Toy Story & Yankee Doodle Dandy Pre-Viewing Thoughts

Obviously I am extremely lazy. To make up for this shortcoming of mine and since I already have both of these movies in hand, I am going to give you two sets of pre-viewing thoughts for the price of one. You're welcome, don't say I never give you anything.

#99: Toy Story (1995)
If you are familiar with me at all, you already know what I am about to say here. I am a Disney-phile. Which is a fancier sounding way of saying, I am a Disney freak. Needless to say, this is the first movie on the list that I have seen before, many, many times. In fact, I own this movie. I really like this movie and love the fact that it is on the Top 100 list, deservedly so in my opinion. This was a groundbreaking film when it was first released. The technology was a new concept and was really eye-popping. I haven't actually watched all of this movie in a few years and I am really looking forward to re-watching it.

#98 Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
Okay, I am slightly ashamed to admit this next thing, but this is the first movie on the list that I knew very very little about prior to all this. I had vaguely heard of it, but I had no clue what it was about. I was surprised to find out it is about George M. Cohan. Mostly because I know as much about him really as I do about this movie. Even with all that I am looking forward to watching this movie for two reasons: James Cagney and it is only two hours long. Win-win in my book.

Ben-Hur, the Finale

And AWAY we go. I watched the first (and by first I guess I really mean last since it is #100) movie on the list last night. This one:

The epic story of Judah Ben-Hur, a wealthy Jewish importer/merchant who lives in Jerusalem around 29 A.D. His life is completely screwed when his childhood friend returns to Jerusalem as a Roman Tribune. His friend is named Masala, which I spent the first part of the movie thinking was Marsala, except he didn't come with wine sauce and mushrooms. Anyway, after a reunion that borders on homo-eroticism, Masala-no-r drops Judah like a gay hot potato when Judah refuses to betray his people to the Romans. Crapiness ensues when Judah is forced into Roman slavery after a misunderstanding involving a broken roof tile and a near fatal hit on the new Roman Governor of Jerusalem. Judah spends 3 years in a galley rowing Roman war ships, which I could sympathize with after sitting through this movie. After he saves the commanding officer of the fleet during a battle, the commander takes Judah back to Rome with him and turns him into a winning gladiator. The commander then adopts Judah as his son. Judah thanks him by leaving to run back to Jerusalem to find his mother and sister. He meets with Masala-no-r under his new name that he was given by his new daddy and tells big bad Tribune that he better figure out what happened to Judah's mother and sister. Eventually Judah agrees to race a Sheik's horses against Masala-no-r and gets vengeance when M-n-r gets trampled during the race and later dies. There is a search for Judah's mom and sis who are now lepers living in a leper hole outside the city. There is some stuff with a dude named Jesus and that's about it. Yup, that's over THREE hours of my life I will not get back. Great googly-moogly, what the hell? What I feared about this movie came mostly true. I have an almost phobia of movies that win a bunch of Oscars ever since the year of "Crash". I loathe that movie and I feel like it is a prime example of what I call "the huh? conundrum". Sometimes it seems movies get praised just because people aren't really sure what is going or are so bored by it that they think it MUST be genius. Ben-Hur falls in the latter. You could easily have cut out a good hour of this movie. But let's start with the good points.

First, there's this:
YES, that is a young, buff Charlton Heston in a loin cloth. Unfortunately, that is not how he dressed the whole movie. Boo. Seriously, I have never really seen a lot of Charlton Heston movies or any at all that I can remember. He was good, damn good, even though he was probably the palest Jew living in Jerusalem at that time period. Most blue-eyed too. His presence on the screen is commanding. Even when he is being beaten down as a slave, he still had a coiled anger that was palpable. (Side note, I love the word palpable, it sounds very round and firm, but slightly squishy. Welcome to my mind, it is frightening up here.)

And there's this:The chariot race scene was pretty sweet. Even more so when you remember it was done in 1959 with no CGI special effects. It made me realize how nice it is to occasionally watch a movie that is not heavy on the fancy special effects. I loved that, once I got over worrying about the horses getting hurt. I am going to assume that none of them were and go on that.

Finally, the bad. The main story line was pretty good. I felt like if they would have stuck to just the Judah Ben-Hur story, it would have been every bit as well-received and quite a bit under 3 hours. Instead we had a whole running line about Jesus. In fact the tagline of the movie was "A Story of the Christ", except it was called BEN-HUR, let's focus on BEN-HUR. It really felt like two movies that were being forced together. All in all, not awful, but waaaay too long.

I will leave you with this: Now those are Charlton Heston guns I can agree with.

Up next, #99, Toy Story! Worse bodies, but better movie. Pre-viewing thoughts coming up soon.

Ben-Hur Pre-Viewing Thoughts

Ben-Hur arrived in the mail. First thought was "it's two discs?? Really? Aw crap." Quite the start to this process, no? The blurb on the DVD sleeve says the running time is 200 minutes. Excuse me? Over THREE HOURS long? Oh brother. Suddenly I am having flashbacks to my youth when for some still unknown reason, one Easter, I begged to be allowed to stay up and watch The Ten Commandments on tv. So what felt like 900 hours later, I had watched it. And for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why. Seeing the Ben-Hur sleeve description, suddenly made me think of the long and arduous process of watching The Ten Commandments. In short, I am not going into this first movie on the list with high expectations, I don't care how many awards it won. Stay tuned for post-viewing review. Fingers crossed that it doesn't live up to my expectations.



