Movies watched in 2008

The list topped out at 186 movies viewed via the theater, cable or Netflix. The full list can be viewed on my IMDB page here.

The stand outs:

The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Burn After Reading
Michael Clayton
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
La Via En Rose
The Orphanage
The Darjeeling Limited
The Fall

Honorable mentions:

No Country for Old Men
Superbad
There Will be Blood
Charlie Wilson's War
Transiberian
Step Brothers
Into the Wild
The Foot Fist Way
Son of Rambow
Sunshine
Eagle vs. Shark
Next Door
After the Wedding

Favorite Documentaries:

In the Shadow of the Moon
Jimmy Carter - Man from the Plains
Encounters at the End of the World

4th of July weekend pt. 2

Other stuff that happened over the three day weekend:

I hung out and drank too much with 'Clover', 'Schaf', 'Litl', 'JimmyAndrewForest' and a bunch of others. Everyone ended up at 'The Castle' for afterhours but I wussed out and went home.

On a whim I went and saw 'Wall-E' with my friend 'Torque Smackey'. Clever film but not as good as 'The Incredibles'.

I spent a good amount of the weekend trying to load the music sequencer and recording software Pro Tools M-Powered onto my computer. A bitch of a time but I finally got it working properly.

And last but not least, I took advantage of my museum membership and went to the Carnegie Museum with 'Evil Genius' and 'Litl' for an afternoon. I finally checked out the new Dinosaur exhibit and the impressive Carnegie International 'Life on Mars' exhibit.

Choke

I love me my Chuck Palahniuk books.

It's cool to hear that the movie adaptation of the the novel Choke is going to start filming next week in Jersey. Starring Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston.

Those unfamiliar with the book; Rockwell will play a sex addict and Colonial War re-enactor who deliberately chokes in restaurants in order to attach himself to his rescuers and con them out of their life savings, all to support his mother (Huston) in a private mental health hospital.

5 Favorite Films

Evil Genius has tagged me to list five of my favorite movies. Again, as any film lover will indicate, picking only 5 is near impossible ... but I'll do my best.

Here are 5 that are at the top of my list:

Dazed and Confused (1993) – Richard Linklater

It is 1976 and it’s the last day of high school for a bunch of teenagers in Texas. This was Richard Linklater’s follow up to ‘Slacker’ and arguably his best and maybe his last ensemble cast / day-in-the-life-of type of script he has written to date.

I lived with my mom in my grandparents house in the mid to late 70’s after my parent’s divorce. My uncle was still a senior in high school in 1977. Granted I was only 4 years old, I still have some memories of that time, solidified even more by my mother’s great photo taking and scrap booking skills. This is where photos of me like this and this come from. Back then I can remember my Uncle turning me on to the sounds of Kiss and Alice Cooper … scaring the crap out of me but also engraining a love for that era of music into me. This film brings back those kinds of memories for me.

It’s also a great film to see some actors before they were stars (Ben Affleck, Adam Goldberg, Matthew McConaughey, Milla Jovovich, Joey Lauren Adams, Parker Posey)

Playtime (1963) – Jacques Tati

“Instead of plot it has a cascade of incidents, instead of central characters it has a cast of hundreds, instead of being a comedy it is a wondrous act of observation. It occupies no genre and does not create a new one. It is a filmmaker showing us how his mind processes the world around him” – Roger Ebert

This incredible film, with hardly any dialogue, illustrates a comic take on the sterility and confusion of modern urban life in Paris. Always moving and in constant motion, this film is almost entirely shot with long and medium shots allowing your eyes to wander over the entire screen searching for action in the foreground and the background. The coordination of the action in these long shots and takes is breathtaking.

‘Playtime’ has received multiple viewings from myself and I still catch something new every time I watch it.


Adaptation (2001) – Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman

A movie about a fictional writer trying to write a fictional screenplay based on a real novel by a real author that was inspired by an article in the New Yorker. Wow. This film and plot blurs the fine line between fiction and non fiction by telling many different stories at the same time; such as the story of the fictional film being made from the actually real life novel and also true events that actually happened in the novel. The viewer is bewildered and deceived trying to follow what is real and what is not … There are people in this film that are real but are played by actors, like Susan Orlean author of the said article and novel and Charlie Kaufman himself, screenwriter of this film and main character in the movie trying to write the fictional screenplay … then there are people in this film that are really real … actors, such as John Malcovich and John Cusak playing themselves filming scenes from Charlie Kaufman’s previous film ‘Being John Malkovich’ … and then there are people in this film who are apparently not real, like Donald Kaufman (Charlie kaufman’s fictional twin brother).

