Movies

Horror Movie Corner

6 Comments / Movies / /

Halloween is upon us once again, and since this is one of the few holidays in which I write something that is somewhat timely, I figure I should continue the tradition (and this year, I’ll actually publish the post before Halloween). A few horror movies I’ve had the pleasure to view recently:

  • The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974): I’d seen this once before, a long time ago, and was pretty well creeped out by it. About as pure an exercise in horror as is possible in a movie. As such, there are some who feel it lacks real purpose (and thus that it is a waste of talent), but it is so well executed that I can’t help but love it and it didn’t really lose any impact upon my second viewing this past weekend. It’s got that gritty 70s horror feel, and you can almost feel the sweaty, grungy Texas setting. Speaking of which, it’s interesting to note that what makes this movie so creepy is not just the freaky chainsaw-wielding maniac, it’s that there really isn’t anywhere to go. Unlike a lot of horror movies, there really isn’t anywhere safe to run. And when our heroine is cornered and you think to yourself “Just jump out of the window, you moron,” she actually proceeds to jump out the window. Of course, that only buys her a minute or so, but it’s still a refreshing difference. It’s obviously a low budget film, but it doesn’t detract at all from the experience (and I think it contributes a little to the atmosphere too). It unfolds in a surprisingly realistic way, and that is part of why it is so effective. There’s a ton more that could be said about this, but if you’ve never found yourself on the business end of a chainsaw or a meat hook, and you don’t mind that it doesn’t really seek to do anything deeper than creeping you out, it’s worth watching. ***1/2
  • Re-Animator (1985): In the 1980s, we started to see the emergence of horror films that were aware of how ridiculous they were, and even embracing the cheesyness in a humorous way. These films were less scary than they were funny, and Re-Animator is one of the better examples of this. It’s a ton of fun, and it has taken on an added dimension of humor recently as one of the characters bears a striking resemblance to John Kerry. Heh. It’s silly, it knows it’s silly, and it’s a lot of fun. **1/2
  • Cabin Fever (2002): In a lot of ways, this movie starts off similar to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There’s an element of realism in the setup, and the setting is a similar sort of desolate, helpless area. Alas, the tendency to wink at the audience and descend into gory meyhem gets the better of writer/director Eli Roth (who also made this year’s squirm-inducing Hostel) and the movie becomes unhinged about halfway through. However, the ending (last 10-20 minutes or so) manages to transcend the cheesy gore as Roth somehow orchestrates a series of simultaneously idiotic and yet brilliant sequences. This ending kicks off with a car crashing into a deer, moves on to a harmonica… incident, has a nice shootout, and then goes into hyperdrive when Roth makes a joke involving a racist shopkeep and a rifle. Oh, and I almost forgot about the lemonade. It’s completely ludicrous.

    It reminded me of the ending of Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood, a film notable mostly for it’s inventive death sequences (many of which were lifted by Friday the 13th Part 2) and its totally unexpected and absurd ending involving two kids and a shotgun. Roth manages to capture this feeling several times as his film winds down, and that’s actually pretty cool. In the end, it’s not the greatest horror film out there, but if you don’t mind movies that start realistically and then take the premise over the top as the film goes on, it might be worth checking out. **1/2

Interesting stuff. For those interested, here are a few older Kaedrin Halloween themed posts and some other Horror movie related posts:

  • Save it with the music: Wherein I discuss the role of music in horror films.
  • Horror: Wherein I blather on and on about more obscure horror films and novels.
  • Friday the 13th: Wherein Weasello hilariously reviews all of the movies in the Friday the 13th movie series.
  • The Biology of B-Movie Monsters: Wherein someone takes B-Movies way too seriously. Still interesting though.

Well, that’s all for now. Happy Halloween!

Animation Marathon

3 Comments / Anime / /

My favorite podcast, Filmspotting (formerly known as Cinecast), has a great format. They review a recently released movie every week, but they also review an older film that they have, for one reason or another, neglected. The usually choose a theme for these older movies and watch a bunch of them in a row. As such, they refer to them as Marathons, and it makes for some interesting listening, even when you aren’t watching along. They’ve done one for Westerns, Horror, Hitchcock, Screwball Comedy, and many others. Their next marathon (scheduled to start in a few weeks) is for Animation. This is the first one I plan to play along with, in part because I like animated movies and also because I have netflix now and can easily follow along with minimal effort.

