disappointed in it. The bits that were left out were for obvious reasons, and what I was annoyed about most pales in comparison to what I loved.

So, let’s begin.

RIP Amy Winehouse

All I can ever be to you,
Is a darkness that we knew,
And this regret I've got accustomed to,
Once it was so right,
When we were at our high,
Waiting for you in the hotel at night,
I knew I hadn't met my match,
But every moment we could snatch,
I don't know why I got so attached,
It's my responsibility,
And you don't owe nothing to me,
But to walk away I have no capacity

He walks away,
The sun goes down,
He takes the day but I'm grown,
And there's no way, in this blue shape,
My tears dry on their own,

I don't understand,
Why do I stress a man,
When there's so many bigger things at hand,
We could a never had it all,
We had to hit a wall,
So this is inevitable withdrawal,
Even if I stop wanting you,
A perspective pushes true,
I'll be some next man's other woman soon,

I shouldn't play myself again,
I should just be my own best friend,
Not fuck myself in the head with stupid men,

So we are history,
Your shadow covers me
The sky above,
A blaze only that lovers see

I wish I could say no regrets,
And no emotional debts,
Cause as we kiss goodbye the sun sets
So we are history,
The shadow covers me,
The sky above a blaze that only lovers see,

He walks away,
The sun goes down,
He takes the day but I'm grown,
And in no way,
In my deep shape
My tears dry

RIP Amy Winehouse. You were too talented and too smart. I looked forward to your next album, and I'm horribly sad I'll never hear a new song by you.

Pre-Potter

Yesterday I worked early at the boring job so I could see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in the evening with TBF, her hubs, and a friend of ours from high school (who should have a better title, but that’s what he gets).

This was me before, at work all day:

This was me during and after:

If there’s one thing you should know about me, I take my time on blog entries, so the Deathly Hallows entry isn’t done cooking yet.

I do, however, have thoughts on the trailers pre-Potter.