100 Best Movies of the Decade

November 15, 2009 at 11:10 pm (Uncategorized) (, , , )

The Times (over there in the U.K.) has posted their list of the 100 best films of the past decade.  Obviously, this is the first of hundreds of such lists that we’ll see in the next seven weeks (are there really only seven weeks left in 2009? Good christ.), and while some people call it provocative, I call it random.

Instead of posting the entire list, I’ll just touch on a few highlights:

  • The Devil Wears Prada starts the list out at #100.  I loved this movie (and it is one of those rare cases where the film surpasses the book–the book is absolutely unreadable, you guys), and I’m happy to see anything with Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt make the list.
  • Sigh.  Crash is in the 90s, which is probably to be expected, but is disappointing all the same.
  • Anchorman makes the list at number 61.  I let my 10th graders watch this last year on the last day of school.  I had forgotten how funny it was until the end with the whole bear cage thing.
  • Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind comes in at #16, and this is where the list and I pretty much break up.  It should be #1, or at the very least, be in the top 5.
  • Casino Royale is in the top 10, and I officially question the criteria that went into making this list.
  • The list cheats at #2, putting The Bourne Supremacy and Ultimatum together.
  • #1 goes to the French film Hidden, which I didn’t even remember seeing until I read the synopsis.  Yikes.

Overall, I’ve seen 46 of the films, which is actually kind of upsetting.  There aren’t a lot of movies on the list that I want to see, although I now want to rent Hidden again so I can remember what the hell it was about.

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More Squeeing than I’d Like to Admit

June 1, 2009 at 10:35 am (Uncategorized) (, , )

You guys, the New Moon trailer premiered last night during the MTV Movie Awards.  Now, I didn’t know this because a.) I don’t care about MTV, b.) I don’t get MTV, or any TV, for that matter, and c.) I’m not a die-hard Twilighter, but I did watch the trailer this morning when PopCandy posted a link to it.

The trailer is already so much better than the book that I hardly know what to say.  Does it look like it’s going to be an unintentional laugh-riot?  Of course.  Will I be there on opening day?  Absolutely.

(I laughed so hard when Jacob ripped out of his clothes when he turned that I was scared I’d attract the attention of other classrooms.)

I’m going to go watch the trailer again.  It’s better than term papers, right?

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Top 20 Movies of 1997

April 24, 2009 at 7:05 am (Uncategorized) (, , , , )

Pajiba’s been doing this awesome thing where they post the top 20 movies of a certain year.  They’ve posted the top 20 for 1997, which is awesome because that’s really the first year where I started to see movies obsessively.  The list follows below.  The ones in italics are those I’ve viewed, parentheses are my commentary.

1. Titanic $600,788,188 (7 times in the theater, countless times at home)
2. Men in Black $250,690,539 (With my mom and sister in the theater, bought on VHS)
3. The Lost World: Jurassic Park $229,086,679
4. Liar Liar $181,410,615 (I watch this movie every time I catch it on TV)
5. Air Force One $172,956,409 (I hated this movie.  I watched it with my family one night on cable.)
6. As Good as It Gets $148,478,011 (Viewed in preparation for the Oscars.)
7. Good Will Hunting $138,433,435 (The first R-rated movie I ever saw in the theater.)
8. Star Wars (Special Edition) $138,257,865 (I didn’t see this in the theater, nor have I ever seen the movie from start to finish in one sitting, but I’m counting it anyway.)
9. My Best Friend’s Wedding $127,120,029 (The first time I saw this, I was upset by the ending.  Now I can’t stand Julia Roberts’ character.)
10. Tomorrow Never Dies $125,304,276
11. Face/Off $112,276,146
12. Batman and Robin $107,325,195 (Rubber nipples.)
13. George of the Jungle $105,263,257 (I secretly loved this movie.)
14. Scream 2 $101,363,301 (Watched while baby-sitting my sister in our basement.)
15. Con Air $101,117,573 (I watched this with my dad one night.)
16. Contact $100,920,329 (I still don’t understand this movie.)
17. Hercules $99,112,101 (Not one of my faves, I have to say.)
18. Flubber $92,977,226 (Watched on a TV at the Holiday Inn a few months before my Bat Mitzvah.  Hated. It.)
19. Conspiracy Theory $75,982,834
20. I Know What You Did Last Summer $72,586,134 (Again, watched while baby-sitting T.  When my parents found out, I was grounded.)