They’ve chosen an interesting list, though I have some reservations. Here’s the list:

As you can see, the list is dominated by Anime movies, and they haven’t yet decided which Miyazaki film they will include. In fact, they’re running a poll on their site with the three choices: Howl’s Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away (Spirited Away appears to be running away with it, garnering nearly 58% of the vote so far). Personally, I think they should do a Miyazaki marathon, as I’ve only seen a few, but they’re great (and why can’t we vote for My Neighbor Totoro? I ended up voting for Howl’s Moving Castle because that’s the only one I haven’t seen.)

As I say, it’s an interesting list, but I have some reservations. I’ve seen 4 of the 6 films (assuming Spirited Away is chosen), so this is perhaps not the best one for me to play along with. I am intrigued by Grave of the Fireflies though, and I could certainly revisit Akira (which I saw many moons ago, and don’t remember all that much about it except that it was confusing). From what I’ve seen of these, I think that while they may have chosen films that illustrate the evolution of Animation, I don’t know that they’ve chosen the most enjoyable of the bunch. Akira seems to be an important film for the genre, but it’s not especially a walk in the park, for example. The only one I’d say is truly great is Spirited Away. I probably would have also recommended the Cowboy Bebop Movie, which is a very good all around experience. The other thing that might seem a little strange is that Anime seems to be a genre dominated more by series than by movies… but then I could see why these guys don’t want to spend 4.5 hours a week watching these series (I don’t know how they managed to do as much as they do).

In any case, I plan to play along, so expect some entries in a few weeks discussing the films above.

Update: The Miyazaki film will be Spirited Away. Also added links to my reviews of the films I’ve watched so far.

Bear Pajamas & Kigurumi

Anime / /

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the bear pajamas that Lain often wears in Serial Experiments Lain, wondering if it was perhaps a cultural thing or maybe an Anime convention. Several people commented, and commentor Lily posted an interesting explanation yesterday:

These pajamas are indeed a cultural thing in Japan. It’s a part of Japanese street fashion and the costumes are called kigurumi. People wearing them are called kigurumin. There are a few firms in Japan that produce these costumes, the most popular one of them is Sleeper’s.

Interesting. Lily also links to a page from their site which has a bunch of examples (no bears, though). A brief check of Wikipedia yields some more info:

Kigurumi (着ぐるみ?) is the Japanese name for costumed animal characters. The name comes from the Japanese term (着る – kiru: to wear) and (縫いぐるみ – nuigurumi: a stuffed toy animal).

To wear a stuffed toy animal. Heh.

Greenlight

Movies / /

I’m not one for reality television, but a few years ago, I got hooked on the third season of Project Greenlight (as usual with TV shows I like, it was cancelled after the third season). For those not familiar with the show, it was started by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck; they wanted to give amateurs the chance to get a real hollywood production. Every year, they solicited scripts and directors and allowed anyone to enter.

Of course, the success of the series is up for debate. As the Onion A.V. Club notes:

The failures of the Project Greenlight experiment—first Stolen Summer, then The Battle Of Shaker Heights, and now Feast—have been pinned largely on the novice contest winners who were in over their head. And while that’s not entirely unfair, given the banality of the scripts and mostly feckless direction, a more substantial chunk of the blame should fall on the producers who set them up for failure. From the start, they’ve backed conventional Hollywood projects at miniscule budgets, and then diluted the material further by constantly second-guessing the filmmakers. In the end, the films look like the cheaply stitched gowns fashioned during week one of Project Runway, all mangled hemlines and unflattering proportions.

I haven’t seen the first two seasons, but I have seen The Battle of Shaker Heights, and I can see why it wouldn’t be considered a success (though it wasn’t that bad either). In any case, I enjoyed season three greatly, mostly because they chose a lunatic to direct the film, called Feast. Without the nutcase, it would have been interesting to get a behind the scenes look at how a relatively low-budget hollywood film is produced. But director John Gulager has a special kind of crazy that’s just a blast to watch. It’s amazing that a movie got made at all…

Unless, of course, you talk to James Berardinelli, who gave the film zero stars:

Zero-star movies are a rare and terrifying breed – films that warrant recommendation only as an alternative to physical distress. Sitting in a theater as one of these examples of cinematic diarrhea unspools creates a curious tug-of-war within the viewer. On one hand, there’s an almost overwhelming desire to flee from the auditorium, to get away as far and as fast as is humanly possible. On the other hand, there’s a compulsion to stay – the result of a sick fascination to see if the production can possibly get worse.

