Dec 29
Watch close or you will definitely miss it. It’s gone in 2 seconds.
Dec 29
Or, more appropriately, movies I love. I was just sitting having a beer after getting off work for the year when I flipped on the TV. To my pleasant surprise Mallrats was on. Sure, I can always put in the DVD, but catching it on TV is more fun for some reason. It got me thinking about the movies I absolutely love.
The movies I love are for a variety of reasons. Some are because they remind me of certain periods in my life, certain friends, certain occasions. Others are because I think they are just fucking great and have moved me to want to create my own. Below is a small list, by no means exhaustive, of some of my favorite movies to watch over and over again and the reasons why.
This is different than a guilty pleasures (crap movies I still love) group of movies. Don’t worry, I have those too and I’ll post about my guilty pleasures someday.
Mallrats - This reminds me of my senior year of college. I actually saw it my sophomore year but we watched it repeatedly my senior year. My friends and I knowingly and unknowingly quote the movie all the time. Just watching it reminds me of all those good times and good friends. I also have a lot of personal connections to the whole View Askew thing and that makes it even more significant. Sometimes it gets poo-pooed as Kevin Smith’s worst film but I think it’s one of his best.
Animal House - Need I saw more? First, it’s just an awesome fucking movie. Absolutely hilarious, great writing, great acting. It reminds me of all my college buddies and all the times we had doing the same stupid shit. That was my college life.
Donnie Darko - This movie was absolutely a life changing experience for me. I loved this movie and can watch it over and over. The tone of the movie, the acting, the story, the sound (and sometimes lack of). Just perfect. I discovered this late actually, after it was in theaters and had a bit of a following. I can’t believe I had never heard of it before then. Luckily I saw it and fell in love.
Pulp Fiction - Another life changing movie for me. I was lucky and saw it in the theater while in college. I can remember going as I didn’t go to the theater a lot (too expensive for a college kid). I went with my girlfriend at the time. I remember being very confused for most of the movie then everything came together towards the end and I loved it. This is one of the movies that changed how I thought about film, along with the next on the list.
Scream - In my mind perhaps the best horror movie for a variety of reasons. It’s got such a tight story, every little detail is covered. It doesn’t take itself too seriously yet is serious enough to still be a great horror movie. I remember seeing it, for free, at the theater in my hometown during a college break. I used to work there and one of the guys let me in without paying. It was phenomenal and still is. It really started a sub-genre I love which is the modern teeny horror genre.
Super Troopers - A more recent addition and totally worth it. Again, I saw it in the theaters. It was on a whim as I knew basically nothing about it. A totally tight movie that seems well thought out. The Broken Lizard gang interacts so perfectly. I hope they can do it again. Club Dread missed it. Beerfest was close. I have faith they can write another that comes very close.
Shaun of the Dead - I kind of have a thing for zombies. I like the genre but honestly most of the movies completely suck balls with only a few notable exceptions. Shaun of the Dead I had heard about and heard good things so I couldn’t wait to see it. Unfortunately for me it was only out in Europe, already on DVD, without a US theatrical release. This is because studios are retarded and wouldn’t know a good film if it gave them a lap dance. I downloaded it from a nefarious source and my DVD player was cool enough that it can play PAL DVDs. I immediately loved it. Subsequently I saw it in theaters and bought the US DVD. Love it, even made it my Halloween costume this year. The detail is absolutely spot on. Watching the extras you can see how every little detail from start to finish is related and well thought out. Ranks up there with Scream.
Dumb and Dumber - I lived in Colorado so the references remind me of that. I can’t tell you how many times we quoted this damn thing while I lived there. One of Jim Carey’s first big roles and it’s fantastic and very quotable, a big thing for me with comedies. If you can quote it constantly without repeating yourself then it can’t be too bad.
Back to the Future - Mainly I’m talking about the first film, but I love all of them. A fantastic comedy that’s totally 80s. Heavy.
Princess Bride - One of my top movies, certainly in my top 10. Why? First, it’s a great movie. It’s a hilarious comedy and a great love story. I know I’ve met my future wife when I can say “As you wish” and she knows exactly what I’m talking about. I had a girlfriend like that but that never worked out (story of my life). Anyway, one of my all time favorites and I can watch it over and over and never tire of it.
