All Quiet on the Western Front: What We've Been Up To

Do as Peggy says

If it's been a little quiet around here, I apologize.

Sunday I wrapped a week-and-a-half off from work (sometimes working at a University has its privileges.  They just sent us home on the 22nd and said "don't come back til Monday the 4th"), and between writing those end of the year posts and no longer being under obligation to write about every movie I've watched, I've felt some sense of liberation and I'm enjoying it.

We also haven't watched all that many movies.  I'll still, at minimum, post the poster for whatever movie I just watched, but full write-ups won't come as often this year.  Yes, I probably should have written something about Hateful 8, but... nope.

A long while back I got Jamie the Season 1 Agent Carter BluRay set, but she's held off on watching it until now so we would get a refresher just before Season 2 arrives January 19th.

It's rare I feel so vindicated as I have about my instincts around Haley Atwell's kick-ass love interest for Cap in 2011's Captain America.  I won't lie:  Ms. Atwell is a striking lady, but I couldn't help but feel they'd found a lot of pieces in both script and actress I was interested in seeing expanded.  But the Marvel Cinematic U is pretty firmly planted in the 21st Century, so I didn't expect anything except for a lot of me saying "I wish they would have done more with Agent Carter".

Well, sometimes the universe surprises us, and not only did they make a short-seasoned TV show I thought was better than it was ever going to be, but Jamie - who liked Peggy as well in the Cap movie - was a HUGE fan.  I won major brownie points for getting her the Peggy carter Funko Pop, for example.

JimD Returns to Blogging

I sense something.  A presence I've not felt since...

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a young attorney, fresh from law school, suggested I try my hand at blogging.

I know Jim from our days at the University of Texas when we were both studying Film in the College of Communications.  Jim sat near me in our first screenwriting class, and while I have no recollection of why and how we started chatting, it seems it had something to do with comic books.  But I can't remember how comics came up.

We had an intensive writing class together the next semester, and that's when we started talking a lot, and thanks to email, our chatting continued through the end of the 90's after graduation as Jim continued his education about 90 minutes up I-35 at the famed Baylor Law School.

In 2002 or so, Jim launched a "blog" and suggested I do same.  "I've nothing to say," I protested, but in 2003, I joined Jim in the blogosphere.

Books Read in 2015

Sometime about 10 years ago, I realized I'd only read, like, 2 books all year.  While that's still 200% more books than the average American, and I justified it all by telling myself I'd read a lot of comics (I had.  A LOT of comics.), I felt a bit bad about not reading books without pictures.  So, these days I
strive to read a bit more.

Here's the list of what I read in 2015.  It's only 23 books, but I figure that's about two a month, and that's not awful when you add in the numbers I presented yesterday when it came to movies.  Plus working and whatnot.

2015 - A Year in Movies (Let's Talk Numbers!)

When I came back to the site at the end of 2014, I picked up in 2015 with enough hubris and energy to decide to write about each movie I watched this year.  Unless something weird happens in the next few hours, I am able to accurately state that I posted on every movie I watched which I watched in its entirety in calendar year 2015.

I did not mention every movie I did not watch all the way through, usually because I tuned in for a bit to a movie I'd seen before and wouldn't bother to finish or came in very late.  I also didn't do full write-ups of a few movies, but no one seemed to mind that I had nothing to say about Spies Like Us.

So, in this post - let's talk numbers.  I'll give out awards later.

For the breakdown on a spreadsheet, feel free to click here.  It's also at the bottom of the post, if you hate clicking things.

As of 2:18 PM on December 31, 2015 I watched and said something about 181 movies.  

The last time I kept count was 2012, when I watched just 136 movies.  As I recall, we were watching a lot more TV that year and I was working like crazy.

That said - that's a whole 45 more movies, at about 1.75 hours a piece, that's about 79 more hours of movies - or two working weeks.  Plus, I dunno, maybe 45 minutes per post.  That's about 34 hours of post-time.  So, a total of about 113 hours more than 2012.

(edit:  I actually checked and back in 2012, we were double-posting movies a lot.  It was 136 posts and 147 movies.  Corrected numbers - 34 more movies in 2015, an average of 59.5 hours of movies, 25.5 hours of posts, so - let's call it 85 hours more than 2012).