Ouch. Most reviews give the film a little more credit than that, but I doubt the film is all that good. Still, I’d like to see it, if only to see the end result of crazy John Gulager’s efforts (plus, I’m a fan of bad horror flicks). Apparently the film only had two showings this past weekend, one at midnight on Friday and one at midnight on Saturday, so I’ll have to check it out on DVD… though honestly, I think I’d rather watch the show again.

YALD

Arts & Letters, Computers & Internet, Movies, Science & Technology / /

Time is short this week, so it’s time for Yet Another Link Dump (YALD!):

  • Who Writes Wikipedia? An interesting investigation of one of the controversial aspects of Wikipedia. Some contend that the authors are a small but dedicated bunch, others claim that authorship is large and diverse (meaning that the resulting encyclopedia is self-organizing and emergent). Aaron Swartz decided to look into it:

    When you put it all together, the story become clear: an outsider makes one edit to add a chunk of information, then insiders make several edits tweaking and reformatting it. In addition, insiders rack up thousands of edits doing things like changing the name of a category across the entire site — the kind of thing only insiders deeply care about. As a result, insiders account for the vast majority of the edits. But it’s the outsiders who provide nearly all of the content.

    And when you think about it, this makes perfect sense. Writing an encyclopedia is hard. To do anywhere near a decent job, you have to know a great deal of information about an incredibly wide variety of subjects. Writing so much text is difficult, but doing all the background research seems impossible.

    On the other hand, everyone has a bunch of obscure things that, for one reason or another, they’ve come to know well. So they share them, clicking the edit link and adding a paragraph or two to Wikipedia. At the same time, a small number of people have become particularly involved in Wikipedia itself, learning its policies and special syntax, and spending their time tweaking the contributions of everybody else.

    Depending on how you measure it, many perspectives are correct, but the important thing here is that both types of people (outsiders and insiders) are necessary to make the system work. Via James Grimmelman, who has also written an interesting post on Wikipedia Fallacies that’s worth reading.

  • Cyber Cinema, 1981-2001: An absurdly comprehensive series of articles chronicling cyberpunk cinema. This guy appears to know his stuff, and chooses both obvious and not-so-obvious films to review. For example, he refers to Batman as “a fine example of distilled Cyberpunk.” I probably wouldn’t have pegged Batman as cyberpunk, but he makes a pretty good case for it… Anyway, I haven’t read all of his choices (20 movies, 1 for each year), but it’s pretty interesting stuff. [via Metaphlog]
  • The 3-Day Novel Contest: Well, it’s too late to partake now, but this is an interesting contest where entrants all submit a novel written in 3 days. The contest is usually held over labor day weekend (allowing everyone to make the most of their long holiday weekend). The Survival Guide is worth reading even if you don’t intend on taking part. Some excerpts: On the attitude required for such an endeavor:

    Perhaps the most important part of attitude when approaching a 3-Day Novel Contest is that of humility. It is not, as one might understandably and mistakenly expect, aggression or verve or toughness or (as it has been known) a sheer murderous intent to complete a 3-Day Novel (of this latter approach it is almost always the entrant who dies and not the contest). Let’s face it, what you are about to do, really, defies reality for most people. As when in foreign lands, a slightly submissive, respectful attitude generally fares better for the traveller than a self-defeating mode of overbearance. As one rather pompous contestant confessed after completing the contest: “I’ve been to Hell, and ended up writing about it.”

    On outlines and spontaneity:

    Those without a plan, more often than not, find themselves floundering upon the turbulent, unforgiving seas of forced spontaneous creativity. An outline can be quite detailed and, as veterans of the contest will also tell you, the chances of sticking to the outline once things get rolling are about 1,000 to 1. But getting started is often a major hurdle and an outline can be invaluable as an initiator.

    Two things that interest me about this: plans that fall apart, but must be made anyway (which I have written about before) and the idea that just getting started is important (which is something I’ll probably write about sometime, assuming I haven’t already done so and forgot).

    On eating:

    Keep it simple, and fast. Wieners (straight from the package—protein taken care of). Bananas and other fruit (vitamin C, potassium, etc.). Keep cooking to a minimum. Pizzas, Chinese—food to go. Forget balance, this is not a “spa”, there are no “healing days”. This is a competition; a crucible; a hill of sand. Climb! Climb!

