Million Movie Meme

I wrote this post late Saturday afternoon and didn't have time to finish it before I had to get ready for my night out with the girls. Then I didn't get home until past midnight by which time we had had a terrible storm and lost power for the next 16 hours or so. It took me freakin' forever to write this hog because of all the pictures and links and by this point I'm just bloody sick of looking at it, so I apologize here in advance for any weird grammar or spelling errors.

With an intro like that I'm sure you are bursting at the seams to read this now.

I'm going to refrain from air kissing myself to avoid adding any extra strain to my already overtaxed neck. Yes. I've tagged myself for a meme, since nobody else would. I don't want to name any names here Tara.

Anyhoo... it's a movie meme and I couldn't resist because I love movies almost as much as I love eating and breathing.

There are just too many movie answers for me to choose from, so I have blatantly stolen an idea from New York Magazines weekly feature The Approval Matrix, where they section off Brilliant and Despicable things by labeling them either Highbrow or Lowbrow. I adore this feature. You can click on the image on the left to see the full size version of this weeks Approval Matrix. (I'm not sure how Rachel Ray and Dunkin' Donuts ended up on the Highbrow side.)

My movie meme will answer each question in the meme with the (Lowbrow) title of a mainstream, big name studio movie and with the (Highbrow) title of a lesser known or possibly totally unknown independent or foreign film or any combination of these things. This is my blog so I get to stand in judgment on what's Lowbrow and what's Highbrow - if you disagree leave it in the comments.

1. One that made you laugh:
Movie: Blazing Saddles (1974) - Because I can never resist a fart joke or anything with Madeline Kahn (RIP).

Film: Flirting with Disaster (1996) - I laughed throughout the entire thing and had to watch it again because I missed so much from laughing the first time.

2. One that made you cry:
Movie: Beaches (1988) - the whole thing with the dying and the daughter. It's just too much and I'm a huge Bette Midler fan. The music gets me every time.

Film: Hilary & Jackie (1998) - based on a true story, the whole thing with the success and the madness and the love of two sisters, plus it stars two actors I adore: Emily Watson and Rachel Griffiths. Also has great music.

3. One movie you loved when you were a child (I will eliminate the Highbrow/Lowbrow element here because as kid I didn't know the difference or really care. I'm going to list a few that I still love to this day and you may also notice that they are all pretty old. We didn't have a lot of money for going to the movies when I was a kid so I watched old movies on TV all the time):

Gigi (1958) - In retrospect the premise is probably a bit racy because it's about a little girl who is being groomed to become a courtesan, but I loved the songs, the costumes, and the fancy manners.

Harvey (1950) - What little kid wouldn't want to hang around with a guy who had an invisible 7 foot rabbit wearing a waistcoat and pocket watch for a best friend?

We can also include here anything with Cary Grant, Doris Day and Fred Astaire.

4. One you’ve seen more than once (I'll lean this one more toward movies that I will watch whenever I notice that they are on TV. There could be 15 minutes left and I will watch them anyway.):

Movie: When Harry Met Sally (1989)

Film: Cold Comfort Farm (1995) tied with Amelie (2001)

5. One you loved, but were embarrassed to admit it I'm going to dispense withe Highbrow/Lowbrow here too. I'm not embarrassed, but these are a couple that I didn't expect to love:
There's Something About Mary (1998) - I could not help myself.

Stuart Saves His Family (1995) - Yes. Starring Al Franken as Stuart Smalley, that 12-step program guy from SNL. I do not remember why I rented this stupid thing. I watched it in secret and then laughed so hard that I made all of my friends watch it with me. Trust me. It's really good.

6. One you hated:
Movie - Mr. Hollands Opus - I'm not going to put the year or a link because that would require an IMDB search and that might cause someone at IMDB to think that I give a shit about this movie - what a turd this was. It doesn't even deserve bold font. Forever known to me as Mr. Hollands Anus.

Film - The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) - I actually walked out of this film - crying. I had had enough cringing, gasping and covering my eyes in my friend Dan's armpit in the middle of a fully packed theater. It was in a word; awful.

7. One that scared you:
Movie: 28 Days Later (2002) - I don't watch a lot of scary movies, but I gave this one a shot because I like the director, Danny Boyle.

Film: El Orphanito (2007) - Scary, Spanish, ghostie goodness. Make sure you have already had a good crap before watching.

8. One that bored you: I think I can safely exempt myself from this one. I'm pretty careful with my movie selections, especially if I'm shelling out full price to see it in a theater. If I'm watching it on DVD I simply stop watching. Besides I rarely ever get bored.

