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invasion of the blog snatchers
08/16/2009 = 09:26 AM

As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

When I did the Facebook "15 Books in 15 Minutes" meme (in here and on Facebook, just to be fair to everyone who gave a poofy damn), it never once occurred to me that I ought to wait for the movie to come out.

Curse you, Witty Kitty.

I'm gonna do the same thing I did with the books: list my fifteen titles in the alloted time, then go back and elaborate, so it will be an actual entry. (Also, I'm deliberately skipping reading Witty's list till after I compile mine, to make sure I don't get influenced by her picks.)

But first, some brain confetti, so you have some reason to read this other than that I've let Facebook invade my home turf yet again.

Why does my spellcheck accept "blog," but not "dingbatitude," another made up word that is far more useful to me? Yes, I know I can add it to my personal dictionary, but I shouldn't have to do so; "blog" was already in there, so, what, it's better because someone else made it up?

Why am I the one who orders the garlic romano fries at Sammy's because That Man of Mine claims they're "okay, but not that great," yet, when I reach for some, my fingers are in danger of getting bitten off because he is eating them like it's his job?

Why, on the show Defying Gravity, are the astronaut's foodstuffs and things flying around, but not their hair? Also, why are the female astronauts wearing makeup? I don't usually see that on NASA TV. And before you say, "It's the future and they might have permanent makeup," bear in mind that during some of the flashbacks, they are not wearing makeup, whereas other times they are, so, yeah, no. (And yes, if my noticing of this gravity/makeup issue is making me miss the story line, I'm not blaming myself. It should be the other way around. I count on my mindless entertainment to entertain me mindlessly. If I start thinking, you've lost me.)

Okay, enough blather. In the order in which they came to me (remember, I'm on a time-constraint):

The Wizard of Oz. Our main family TV, when I was a tiny kid, was black-and-white. But when The Wizard of Oz was on, we got to watch it on the big color TV in the Mom's room. When Dorothy opened the door after the cyclone, I felt like my brain had exploded. Any time I have experimented with anything mind-altering thereafter, it is that feeling I am trying, without success, to recapture. (It also occurs to me, about a month after the fact, that Oz should have made my book list, too. But please consider I was under the same time-crunch.)

Fantasia. Another brain-exploder: breathtaking color images synchronized to powerful classical music. I saw it for the first time during a revival at the theater, and although I own the DVD, it's not as magical as seeing it on the big screen and hearing it through loudspeakers.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I had no idea who Monty Python was when I first saw this (I got it mixed up in my head and though it might be Marty "Damn His Eyes — Too Late" Feldman), but I was delighted that someone finally got how my mind bounces along from thought to thought without rhyme or reason. If Monty Python were a single individual, I would be begging him to adopt me. As it is actually a collective, rather like a very clever Borg, I will simply live on in the hope that, someday, I may prove myself worthy to be assimilated.

Casablanca. The first film I ever saw where I realized that the ending you want and the ending you get can be complete opposites and still leave you satisfied. I don't have to tell you that this is not always the case. I base my fondness for many films on this very criterion: for instance, it's the main reason I thought Juno was more than just a pile of stuff thrown together hoping to win the "Movie with the Largest Quantity of 'Memorable Quotes' in IMDb.com" award.

The Exorcist. I thought I could not be scared by horror movies, because the ones I'd seen up to that point (mostly Fridays the 13th and Nightmares on Elm Street) had been formulaic and apparently meant to make me jump but not to terrify me. I didn't watch The Exorcist till I was an adult, and although it, too, was shocking, it shocked in a different way, and the creepiness of the experience preyed upon me for several days thereafter. I base my estimation of a good horror movie on whether or not I'm still a little scared after the final credits. I can't even hear the main theme of The Exorcist without having my heart start to pound a little.

Dead Again. This film came out right around the same time as the joke where Emma Thompson says, "Honey, I'm home," and Kenneth Branagh says, "I'm in the kitchen," and Emma Thompson says, "Ooh, can I be in it too?" Dead Again was delicious film noir and I don't think the casting could possibly have been improved upon: it needed to have both Branagh and Thompson or it would not have worked. Beyond that, though, the twisted story, the imagery (particularly of the scissors) and the brilliant performance from Derek Jakobi (and no one ever accuses him of begging Branagh to let him play too) make this worth watching. If that doesn't get you, watch it for Robin Williams, who restrains himself to the script and kicks its arse.