    Lots of other fun stuff there. Also, who says you need to do it on Labor day weekend. Why not take a day off and try it out? [via Web Petals, who has some other interesting quotes from the contest]

That’s all for now. Sorry for just throwing links at you all the time, but I’ve entered what’s known as Wedding Season. Several weddings over the next few weekends, only one of which is in this area. This week’s was in Rhode Island, so I had a wonderful 12-13 hours of driving to contend with (not to mention R.I.’s wonderful road system – apparently they don’t think signs are needed). Thank goodness for podcasts – specifically Filmspotting, Mastercritic, and the Preston and Steve Show (who are professional broadcasters, but put their entire show (2+ hours) up, commercial free, every day).

Shockingly, it seems that I only needed to use two channels on my Monster FM Transmitter and both of those channels are the ones I use around Philly. Despite this, I’ve not been too happy with my FM transmitter thingy. It get’s the job done, I guess, but I find myself consistently annoyed at its performace (this trip being an exception). It seems that these things are very idiosyncratic and unpredictible, working in some cars better than others (thus some people swear by one brand, while others will badmouth that same brand). In large cities like New York and Philadelphia, the FM dial gets crowded and thus it’s difficult to find a suitable station, further complicating matters. I think my living in a major city area combined with an awkward placement of the cigarrette lighter in my car (which I assume is a factor) makes it somewhat difficult to find a good station. What would be really useful would be a list of available stations and an attempt to figure out ways to troubleshoot your car’s idiosyncracies. Perhaps a wiki would work best for this, though I doubt I’ll be motivated enought to spend the time installing a wiki system here for this purpose (does a similar site already exist? I did a quick search but came up empty-handed). (There are kits that allow you to tap into your car stereo, but they’re costly and I don’t feel like paying more for that than I did for the player… )

It didn’t take long…

2 Comments / Movies / /

In fact, the film Snakes on a Train actually came out three days before Snakes on a Plane. That’s right, the knockoffs started before the film came out. Naturally it’s straight to DVD, and by all accounts, it’s a pretty bad film, but I have to admit that I’m intrigued by this tidbit from Wikipedia:

The film features former WWF wrestler “The Iron Sheik”, in a major role, although he appears under the pseudonym Ronald “Bubba” Sparks.

Score. I don’t know about you, but I’m still holding out for Ostriches on a Hovercraft.

Travelling Link Dump

Arts & Letters, Movies, Music, Neal Stephenson, Security & Intelligence / /

I’ll be on vacation this week, so Kaedrin compatriots Samael and DyRE will be posting in my stead, though they may not be able to post tomorrow. In any case, here are some links to chew on while I’m gone.

  • Bruce Schneier Facts: In the style of the infamous Chuck Norris Facts, some enterprising folks have come up with facts for security expert Bruce Schneier. “Bruce Schneier only smiles when he finds an unbreakable cryptosystem. Of course, Bruce Schneier never smiles.” and “There is an otherwise featureless big black computer in Ft. Meade that has a single dial with three settings: Off, Standby, and Schneier.” Heh, Cryptonerd humor.
  • Khaaan! [via the Ministry]
  • Neal Stephenson Q&A (.ram Real Video): I hate Real Player too, but it’s worth it to see the man in action. It’s from a few years ago, but it’s great stuff.
  • I Smell a Mash-Up: James Grimmelmann notes the irony of Weird Al Yankovic’s new song entitled Don’t Download This Song (available for free download, naturally) that parodies the RIAA’s anti-downloading efforts.
  • How to read: Nick Hornby tells us to read what we like:

    It’s set in stone, apparently: books must be hard work, otherwise they’re a waste of time. And so we grind our way through serious, and sometimes seriously dull, novels, or enormous biographies of political figures, and every time we do so, books come to seem a little more like a duty, and Pop Idol starts to look a little more attractive. Please, please, put it down.

    And please, please stop patronising those who are reading a book – The Da Vinci Code, maybe – because they are enjoying it.

    For a start, none of us knows what kind of an effort this represents for the individual reader. It could be his or her first full-length adult novel; it might be the book that finally reveals the purpose and joy of reading to someone who has hitherto been mystified by the attraction that books exert on others. And anyway, reading for enjoyment is what we should all be doing.

    …The regrettable thing about the culture war we still seem to be fighting is that it divides books into two camps, the trashy and the worthwhile. No one who is paid to talk about books for a living seems to be able to convey the message that this isn’t how it works, that ‘good’ books can provide every bit as much pleasure as ‘trashy’ ones.

That’s all from now. I hope everyone has a great week. I now leave you in the capable hands of the guest bloggers, Sam & DyRE….