Yikes.

If we figure 181 movies at 2.5 hours of watching and posting, that's 452.5 hours I've give you people this year, or more than 11 weeks of work.  And it's likely more than that as a lot of the movies were more than 1.75 hours, so let's not think too hard about this before I start really worrying about what I'm doing with my life.

Anyway, here we go...

New Years Watch: Sunset Boulevard (1950)

The movie neither begins nor ends on New Years.  Instead, it's the morbid spectacle of New Years Eve in the Desmond mansion that's the crucial turning point in the movie as screenwriter Joe Gillis decides to stop fighting the pull of Norma Desmond.

With a night out (a rarity of late) ahead of us for New Years, I figured whatever I put in at 9:30 PM on 12/30 would be the last movie I'd watch for the year.  Sunset Boulevard (1950) is a movie I am afraid I came to quite late, and one I wish I'd paid attention to years ago, though I am uncertain that - as a 20-something - if I would have seen it as much more than highly enjoyable melodrama and camp.  Certainly I'd understand it was loaded with enough real star power behind it to lend it an air of legitimacy, but it's in watching the movie as an older viewer that the movie resonates in a way that I'm unsure it would in quite the same way for a younger viewer.

Joe Gillis is a down-on-his-luck screenwriter, a tarnished golden-boy, unable to produce the same kind of work that landed him some big gigs in Hollywood in recent memory.  Now, though, at 30-ish, he's yesterday's news, unable to sell a story, laden with debts at his heels, the finance company ready to take his car.

Avoiding those repo men, he turns into an overgrown driveway on Hollywood's famed Sunset Boulevard, finding himself on the grounds of a decaying mansion, an echo of the glory days of the silent era.  Inside he finds former silent star Norma Desmond, an actress who vanished - as so many did as the industry moved from silent to sound.  She's survived, wealthy enough to keep the world outside at bay, her manservant, Max, helping to protect and shield her from the world which has forgotten her and moved on.

Growing Up With Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (and Beyond)

This is the 3rd and last in a series about being a kid in the 70's and 80's and being a part of the generation that was exposed to Star Wars first hand.  All recollections are subjective and are not intended to represent those of the other billion kids who were also around.  For Part 1 about Star Wars click here, for Part 2 about Empire, click here.

My memories about Return of the Jedi come with a lot of "firsts" attached.

It is the first movie I remember anticipating.  The Empire Strikes Back has ended on a cliffhanger, and so it only made sense that from the second we saw the Skywalkers staring off into space and the credits rolled, I was signed up for the third installment.  As I discussed in talking Empire, we moved into speculation.

What you kids have to remember is (a) there was no internet and (b) the sector of the population that obsessed over what movies were coming and when was much smaller back then.  My first inkling that the movie was actually, like, really, really coming was a slide that appeared before some other movie my mom took us to.  I don't think it said Revenge of the Jedi, I just processed that - yes, we were finally getting a 3rd movie.  But the slide was really bland - just a title and a picture of a greenish planet, if memory serves.

After that, I do believe images began to trickle out in magazines and on television.

It was also the first movie I spoiled for myself.

Growing Up With Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

At five years old, I'm not sure I really understood the concepts of cliffhangers or ennui, so this was more or less my intro to those ideas.  I've read elsewhere about people my age who freaked out about how bleak they found The Empire Strikes Back (1980), or got wigged out that it didn't have a tight ending where the heroes saved the day.  And while I get that, I wouldn't say that was my take away.

Prior to the screening, I only vaguely recall being aware that there was a new Star Wars movie coming out because my mom ordered a Boba Fett toy through the mail (yeah, we were one of those families).   But one morning The Admiral grabbed my brother and I, tossed us in the car and drove us to a gigantic theater somewhere in Dallas (I've had Dallas-dwellers identify the theater for me a dozen times based on the description, but I can never remember the name), and we watched The Empire Strikes Back with hundreds of other people.

Growing Up with Star Wars - Let's Talk Episode IV (we just called it "Star Wars", dagnabbit!)