Considering that I was 12 when these movies came out, I think it’s pretty impressive/embarrassing that I’ve seen all but 3 of them.  What’s more is that I can remember where I was and who I was with when I viewed these movies for the first time.

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Self-congratulatory, narcissistic, meaningless drivel.

February 19, 2009 at 7:05 pm (Uncategorized) (, , , , , , )

It seems that those lists of 25 things have blown up on Facebook, and I’ve even seen them leaking into some of the blogs I read via my google reader. I love to read random things about people (there’s a whole argument to be made about the fact that the things aren’t really random at all but are carefully selected factoids, but I digress), and so I’ve been devouring these memes like crazy.

What strikes me as odd, however, is that I haven’t been tagged once during this entire meme explosion. Not once, y’all. I don’t know what the odds are of that happening, but they have to be like, one in…some really big number. I’ve never really understood that whole odds thing, anyway.

(As I write this, The Boy is standing over my shoulder, urging me to mention the fact that he has been tagged a shit ton of times. Jerkface.)

So I was thinking, maybe I’d just post my 25 completely not-random things on here? At this point, the meme has been done by so many people that rebellion has set in and people are abstaining from doing it. Therefore, by participating in the 25 things meme, I’m actually counter-counter-culture? (Does that revert it back to mainstream culture? Does it matter?)

Well, Gentle Readers, here goes nothing.

1. I was born on Mother’s Day, at 5:11 in the morning. I’ve been announcing my presence at the most inopportune times ever since.

2. I had the same best friend from 1st grade until 9th grade. She and I still see each other from time-to-time, but we aren’t close like we used to be. Siamese twin close, you know? It can’t sustain itself. Also, we’re very different people.

3. Close friends are something I take very seriously, and therefore do not have a large number of people that I file under “close friend” in my life.

4. People, in general, annoy me. Especially in large groups.

5. When I’m asked why I became a teacher, I usually deadpan, “For the summers off.” This is not actually the reason at all, and I will probably teach during the summer for the next several years.

6. I abuse sarcasm. I don’t see that changing any time soon.

7. When I was in high school, I went through a phase where I quoted movies and TV shows almost constantly. It got so bad that my mom would ask, “What’s that from?” the second I’d finished saying something whether or not it was a Clementine original (I’m very creative, you know). Amusing, it was not.

8. I have a hard time choosing favorite bands or movies, but I have no trouble selecting books and TV shows. Veronica Mars always tops the TV list, and The Portable Dorothy Parker has been my number one literary obsession for years.

9. I really like music, but I don’t consider myself to be a snob. My music tastes change with my moods (which are likely to change without any notice, as The Boy can attest), and I tend to prefer pop music to sing along to in the car. I also tend to favor female singers with self-deprecating lyrics, so I guess it’s pretty much a crapshoot.

10. Speaking of music, I’ve been to more than one Hanson concert. They were my first real music obsession (no, Raffi doesn’t count), and I maintain that they’re talented musicians, which is an argument I will keep making until I die.

11. When I get sick of the music on my iPod/the radio, I’ve been known to listen to a large amount of NPR. I like the station in general, but Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me! is one of my favorite things in the world.

12. My workouts usually take place on a stationary bike, and while I love to read while pedaling, I find that it slows down my RPMs, so I usually watch TV on DVD instead.