You Only Live Twice. This is my favorite Bond film, even though it's the first one to pretty much discard everything Ian Fleming wrote and kind of just repurpose his characters instead. Blofeld was the villain that everyone parodies, now, and he rocked. Also, Bond uses two of my all-time favorite movie quotes in this one movie: "If I'm going to be forced to watch television, may I smoke?" and (upon being told he isn't going to be sleeping in the same bed as Kissy) "Well, I won't need these," in regard to a dish of oysters. I am Gone for Sean.

Apocalypse Now. I should not have been allowed to watch this movie. I don't remember how old I was, but I was under the age of ten. I believe the statute of limitations is up on this, Mom, so don't go getting mad at Daddy now; it's too late. Suffice it to say that I took a greater interest in that period of American history than I would have had I not seen this film, and that I did read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, and that it was due to this film that I knew who Laurence Fishburne was before either Matrix or Pee-Wee's Playhouse. Let it go.

Finding Forrester. Did I mention I'm Gone for Sean? Never mind that. It's the descriptions of the writing process in this movie that speak to me. Another in a series of patterns wherein I feel like no one understands me and I find out that, someone, somewhere, knows exactly what compels me, and that just does me so much good.

What's Eating Gilbert Grape? Dammit, someone should have gotten an Academy Award for acting in this. In the beginning of the film, I was saying, "That Leonardo DiCaprio sure is a good actor." By the end of the film, I was saying of Darlene Cates, "She is so good with him," having forgotten that DiCaprio was an actor and not really a mentally-challenged child. Mr. DiCaprio, you were robbed; and so were you, Johnny Depp.

Annie Hall. Say what you will about the lobster scene and the cocaine scene; it's the fourth-wall-breaking scene in the theater line that made me go, "Holy crap, I have never seen anything like that before." Woody Allen's peccadillos aside, the man is a genius and I would like to be him if I grow up.

Citizen Kane. One of two all-time classic movies (the other being Titanic) containing a humongous plot hole that does not manage to ruin it. In Kane, no one hears him say "Rosebud" but everyone seems to know he said it; in Titanic, Rose wasn't present for a whole bunch of the flashback occurrences that, supposedly, she was retelling in the present day. It bothers me more for Titanic than it does for Kane, because Kane was so powerful in its other offerings; I could get past the fact that the plot was a hot mess because if I let go of that one problem, the rest of the film just stood up stronger and held my attention better.

Dogma. I always feel like Kevin Smith is trying to win spurs, if you know what I mean, and this was the film where I decided that, if I'd had a vote, he'd be getting a pair. It was irreverent without being completely sacrilegious; it was unapologetically profane without being inexcusably so, and I was less offended with Smith's questioning of plenary indulgence than I was by Ron Howard's skewed depiction of Opus Dei in The DaVinci Code. Yet one of them has respect in Hollywood and the other one is Kevin Smith. I call bullshit.

Stand by Me. Oh, hell, yes, it's a great adaptation of a Stephen King piece (always an iffy proposal), and possibly one of the greatest young actor ensemble pieces ever, better even, in my estimation, than The Outsiders, and yes, both Stand by Me and The Outsiders touched on the writing process, but Stand by Me is my pick because Gordie wrote fiction (the tale of Lard-Ass) and Ponyboy wrote a narrative. Of the two characters, Gordie is more creative. Also, the actor who portrayed him, Wil Wheaton, is a writer today. If C. Thomas Howell is writing now, I'm not aware of it.

Somewhere in Time. If you can watch this without being moved when you see, in the background, Jane Seymour pick up her skirts and begin sprinting toward the hotel, shouting "Richard!" you have no soul. The story is beautiful, heart-wrenching, Twilight-Zone-ish (written by Richard Matheson, a regular contributor to the Zone) science fiction and romance, a combination that works better in practice than one would think, and the music (the eighteenth variation of Rachmaninoff's Variation on a Theme by Paganini) combined with the antique setting is so lush. I have to say that, although I never remember to list this as one of my favorite movies, it really is. Shut up.

I better run like hell now before I get tagged with the 15 Television Shows in 15 Minutes Meme, or the 15 Made for TV Movies in 15 Minutes Meme, or the 15 Commercials in 15 Minutes Meme ... argh.

Tags: movies

drinking: coffee
listening to: Franz Ferdinand, Can't Stop Feeling
wondering: what's going to be the first movie i think of where i say, oh, hell, that should have made the list, and simultaneously realizing the answer is singing in the rain