I was born in 1975.  In 1977, my folks dumped off my brother and myself for the evening and went with some friends to see Star Wars.  Legend has it that of the four in the party, only my dad liked the movie.  The Admiral apparently totally fan-boyed (he would have been about 31, then, I guess), told everyone they didn't know what they were talking about, and was proven very, very right by money and history.

As for myself, I tell people that the The Admiral took me to see Star Wars in the theater during its initial run and am surprised how often I'm met with looks of suspicion or people trying to correct me.  "You were 2 years old?" they say.  "I don't think so.  You must have seen the 1980 re-release."  Well, thanks to some iffy judgment calls and my dad's desire to see that movie again in an era before home video, I did, in fact, see Star Wars in the theater during that first run.

My primary memory of that Star Wars screening is getting totally wigged out by the Tusken Raiders.  So, anyone who wants to feel vindicated that Star Wars is too much for kids that age, maybe, maybe not.  Because I also remember the feeling of absolute amazement that exploded all over my life from that moment to today, in its own way.

Opera Watch! We take in some culture and see "Tosca" at the Houston Grand Opera

So, it's pretty hard to call me an opera fan.  I mean, the only opera I've seen live in the past 30 years has been Das Rheingold.  For reasons I don't even remember, I had to give up my tickets to see Der Walkurie this year, and if Jamie's enthusiasm to Das Rheingold was any indication, it's not really worth the weekend trip to Houston to go catch parts 3 and 4.

But, you know, I think its not imperative, but a good idea, to try to see famous works for yourself.  That's kind of the stage of life I'm in now I guess.  And among operas, Tosca is more or less a household word.  Fortunately, I'm culturally illiterate, so I wasn't actually sure what the word "Tosca" meant when I plunked my butt in the seat at the Wortham Center to see the Houston Grand Opera Saturday night.

Little background:  a fellow I was pals with in high school is now a, like, serious opera-performer-type-person, Weston Hurt (ask for him by name)!  Weston has performed all over the US and abroad, but he'd never wound up playing Houston Grand Opera until this recent run of Tosca at the HGO.  And while I've watched YouTube clips of him and whatnot, I hadn't seen him sing since high school where he kind of shamed everyone else during a musical revue where he led the chorus in "Do You Hear the People Sing?" from Les Mis and sounded like a grown-up-type singer among a herd of high school squawkers (I was working crew for that show, so I got to hear it over.  And over.  And over.)  He also did a little Country and Western at the talent show, which left me baffled, but the guy has pipes.

Merry Christmas from the Inexplicable BudK Catalog

I have no @#$%ing idea

So, this showed up in the mail.  That's right, it's a Christmas Knife!  These people aren't making the same mistake as those heathens at Starbucks!  And, with their product, you could kill a man.

I have no idea who this company is, but they had my name and mailing address.

Oh, yeah.  That's a lousy picture.  Here you go.  From their website:

Pretty exciting!  And something that you will totally not throw in a sock drawer and forget about.  

But, like the page says:  You may also like...

Happy Halloween 2015 from The Signal Watch

20 years ago bonus

And here's a pic from what I figure is Spring of 1996 of me and Jamie somewhere in San Antonio.

The dream of the 90's is still alive.

20 Years.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of when Jamie and I started dating.

I have to use the term loosely, because there wasn't all that much dating.  There was no dinner and a movie followed by more dinner and movies, and then the usual progression.  After knowing each other for about two years, we went to one David Bowie concert in a non-romantic context (heck, my brother was along), and a couple of weeks later, we sort of high-fived and were suddenly together, and I guess we decided we liked it that way.

Jamie was college roommates with some lady friends of mine from high school, and they were all at Trinity, a small university in San Antonio, about 90 minutes south of Austin.  I'd met her in October of my freshman year, but we didn't start "dating" until our 3rd year of school.

It basically went like this:




I dunno.  I figure anyone who goes and sees Vampire in Brooklyn with you for what amounts to your first weekend together, complains a minimal amount about your film selection and is willing to see you again...  that's a girl you want to stick with.