13. I just finished the first season of Gossip Girl and find myself thinking about the show and the characters more than I’m comfortable with.

14. I collect recipes obsessively. My favorite recipes to try out involve baked goods, but I’m trying to get into savory recipes to expand my abilities in the kitchen.

15. Easter candy is my favorite candy. I can’t explain it. I love Starburst Jellybeans, chocolate eggs, marshmallow Peeps. The pastel colors probably don’t hurt, either.

16. I’m a self-professed Jossverse fan.  I actually own a “Joss Whedon is My Master Now” t-shirt.  It’s only seen the light of day once, and that was the night I went to see Serenity.  It was a theater full of Joss-nerds.  There was no judgment.

17. Sometimes I get up early in the morning so I can watch the back-to-back episodes of Saved By The Bell on TBS.  Then I go back to bed.

18. I feel like this list is turning into a list of all my guilty pleasures.  In a way, I guess it kind of is.  It’s as though my life is full of these elusive, yet fragile things.

19. When it comes to relationships, I tend to favor long-term monogamous relationships and then long periods of being single.  I do not have a lot of ex-boyfriends, and the longest I’ve ever been single is three and a half years.

20. I’m not on speaking terms with any of my exes.

21. While I tend to judge people fairly harshly, I am incredibly adept at reading a person.  My impressions of people are rarely wrong, but when they are, I freely admit it.

22. I used to write poetry until I realized that I was terrible at writing poetry.  Now I write mostly unfinished fiction of the mediocre variety.

23. I played with Barbies much longer than my peers did.  I’m not going to give you an exact age-range, but I will tell you that the last time I was caught playing with them, it was by my younger sister, who had come home from a date.

24. She sat down without a word and joined me.

25. I pick my nose every day.  It’s so satisfying, and it’s definitely my grossest habit.
Well, there you have it, gentle readers.  It took me much longer to put this list together.  I hope you enjoyed it.  I know I did.

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On wasting time

November 18, 2008 at 5:26 am (Uncategorized) (, , )

I didn’t manage to get any actual work done during my 5th hour prep today, but I did score a 14/15 on an online Saved By the Bell Quiz.

Absolutely.

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Rambings in the basement of a house in Southwest Minneapolis

October 4, 2008 at 10:56 pm (Uncategorized) (, , , , , , )

I saw Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist this afternoon. Going in with very low expectations allowed me to enjoy it more than I thought it would. I’ve started reading the book to see how it compares. I’m not very far into it, but I can see that the book is much edgier, sharper, and more real than the movie. But I love me some Michael Cera, and Kat Dennings is my new girl crush.

Speaking of books-to-movies, I’m eagerly awaiting the adaptation of The Time-Traveler’s Wife. By eagerly, of course, I mean that I’m wringing my hands in nervous anticipation. I so loved the book (and am so embarrassed by this fact) and I so want to love the movie that it’s causing me a great deal of stress. Every few days, I check to see if a trailer has been posted online, so that I might get a glimpse into the wonder that might be. It hasn’t happened yet, but I read a brief article the other day that’s gotten me a bit nervous about it. In it, Rachel McAdams (my girl!) says that people have to approach the book and the movie in different ways, because they’ve taken a 500-plus page book and condensed it into a 90-minute movie. That seems like a really nice way of saying that we’re going to be served shit come this winter. Oh, I think I’m getting an ulcer.

Currently, I’m babysitting for a 3-year-old named Walt (one of my favorite things to do is yell, “WALT! THEY TOOK MY SON!” Oh, second season of LOST, how I miss you). His parents should be home any minute, and I’d like that minute to be now, because I’m heading over to The Boy’s apartment for a little late-night hanging out. I’d like at least a good 45 minutes before he passes out and I’m left wide awake with nothing to do (no cable, no internet means that I’m pretty bored). He promised to cook me something delicious, but I know that he was going to meet some friends for a drink tonight so I figure I’ll be lucky if he’s home when I get there. Oh, ye of little faith.