9. One that made you happy:
Movie - Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985) - Never was the tale of a weirdo who lost his bike more delightful.

Film - Juno (2007) - Never was a tale of teen pregnancy more delightful.

10. One that made you miserable:
Movie - Leaving Las Vegas (1995) - a jolly little fable about a dude who wants to literally drink himself to death. 100% Charm Free.

Film - Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006) - My bad. I didn't pay close enough attention to the title of this piece of shit and take the word Imaginary to heart. I mean, I know that she was known for being really weird and that she eventually killed herself, but I had hoped for more insight into what made her tick and instead I was treated to middle aged nudists and gargantuan hair clogs. It made me itchy.

11. One movie you weren’t brave enough to see:
Movie - Any of those Police Academy things.

Film - Cloverfield (2008) - OK - I doubt that this is highbrow, but I can't think of anything else at the moment, and I know for certain that I do not want to see this thing. Not because it's too scary, but because I heard the camera work was not dissimilar to The Blair Witch Project, which caused me to get motion sickness and spend the second half of the film in the ladies room puking my guts up. No film is good enough for me to go through that again.

12. One movie character you’ve fallen in love with (oddly both of these characters appear naked in their respective stories):
Movie - Jason Segel's cleverly named character, Jason in the movie Knocked Up (2007).

Film - Julian Sands as George Emerson from the Ivory Merchant A Room with a View (1985). Upon deep reflection I have just realized that Julian Sands was the first man I ever saw naked. Of course in the same scene in which Julian Sands is naked you also see Simon Callow's penis bouncing around as well. Some of you may remember Mr. Callow as the chubby bearded guy that keels over from a heart attack and dies in Four Weddings and a Funeral. I choose Julian Sands as my happy memory even though he went on to totally bum me out by making that horrible Warlock movie.

Just to qualify I did not fall in love with George Emerson because I saw Julian Sands naked. George was a romantic guy (and not bad to look at either) who knew exactly what he wanted with Lucy Honeychurch and by the end of the story completely transforms her. In the movie George lives and that is how I like to remember him. I read the book about 5 years after I first saw that movie and was devastated to learn that his character dies in the war and that Ivory/Merchant kind of butchered EM Forrester's book, but I really don't care. I like it better when I think of George and Lucy living forever in love in that damn window.

13. The last one you saw (I'll qualify this with - in a theater):
Movie - Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) - S'ok.

Film - Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008) - I wrote about this already.

14. The next movie you hope to see:
How about the next movie I'm going to see? Because I don't just dream it baby - I live it. It's Sex & the City and I'm going to do the whole cliche all the way and see it with my girlfriends after dinner and drinks this very evening. Minus the expensive heels. Fuck that - I'm wearing flip-flops.

15. Tag Five People:
I'm only going to tag one person. The only person I can think of that loves movies more than me, and whose opinion of movies I value more than any other - yes my friend Dan - I mean you Dan G.

C'mon! Write us up a little something. It's about movies, you know you want to. Don't make me beg. Write!

Son, You Got a Panty On Yer Head...

Recently I heard this woman on NPR talking about an essay she wrote for the New York Times called "It's Not You, It's Your Books", the gist of which is that people have literary deal breakers in their relationships.

Being a native of Central Ohio I never really had a literary deal breaker in as much as I couldn't tolerate the company of someone who loved Ayn Rand or hated Dostoevsky, it was more like I was thrilled if the dude had a job, didn't have a mullet and could read at all, period. It was an extra super-duper double coupon bonus (and I didn't care what genres were preferred) if he happened to list reading as high up on his list of things he enjoyed doing.

Holding out for an avid reader totally paid off in the end because my husband (even though he doesn't enjoy fiction the way I do and is more into history and politics) is so brilliant it makes me want to weep with joy.

I am totally biased about reading, maybe unfaily so, but I have this thing like if you don't read then you must be stupid. Not that I'm some genius (my lips move when I do simple addition and I may even go blank and begin to drool) and I have certainly run into many people in my life that have proved this theory wrong. I used to work with a guy (at the construction company) who was functionally illiterate (like couldn't even fill out his insurance forms), but had an amazing photographic memory and could eerily recite shit that he had overheard word for word.

So it's fine not to be a reader, chances are I probably would have had sex with you anyway although I most likely wouldn't have dated you publicly or introduced you to my friends.