Travelogue - Portland, Oregon

So, my apologies for not posting much this week.  I didn't even get to do a Flash re-cap, at least not yet.  Wednesday, I jumped on a plane and flew to Portland, Oregon for work.  I'd never been there, and of the many things I like about my current job, it's that I get sent all over the place on someone else's dime.

this was next door to my hotel

A lot of the time when I travel, I just wind up hitting a hotel, eating in said hotel, going to bed, getting up, working, then leaving.  That happens a lot.  But on other trips, particularly when you're meeting with people from all over, you tend to wrap up work and then at least walk around a bit with those folks and grab dinner out and about.

Now, I was only in Portland from 11:00 Wednesday night until when I flew out at 9:00 on this morning (Saturday), so I can't say much about the town.  I was working all day Thursday and Friday, but we did go out for lunch and dinner.  And, yeah, a few of those meals were kind of over-the-top Portlandia-style and fantastic.  We ate at the food trailer area on 10th street and a sandwich shop called Lardo's (I was very happy with my tuna sandwich).  For dinner, we hit a place out in the 'burbs called Old Salt Marketplace, that was a lot of fun, and they made a good cocktail, terrific ham hocks and broccoli.

I won't pretend that I am a Portland expert.  I was barely there.  But it's a beautiful town and they do a lot of things we could learn from here in Austin.  Like, hey, the drivers don't try to run you over.  And you can walk places.  Or take a train.

I stayed in a very nice hotel called The Heathman, where, just to make me uncomfortable, the doorman was dressed as a Beefeater.  I have no idea why and didn't ask.  Then, one of my colleagues who was also on my floor, pointed out that there was a security detail watching the door of another room.  They were just camped out in an open room, watching the door.  So, of course I asked, and the guy said "the reading light is better here" as he sat in the doorway.

I didn't push it.  Never figured out what was going on.  But I did see a lot of very nice dogs in my hotel.

Anyway, an unexpected highlight was getting an email from an old pal from college who moved up there years ago who saw I was staying right near her place of work.  We met up, grabbed some dinner then went to a bar/ restaurant that - you know, 20 years later, it's funny how people still know "oh, Ryan will love this" - was an elaborately Egyptian themed bar that had seen better days maybe 15-20 years ago, and was dead empty on a Friday night.  It was me, Amy, the owners, and a Stan Getz greatest hits album on the PA, surrounded by Egyptian kitsch.  Not another soul around.

If you were to ask me about my ideal drinking experience - buddy, I just had it.  So, thanks, Amy.




  

Doc Watch: American Movie (1999)

Fist things first:  as regular readers may know, one of my two undergraduate diplomas from Ye Olde University of Texas is in Communications, where I was in the Radio-Television-Film Department, and happened to be one of the lucky stiffs who went through the "Film Production" track.  Which was kind of a big deal, at least to me, as they only let in a handful of students into that track every semester.

Here, you can see my first experience shooting 16mm.*  And you get special appearances by our own JAL, occasional reader and longtime pal Shoemaker, and Kerry, who wound up selling me the very house I live in today.  Thanks, Kerry!  (she doesn't even know about this site, so, whatever).  Oh, yeah, and Michael in an alien suit that he already owned.  Because, you know, Michael.

The documentary, American Movie (1999), stirs up a lot of very specific feelings for me when I give it a whirl - something I don't think I've done in 15 years.   If you've not seen it, it's the very real story of a filmmaker from Wisconsin who has a dream of making a horror movie called Northwestern.  Mark Borchardt, the film's main subject, is a high school drop out, he probably drinks too much (and, I think you can infer that drugs were or are also involved somewhere in the picture), barely holds together a job as a newspaper delivery man, is split from the mother of his three children, is 30 and lives at home with his dysfunctional parents.

Despite a lack of any formal training, a lack of experience on any other films other than his own 8mm projects, and a seeming inability to project manage himself whatsoever, Mark remains focused on the dream of finishing a movie.  Maybe.  Just maybe not Northwestern.

The movie uses the "aspiring filmmaker" as the excuse for really getting to know Mark, his family and friends, his corner of the world.  The film takes a look at what the American Dream means to a guy like Mark and his friends, guys from middle class families in middle America, folks for whom things haven't really panned out by the age of 30, and for whom it doesn't look as if things are set to improve a whole lot.