Bear Pajamas

6 Comments / Anime, Movies / /

One of the things I like about watching foreign movies are the cultural differences that don’t quite make it through (it’s a novelty thing, perhaps). Sometimes this is due to poor translation and sometimes it’s due to a physical mannerism or custom that simply can’t be translated. There is a perfect example of this in Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. Towards the beginning of the film, the main character Chihiro is taken to the boiler room where she meets an old man with several arms who runs the place. At one point, this man puts up his hands in what looks sort of like a football goalpoast gesture and Chihiro pushes her hand through it (alas, I do not have a copy at my hands, so I can’t give a screenshot). I have no idea what this means, but it’s clearly something children in Japan do (I’m not sure how I picked up on this – I think I might have watched the movie with the commentary on at one point, which might actually explain what this means).

Most of the Anime I’ve seen are films, not series. I’ve seen a few Miyazaki movies, and some other movies like Akira and the Cowboy Bebop movie, amongst assorted other stuff. A few months ago, I watched Haibane Renmei because of the enthusiastic recommendations of Steven Den Beste (and pretty much everyone else who has seen it). Their enthusiasm is certainly warranted. Again, my expectations were constantly thwarted, which I think is part of the reason I enjoyed it so much (I’m sure this series will come up again here). I have since moved on to Serial Experiments Lain. I haven’t gotten too far into the series, but one thing that really struck me as funny was Lain’s bear pajamas, which she seems to wear whenever she’s feeling down:

(Click images for a larger version)

Lain's Bear Pajamas

Lain's Bear Pajamas

Lain's Bear Pajamas

As you can see, it’s adorable (I believe the appropriate word is Kawaii). Now, what I don’t know is if such pajamas are normal garb for young Japanese girls, or if it’s just a quirky Anime trope like washpans that bonk people on the head or Absurdly Powerful Student Councils (not that I’ve seen either of those). Like I said, I haven’t seen much anime, but I’ve fallen into the habit of reading blogs in the Otakusphere, many of whom seem to delight in posting screenshots and I seem to remember some similar type pajama/costume type stuff coming up from time to time. So is this a pseudo-trope, another cultural difference, or is it just an oddity limited to Serial Experiments Lain (one could certainly find symbolic meanings in such a visual)?

Gloriously Bad

5 Comments / Movies / /

I think you can tell what movie I’m referring to by the title of this post. Indeed, the most gloriously bad thing about the film is it’s title, perhaps the best, most hyped title of all time: Snakes on a Plane. Steven Den Beste has been writing about this (likely permalink) a lot on his blog recently, and he cites a CNN review which claims that the movie is good. Not “so bad it’s good” good, but actually, genuinely good. I don’t agree. I think it’s so bad it’s good, but in my book, that’s not a bad thing. It’s transcendently bad, this is exactly what they were going for, and this sort of thing is honestly not as easy to create as you might think. Much of the time, movies only reach this status unintentionally. It’s a rare bird indeed that is able to cultivate the bad into something good.

There’s little to be said about the film that hasn’t already been said. I think the most astounding thing about the film is its title, in that I think it could serve as an appropriate litmus test. If you like the title, chances are, you’ll like the movie. If you’re baffled or otherwise dismissive of the title, you’ll probably won’t. As many have noted, it’s critic-proof. You don’t need anyone to tell you if you want to see it or not, you just do (or don’t).

When I was in college, I didn’t get to take a free elective until my senior year, and when I finally did, I jumped at the chance to take a film-related course. It was an excellent course, and I think my teacher did a great job giving a broad overview of the history and types of film theory. However, it seemed to me that the real joy of films was lost on her. This was brought into stark relief one day when the students of the class were talking about the first X-Men movie. Everyone enjoyed the film. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a lot of fun. Our teacher was totally dismissive of the movie, and as the semester went on, it seemed to me that she had studied filmmaking and theory so much that she couldn’t watch a movie without over-analysing it. She would hate Snakes on a Plane.

Now, as readers of this blog might have observed, I like movies a lot. I even like a lot of arty, offbeat movies. Because of this, I sometimes worry that I’m turning into my teacher, but in reality, I think my tolerance for movies so bad they’re good has increased over the years. Hence, I enjoyed Snakes on a Plane. Perhaps not as much as Tremors, but it’s still a lot of fun. Den Beste explains why he’s interested in the movie:

It’s because it’s completely unpretentious. There’s no message in this film. It doesn’t preach. It doesn’t have a political point of view. It isn’t politically correct. The people who made it are interested in one and only one thing: entertaining their audience. Even the title is unpretentious.