The concept of the literary deal breaker is how I knew that my best friend Amys marriage to Assface was as doomed as doomed can be when, not even one full year after their wedding, Assface proudly and pompously announced that reading for pleasure was a complete waste of time.

Amy was floored.

I probably mentally nicknamed him Assface right then and there.

Imagine the shock and horror of my poor darling Amy at this news. Like finding out you're married to Joseph Stalin or Jesse Helms or Roy Cohn. Fuck, name any historic killjoy.

Not that she hadn't noticed in all that time that he didn't care for reading. But he was a student and she just assumed that he didn't have the time. It never occurred to her that he or anyone on the planet could actually be anti-reading. What the fuck?

As I was saying, I didn't really have a literary deal breaker so much but I did have a movie deal breaker.

I loved the movie Raising Arizona so much that I saw it twice in one day. I went to see it at the theater the day it opened with my friend M. She and I both worked in retail at the time and had Fridays off so we went to the movies a lot on Friday afternoons. Matinee prices. We were young and poor.

Raising Arizona was the fucking funniest thing I had ever seen in my whole young goddamn life. M and I laughed so much we missed half the movie so we decided to shell out for it again at the next show.

It was too good not to share so we went to the pay phone in the theater lobby (because back then "car phones", as they were called were only owned by oil tycoons, real estate barons and Hugh Hefner) and called in the reinforcements, her boyfriend, my best friend, her sister and all our other friends and demanded they meet us at the theater immediately for our second viewing. We called as many people as we had change in our pockets to call.

A little later in life when I met Dan and Nature Boy I knew we would all be great friends because they loved Raising Arizona as much as me. To this day we all make references to and quote from this movie to each other. Some highlights include:

Not unless round's funny.

Sometimes I get the menstrual cramps... real hard.

Does the Pope wear a funny hat?

Let me sneak a little peek-a-loo!

I'm crapping you negative.

These things aren't as meaningful or as funny typed out here on my blog, but trust me Raising Arizona is all kinds of funny.

When I was a young singleton, and some man-boy was poking around looking for a date and he either refused to watch it, said it wasn't funny or didn't get it - he was immediately ruled out and the connection was instantly dead. I felt like if you didn't get that movie than you would never get me.

Flossing was my other deal breaker. That tidbit is somewhat unrelated to the subject of this post but a reminder to all you young (and old) single people out there of the importance of dental hygiene.

Now... on the other end of the spectrum I had another movie deal breaker in that I knew that if the interested party claimed to love any number of the Police Academy movies, Porky's, or anything having to do with Steven Seagal or god forbid Chuck Fucking Norris, not only would never work but I might have just run away screaming.

Anyhoo... if you have never seen Raising Arizona, what the hell is wrong with you? Rent it immediately. I realize that it's 21 years old now, but I think it is every bit as good as it was when it came out. I plugged in this scene for you that I found on YouTube. I never realized how much punch the Cohen Bros. were able to pack into a 7 and a half minute scene. There is not a millimeter of film wasted.



What movie, book or music is/was YOUR dating deal breaker?

Snow Day for a Grown Up Lady

As I was putting the finishing touches on my hair-do this morning the phone rang, like it always seems to do, just as I'm about to walk out the door. Thankfully, for a change, I didn't ignore it, because it was my recruiter guy calling to reschedule the 10am "orientation" appointment I was busily making myself beautiful for. The roads and driving conditions here are pretty bad today in the tundra.

So for the first time since I was in high school - I've got a snow day.

Weird.

I'm all made up. Hair done, eyes shining and no where to go. I'm tempted to head back into the bathroom and wash it all off, but I think I'll remain cute awhile longer.

Anyhoo... as I walked into the living room to put my outfit back in the closet I decided I liked the juxtaposition of the crisp tweed, cashmere and silk against the backdrop of our sloppy book shelves. It pretty much sums us up as a couple, and having my clothes all over the place is usually part of the mix.

You can see the beautiful raku vase made by my good friend Nature Boy (husband of my also good friend Madame La Prof) directly over top of my outfit. It's sitting next to MDH's fez that he bought at a yard sale that has been a featured tzchachki in our home since we first shacked up. MDH's military books and biographies are mixed in with my collection of fiction and a photo of my parents at our wedding.

I think I'll spend my snow day doing some terribly unproductive things that I would normally feel too guilty to do, like play the Sims and watch old movies I've been saving on the DVR for just such an occasion. Namely, and appropriately, The Lady Vanishes and The Lady Eve.

It's such a load off to spend a day with no job hunting.