In a country built on the promise of opportunity, what does that really mean when the dream is creating a movie?  And, really, what's the dream behind the dream?

It's Been a Long Day

Long day here at The Fortress of Nerditude.  I'll spare you the details.

But, hey...  I hear the Williams sisters had a hell of a match.  The Cubs won again in St. Louis.  Stephen Colbert debuted tonight on CBS.  That's all good stuff.

It's going to be a long week.  Bear with us.

Straight Outta MemeLand

Your humble blogger.

Happy Anniversary to My Folks

Here's to The Admiral and KareBear, two of the finest people I know and the best parents I ever had.
Today marks their 46th Wedding Anniversary, I think.  Something like that.  I'm sure someone will tell me if my math is wrong.

Like all great romances, my parents met at a bar.  My dad was in the Air Force, post-Vietnam, stationed in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  My mom was a local, finishing up college.  I guess romance blossomed or some such.  Booze will do that for you.

Soon, my dad got out of the Air Force and my mom married my dad and she moved to live with him in Miami, which I figure had to have been a heck of a culture shock.  He was from Hialeah and went to community college for a while and my mom worked, then they both got into the University of Florida where my mom got her Masters in Education while teaching and my dad went straight from his undergrad to his Masters in Business.  I think he was working at a 7-11.

Anyway, they've really managed to make this marriage business work.  It ain't Ozzie and Harriet, but they do that teamwork thing as well or better than anyone I know.

In addition, they basically didn't mess up raising two kids of their own while helping with countless other kids and grown-ups via my mom's jobs teaching, through their church work, through philanthropic work, through friends, random people they meet, and countless other activities.   And that's not to mention all the stuff they did for me and Jamie over the years (and my brother and his wife, too).  And now they've stepped up as terrific grandparents for my nephew, Raylan.

If you want to know why I think a do-gooder like Superman is a pretty good idea, I grew up living with these two.  They never asked for recognition or thought they were doing much more than what you were supposed to if you had the ability to do so.  Good folks, my folks.  Hard standard to live up to.

Happy Anniversary to a great set of parents.

I forgot to get you a card.

This Moment In History: Supreme Court Rules for Equality for Same-Sex Marriage

Taking a break from pop-culture commentary and irrelevant minutia to reflect on the overall cultural thunderstrike that came across the internet this morning.  The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, has legalized same-sex marriage in the United States.  

No doubt the armies of lawyers and pundits are lining up to stoke the fires and make some money off good old fashioned rage.  It's to be expected.  But today I think we broke through another barrier.  We abandoned separate rules for a class of our citizenry for a common definition of the most important conscious relationship most people ever enter.

I am aware not all of my readership shares my belief that this ruling reflects part of America's steady progress in recognizing the rights of all its citizens.  Here I have to break with you, but I hope you know, it's with an olive branch extended.  Recognizing the equality of love between two people as they define that relationship, not hemmed in by concepts of gender or adherence to non-legal codes, whether the Supreme Court had stepped in or not, seems to me an act of human decency.  At the heart of that of all of this is the word "love", and it seems that a victory for love should only be amplified by an extension of some of the same with an open hand rather than a closed fist.

"Old Green World" by Walter Basho - now available on Amazon

A former co-worker & co-blogger, current pal, and all around great guy, Walter Basho, has released his first novel today to the Amazon Kindle.

If you've got $3, I highly recommend picking up his debut book, a sci-fi novel set in THE FUTURE.

Here's the description as per Amazon:

The apocalypse happened 4000 years ago. A forest now covers the world. In its shadow, Albert, an immigrant military prodigy, falls in love with Thomas, a boy he can never marry.  

Their island nation flourishes, led by strange monks called the Adepts—who have power over matter and the mind—and their holy figures, the mysterious Old People. The Adepts are building an army to storm the wild continent of Terra Baixa. They plan to tame the forest and rebuild civilization.  

The forest doesn't care. It is patient and vast. This is what happens. 

Walter Basho's first novel is a science fantasy adventure, a coming-of-age story, a romance, and a meditation on what it means for the world to end.

Everyone give Walter $3.  He deserves it.

Order the book here.