P.S. I just checked the list and thankfully, The Ten Commandments is not on it. Phew. That was going to throw a monkey wrench into the whole process.

My Grand Plan

So here is my new idea. See I really enjoy this blogging thing, but I felt like I needed a direction and some kind of project in my life. I thought about it and finally realized that since I love movies, I could make my movie watching something productive and hopfully interesting. I am going to watch all 100 movies on the AFI's Top 100 movies of all time list. There were 2 lists to choose from: the original list which was put out in 1997 or the 10th anniversary list from 2007. I am going with the 10th anniversary list because I felt that it being the most recent list, it was the best choice. You can find the list here:
AFI 100 Movies

Here are the rules I am following:
1. I am starting with #100 and working my way up the list
2. I have to watch every single movie, no exceptions. Even if I have seen it before and disliked, I will watch it again. And conversely, even if I have seen it a bajillion times, I will watch it again.
3. For each movie, I will have two posts. The first will be what I am thinking about that movie BEFORE I watch it. The second will be what I think AFTER watching the movie.

That is pretty much it. There are movies on this list that I swore I never wanted to see and some I hoped to never watch again, but it will be interesting to watch them with a new, critical purpose. I am hoping to watch at least two movies a week and have all this finished in a year. First up: BEN-HUR. I will post my pre-viewing thoughts soon.

Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent

Have you seen RuPaul's Drag Race on the Logo network? If not, why the hell not? It is one of the funniest and touching shows out there. Don't believe me? Well, the season finale is on tonight and that episode and several others are available on On Demand and online. Go find them and watch. Trust me. You get to hear such gems as:

"I don't want to say 'Rebecca, you are a bitch'. I don't want to say that."
but yet you just did, LOVE it! This was said by one of the 3 finalists, Bebe Zahara Benet, about another finalist, Rebecca Glasscock

"I took off work to be here, of course I want this"
Akashia in response to being told that she didn't seem to want this that much.

"My life in a nutshell, it's a big-ass nutshell: school, drag, Miami Public Transportation, Pilates, cupcakes and FACE!"
See this one was said by a contestant who didn't even make it onto the show, if that is what got cut, IMAGINE the people that made it on.

So go for it, watch a couple episodes. And I dare you to then not want to walk around just yelling "Camerooooooooooonnnnnn" anytime it pops into your head. I know I do.

Happy Birthday, Bungie!

Today we are celebrating my younger brother's birthday. His birthday is still 9 days away, but he will be in Paris on the real date, so we are celebrating now instead. And yes, he sucks. Seriously, my soon to be 27 year old brother is a wonderful person. He is witty, bitchy, and the life of the party. He is also sweet, caring, and hadsome. My life would be so sad without him in it. Because of this, I wanted to make sure his birthday was really special. Last Saturday night, we had a textversation that went like this:

ME: What kind of cake do you want for your birthday?
HIM: The usual, white cake with white frosting from Piro's or somewhere

ME: And big pink roses?

HIM: No purple ones

ME: With unicorns and rainbows?

HIM: and a care bear

ME: which care bear?

HIM: the one with the heart.

Now most people would laugh and order a normal cake. I however chose to view this as more of a challenge. So I called the bakery to order the cake. I asked for a cake that said "Happy Birthday, Andrew" and had a rainbow and purple flowers on it. I figured asking for a unicorn might be pushing it, so I left it at that. Here is what I got:

Not bad....not exactly the rainbow I was hoping for, but certainly not cake wreck quality. I mean the rainbow says more 'baby shower' than gay pride, but we'll take it. Here is the candle:

They didn't have the one with the heart. Now, I know what you are thinking, where's the unicorn? I thought the same thing. Where do you go to get such a thing? The party store didn't have one. I tried Cracker Barrel, figuring with the amount of tacky crap in that store, there MUST be a unicorn somewhere. Oddly, there wasn't. There was Teaberry gum and Bottlecaps candy, so the trip wasn't a total bust. Next off to Target, to look for a unicorn and a birthday card. While looking at the cards, I realized I should see if there was a card with a unicorn on it. Lo and behold, there was ONE card and it was for a girl turning 7. What are the chances?? Add a 2 and voila, birthday card for brother! It's real purdy too:

It's on the inside where this card really shines:

YES! LOVE it and trust me, so will he. At least I hope he will, usually Andrew is the other person in this world who finds such ridiculousness as amusing as I do. And yes, the card ends with Happy Wishing! So 'little' brother, happy wishing, I hope your birthday is fantastic. And I hope you meet a French hottie on your trip to Paris. Much love always, your big sis.

K.Clark

I love me some Kelly Clarkson. I think it is awesome that she has attitude and doesn't hold it back. I also give her a big thumbs up for not becoming famous and then turning into a stereotypical stick figure. But girlfriend needs to learn how to dress her body. Lady has some junk in her trunk, good for her. This, however, means she should not wear mini-dresses that are skintight on the bottom and loose and flowy on top. This has been a public service announcement for all us big bottom girls out there, we may make the rockin' world go 'round, but we should make it go 'round in appropriate attire.