This upcoming week will be the halfway point for student teaching. I’m actually surviving it, and that doesn’t suck at all. I’m tired of writing lesson plans, and I’m tired of saying things like, “I will wait for you to be quiet.”

Ugh.

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Why Pajiba is made of awesome.

September 20, 2008 at 9:33 pm (Uncategorized) (, )

Sarah Larson has a great piece at Pajiba about New Moon that pretty much mirrors my sentiments about Meyer’s series as a whole.

It’s hilarious and a good read.  Plus, she’s from Minnesota, so you know she’s totally boss.

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Obligatory music post

August 24, 2008 at 10:45 am (Uncategorized) (, , , )

I don’t write much about music because I don’t feel that I’m qualified. I really love music, but I don’t have the knowledge and skills that would allow me to write about it in a lucid and intelligent way. However, these are several thoughts I’ve had recently that I want to share.

The Knife’s song “Heartbeats” is covered by Jose Gonzalez. Both are pretty awesome versions in their own rights, but Gonzalez’s cover is so hauntingly beautiful that I can’t stop listening to it. It also makes me incredibly sad and kind of nostalgic for something that I can’t quite put my finger on, but since I’m looking for any distractions from thinking about my impending student teaching, I’m okay with being sad and nostalgic.

The Hold Steady’s new album, Stay Positive, is pretty strong. Although Boys and Girls in America will probably remain my favorite, this one is fast becoming a close second. Of course, …Almost Killed Me is attached so tightly to my heartstrings that it’s hard to say, really. I’m aware of the fact that my love for all things Craig Finn might color my assessment of this band, but really, I love them so much.

“I’d have Craig Finn’s babies,” I said to a boy I met a few weeks ago. “That’s really saying something, because I don’t want to have anyone’s babies.”

“I’d have a sex change and then have Craig Finn’s babies,” he replied to me. I thought this was hilarious at the time. In defense of my character (and sense of humor), I’d had several drinks.

A good friend of mine once told me that he considered Beulah to be a band whose entire oeuvre was worth listening to. “I’ve never found one of their songs to not be worth listening to at least 100 times,” he said to me as we drove around St. Paul, Miles Kurosky opining about love in an abstract way on the CD player. He then told me that he felt that Beulah’s songs mirrored how he felt about love and relationships. I spent the next few days obsessively going through their lyrics, trying to gain insight into a very strange boy’s mind.

My friend’s extreme love for Beulah is analogous to how I feel about Missy Higgins. There is not a single song of hers that isn’t worth listening to. She’s amazing. I love her. If I were a song writer, I would write songs like hers. That’s pretentious. I don’t care.

These days, I’m also listening to a lot of Jaymay, Dance Band, Bree Sharp, and Mori Einsidler (who just happens to be my cousin, but is proving to be quite the musician).

Commence tearing my musical tastes apart.

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Where I Stood

June 30, 2008 at 1:29 pm (Uncategorized) (, , , )

Entertainment Weekly’s list of the 100 New Classic books. Bolded are ones I’ve read, and italicized are those I’d like to get to soon. Possibly before the end of the year. Probably not.

1. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling

3. Beloved, Toni Morrison
4. The Liars’ Club, Mary Karr
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer
12. Blindness, José Saramago
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates
15. A Hearbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
16. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith
20. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
21. On Writing, Stephen King
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt
28. Naked, David Sedaris
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst
36. Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
41 . The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman
47. World’s Fair, E.L. Doctorow
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
49. Clockers, Richard Price
50. The Corrections, Jonathon Franzen
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe
58. Drop City, TC Boyle
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich
61. Money, Martin Amis
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini,
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel 69. Secret History, Donna Tartt
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields
84. Holes, Louis Sachar
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman
96. The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson
98. The Predators’ Ball, Connie Bruck
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show

Real post soon, I promise.