This film reminds me and assures me of how brilliant and entertaining the art of storytelling and filmmaking can actually be.


City of the Lost Children (1995) - Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro

Part Sci Fi fairy tale and part nightmare, this film brings to the screen a world that includes an evil scientist who kidnaps children for their dreams, a brain that lives in a sort of fish tank, one strong-man circus performer, several cloned orphans who cannot figure which of them is the original, some very nasty insects, and Siamese twins who control the orphans for nefarious ends. There are also deep-sea divers, performing fleas (yes fleas) and some Cyclops men who have one eye removed and replaced with a computerized hearing device that allows them to visualize the sound waves of others. All of these people live in a dark and gloomy universe constructed of much brass, wood, tubing, shadows and obscure but disturbing machinery.

I saw this in the old Rex Theater in the Southside back when they used to still show movies there. This was the film that introduced to me what a ‘foreign art house film with a very limited release’ actually was. I have been hooked ever since.


The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989) – Terry Gilliam

It’s hard to say which Terry Gilliam film is my favorite … but this one is up there. This was the third movie in Terry Gilliam’s trilogy regarding his own life … while ‘Tim Bandits’ was about his childhood and ‘Brazil’ was about his adult life, ‘Baron Munchausen’ tells a story of coping with old age and not letting go of the child inside of you. In this film, the aging Baron tells stories of his outlandish travels – from Turkey to the surface of Moon, to the heart of a volcano, and into the stomach of a sea monster. These stories, even though they are being told by an elderly man, they come across as being told by a child – wonderfully literal and very naïve. The brilliant use of simple special effects helps further engulf the viewer into the world of the Baron. The simple approach to telling these stories is what captivates me about this film.

Movie Night

Another long evening working on the landscaping of my backyard. My neighbor is building a fence along our property line and his progress sort of depends on my progress so I have to get as much possible done before the weekend. Anyway ...

The HD DVDs are coming in from Netflix ... I had a few people over to watch Letters from Iwo Jima last night. Very good movie. All the better in HD. We started the movie a little late and didn't realize it had a running time of 2 hours and 2o minutes. The engrossing storyline and the bottles of wine made the time go by quickly though.

After the movie I stayed up with one of my friends swapping stories about the history of Electronic music here in the city of Pittsburgh. He and I were both pretty active in the scene from 1999 until today but our paths rarely crossed. We had many stories that intersected and it was fun putting the puzzle pieces together from our different viewpoints ... before we knew it, it was 3am. d'oh.

Tonight I'm having people over to watch Children of Men but the movie starts no later than 8pm and people are out by midnight. New house rules.

HD DVD

I'm thinking of switching over to HD DVD today.
I watch a lot of movies.
I don't have cable.
I'm a Cinema junkie.
Old, new, good, bad, foreign, indie, big studio, documentary, black and white, no brian comedy, horror, action, etc. I'll give anything a chance.

I realize that the HD DVD and Blu Ray battle is far from decided ... and I realize that the HD at-home-player technology is relatively new.

I'm also usually a proponent for waiting until the technology is tried, tested and the price tag comes down ...

but I want to enjoy HD now.

I have the TV for it .. and again, there is that Cinema addiction of mine ... I should be enjoying my movie watching in all of it's High Def glory ... right?

Why HD DVD then and not Blu Ray? I don't really have a concrete answer for that. But here are a a few reasons that sway my opnion ...

Blu Ray is too expensive right now and it seems that most studios are releasing their movies on both mediums (although, for now, Universal is HD DVD only and 20th Century Fox is Blu Ray only)

The Porn Industry seems to have sided with HD DVD for now. Even though I don't plan on buying or watching HD DVD porn, it seems that they were a big decider in the whole VHS and Betamax Battle.

Headgeek over at Ain't it Cool News has chosen to go HD DVD ...

and one of my main reasons for this decision, Circuit City is running a 'No Interest until 2009' offer on all HD DVD players until the end of this week (plus 3 free HD movies included). I already have an account with them when I purchased my LCD TV last fall. The TV is paid off so carrying another balance (with required minimum payments of $10 until 2009) shouldn't be too hard to handle ... and seeing as I want it now as opposed to later ... well ...

But I don't know. I do know that the players will only get better, slimmer, less bulky, less glitchy and much cheaper as time goes by ...

I guess I'll decide by Saturday.