Can’t Hardly Wait - I’m throwing you all a curveball with this one. Never heard of it? Have heard of it but think it sucks? That’s fine. I like it. The reason I like it is because of the memories I have around the movie. I bought a DVD player when they first hit the market, spent $650 on something that’s worth about $20 nowadays. There weren’t a lot of DVDs to be had so I bought just about anything that looked decent (btw, that’s how I found Half Baked which I also love). I picked up Can’t Hardly Wait on a whim one day in Colorado and loved it. My friends and I used to watch it all the time when we partied or were going out so it reminds me of all those good times.
Office Space - If you work in an office, in a cube, how could you not absolutely love this movie. It’s one of those little gems that took on a life of its own after its theatrical release. It’s spot on for anyone who works in any office, especially in technology companies as I have. very quotable, very relatable, very funny.
The Fifth Element - Another underrated classic. The style and visuals are stunning. The story is very good. It’s a space opera that, to me, is up there with Star Wars. It’s a gorgeous movie to watch. Just look at the Diva scene to understand how beautiful the visuals are.
That’s a good start. There are a a lot of other movies I love but don’t watch as I do the above. Movies like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, Starship Troopers, Reservoir Dogs, The Frighteners, Army of Darkness, There’s Some About Mary, Weird Science, A Knight’s Tale, Arachnophobia, Boogie Nights, Desperado, and dozens of others. They all hold a special place in my movie-viewing heart.
One of these days I’ll get my DVD collection database all updated and then upload it online. Here is an old version (warning, HUGE page, takes a long time to download). I have added several since that was updated. It was really more of an experiment with exporting my database. Yes, I have a database of all my DVDs. I have a barcode scanner and I scan them all in using Delicious Library.
What are some the movies you love?
Dec 29
Well, the 50 in 25 didn’t go quite as planned. Just too much shit, too busy, too much of a social butterfly and all that. I have more than are on the list. I won’t probably review them all but I will try to update the list. I think I hit about 20, so, not even close. Go big or don’t go at all. If you’re going to fail, fail big!
Oh well, I’ll do something like it again soon. Come the new year I’m going to get back into my workout routine big time. I am starting the second week of January because of work commitments. Along with that I think I might take a break from some of the other shit I’ve got going on. I just want to relax for a bit.
Then there’s that whole dating thing. I might eventually make another post called “50 horror failures” except that one will be about dating. I’ve been trying to date more the last couple months and you know what? It sucks. Seriously, dating sucks. But that’s another post for another time.
‘Til next time, Excelsior! natch
Dec 09
I am still alive, I promise. I have been busy as hell lately. So much so that I’ve been stressed to all hell and back. Things are calming down and I am getting a little more LD time lately. I can’t remember the last time I had time to go to a movie in theaters or even when I watched my last Netflix other than this afternoon. The first time in like 6 weeks.
I took my LSAT and it felt ok. I’ll know in about 3 weeks. I have to get in my applications and such to schools.
Work sucks, as usual. It’s not just me anymore. Everyone is completely stretched thin and stressed out because of it. It’s not a happy atmosphere. I wish it were better for a lot of reasons. I wish it were better for me, so I wasn’t so stressed. I also wish the company wasn’t so fucking stupid and that things were better for them. I had a meeting with my boss and let him know everyone was stressed and he asked me if I had any solutions. I honestly don’t. Everything I’ve had I have suggested and it’s been shot down. I don’t give a shit anymore.
That’s a bad situation for a company to put itself in, yet that’s what they constantly seem to do. For the life of me I can’t understand it. What we do customers pay for. We generate the highest return of any division in the company. Customers pay for our service and it’s something like 40% of total company income. Yet we can’t hire an extra person. We earn 40% of company income with 8 people, 10 if you include management. Ten people out of around 400. And we are the reason sales people can get 40% of their income. We all really do feel under-appreciated.
Worse yet, we just lost a guy to another position. It’s one I interviewed for and wish I would have gotten. I think he’ll do good. But the bitch of it is he got a sweet raise AND quarterly bonuses. We get no bonuses. Hell, we don’t even get shift differential or overtime when we work 12 days in a row, the last 7 of which are graveyard 10-12 hour shifts. It’s hard to feel valued with that kind of situation.
Worse yet, when asked to contribute to new product releases and such our opinion doesn’t just go ignored, it gets beat the fuck down by upper level management. Why should I bother when I know the outcome? I gave up on my last product release. Not one bit of feedback I gave was taken into consideration. Yet I got yelled at for not bringing it to my VP. Fuck that. If I get told to basically shut up by a VP then I’m not going to fight because what’s the point? I won’t continue to fight for things that I know will never change.
That’s why I havee made the decision to leave the company. There are things inherent to the company that I think are wrong. They won’t change. I can’t stand them. I’m out.