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Overhsare Meme

June 11, 2008 at 1:04 pm (Uncategorized) (, , , , , )

Found throughout various blogs, I’m a sucker for memes that let me talk about myself, because let’s face it: I like to talk about myself. So without further ado, let’s begin, shall we?

1. Name the singer/band/performer you are most embarrassed to admit you actually paid good money to see in concert.

Most people would argue that I should write the name “Hanson” down here, but I disagree. I first went to see Hanson when I was 12 years old, when they performed the free show at the Mall of America. It was insane on all levels, but it was probably the most fun that I’ve ever had at a concert. I saw them again when I was 19. I don’t regret either concert, nor am I embarrassed to admit that I still listen to them from time to time. They’re good people.

2. Which reality TV show have you watched more than once (come on. I don’t believe you if you say “none,” unless you don’t own a TV)?

I don’t watch much TV in general these days, and the few things I do watch are not reality TV, but I will admit that I watch American Idol every now and then, and I fucking loved Lisa Loeb’s short-lived show on E! called #1 Single. That show was high-quality entertainment.

OH AND ALSO: Kathy Griffin’s My Life on the D-List is starting up again, and even though I don’t have cable, you can be sure I’ll be couch-hopping to various places that do.

3. Which complete trash novelist have you not only read but enjoyed enough to read more than one book of his/hers?

A lot of what I read is trashy. I collect the Sweet Valley series by Francine Pascal as well as an assorted number of other YA series from the days of yore. I’ve also read all three of Stephenie Meyer’s books in the Twilight series (and will pick up Breaking Dawn when it comes out for sure), and while I pretty much hate everything that they are and stand for, I secretly enjoy them.

I’m also a fan of Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series, which is all kinds of trashy. What else, what else? There’s a shit-ton, you guys. I read a lot of crap.

4. What sappy musical could you watch over and over and over again?

Isn’t the phrase “sappy musical” kind of redundant? I like to say that I’m not a big musical fan, but that statement is contradicted by the fact that I know all the words to the soundtracks for Wicked and Rent. I also love the movie Once, which is all kinds of sappy but remains to this day the most beautiful little love story/musical that I think I’ve ever seen

5. Who was your first celebrity crush?

Jonathon Taylor Thomas and Devon Sawa? Yeah, pretty much. I was so in love with JTT. And Devon Sawa’s little cameo in Casper was the stuff of a 9-year-old girl’s wet dream. I still think Devon Sawa is kind of attractive, actually, but the fact that Jonathon Taylor Thomas stopped growing at the age of like, 14 kind of weirds me out.

6. Who is the most embarrassing celebrity on whom you have a slight crush today?

Similar to the question about embarrassing concert-going experiences, I’m not sure that I have any embarrassing celebrity crushes. I have a terrible girl-crush on Jessica Alba. This is only embarrassing in the sense that she cannot act her way out of a paper bag. But she’s so lovely

7. What movie that everyone else and his cousin and even his dog has seen have you never seen?

There are a lot, I’d wager. I’ve never seen The Godfather trilogy, nor have I seen Casablanca. I haven’t seen It’s a Wonderful Life, either. I’m woefully uncultured, and I totally don’t care.

8. What were you drinking the first time you ever got drunk?

This is a tricky question, because I’m not much of a drinker. I got tipsy for the first time when I was 18, on Southern Comfort (woof) and Bud Light (good lord).

The first time that I got rip-roaring drunk, it was on White Russians, screwdrivers, and Red Stripe.

9. Which old re-run will you still pause to watch if you’re flicking through the channels and see that it’s on?

I’ve been known to watch re-runs of Friends, Sex and the City, and Saved by the Bell. But really, thanks the the wonder that is TV on DVD, I don’t really do the whole re-run thing.

10. What book/movie/t.v. show that only a fifteen-year-old would think is funny makes you laugh?

Any Judd Apatow movie, ever.

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