Indeed, and pretentiousness is something that is bothering me more and more these days. Hopefully, we’ll see more of this sort of pure entertainment in the future (and not just lame knock-offs like Spiders on a Boat, Clowns on a Toilet, or, my personal favorite which two friends of mine independently mentioned: Ostriches on a Hovercraft… er, wait, you know, I think I’d pay to see those. Never mind.)

Early Movie Memories

2 Comments / Movies / /

VHS Tape: The Empire Strikes Back & Return of the JediIn the most recent Filmspotting podcast, the hosts recount their top 5 early film memories. As you might imagine, their memories are peppered with early 80s standards like Drive-In theaters, The Empire Strikes Back, E.T., Top Gun, and others.

One thing I realized about my early movie experiences is that none of them are memories of going to a movie theater. For whatever reason, my family didn’t go to the theater that often when my brother and I were young. As such, most of my movies experiences came from HBO and the VCR. Since my parents recently cleaned out the VHS tape drawer, I got a hold of some of the old standards. For the most part, I’ve replaced these movies with DVDs, but I’ll probably keep the tapes out of sentimental value. Anyway, without further delay, here are my top 5 early movie memories (in no particular order).

  • The Terminator: I could be wrong, but I believe this to be the first non-cartoon movie I ever saw. Not exactly children’s fare, but it totally blew me away. When my family finally got a VCR, this was amongst the first movies we taped and I rewatched it countless times. We’re talking at least triple digits here. To this day, this remains one of my favorite movies of all time.
  • The Last Starfighter: When my parents finally broke down and purchased a VCR, this was the first movie we taped. It’s not fine cinema, but it’s fun stuff and it was the first movie I watched and rewatched. Ultimately, I think we ended up taping over this, but it still holds a certain sentimental value (like The Terminator, it was one of the first non-cartoons I had seen). This film is also the source of one of the single geekiest moments of my adult life: this movie came up during a lunch discussion, and someone asked what that special weapon they used at the end of the movie was called. Without hesitation, I responded “Deathblossom.” I don’t know why I would remember such a thing, but it was quite a moment.
  • The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi: Of course, these need to be on the list. More films that I captured on tape and watched over and over again (the tape label is pictured to the right). You’ll note that the original Star Wars is not on the tape. This is because that movie wasn’t on HBO that night, it was just Empire and Jedi. I don’t think it would have fit on the tape anyway. Also worth noting is that this is the pre-special edition version of the films, complete with crappy composite special effects (particularly funny looking when it came to tie fighters – I wish I had a video card that had video inputs so I could really show the difference between the old and the new). Nevertheless, those were the versions of the film that I fell in love with. A pity that we’ll probably never get those films re-released properly (and apparently the one coming in september is a crappy re-release of the old Laserdisc version). I vaguely remember this being in theaters (and the long lines stretching blocks away from the theater), though I was only 5 at the time and I’m pretty sure I didn’t see it in the theater. In any case, a cherished part of my childhood movie experience.
  • Batman: This was definitely not the first film I saw in the theater, but it is one of the most memorable. It was the first time, I think, that the hype of Hollywood really got to me (and apparently everyone else) and seeing the movie in the theater was a ton of fun. I specifically remember this because my family was on vacation in Ohio (visiting relatives) and I was pretty sure I was going to miss opening weekend, but it seemed that the family was into the idea so we did end up seeing it on opening night. I remember loving the movie, though I think I’ve grown out of that opinion a bit. I still like it, but it’s not as great as I once thought. In any case, this, to me was the start of hype and summer blockbusters for me. It seemed that there was a big movie like this every summer. I think I started to come down from that buzz by the time Terminator 2 let me down and the idea completely died with Independence Day.
  • Spaghetti Westerns: I vividly remember one summer where Cinemax was running a Western retrospective. I didn’t much care for Westerns and never really got why John Wayne was such a star (and still don’t, though I’m willing to bet I would if I went out and watched more of his movies!), but one Wednesday night at midnight, I caught For a Few Dollars More and it blew me away. Who knew a Western could be interesting? Come to think of it, this may have been a Clint Eastwood marathon too, because I remember watching a lot of his movies around the same time too. In any case, I remember the Spaghetti Westerns the most because they came on every Wednesday at midnight (and it was summer, so I didn’t have to worry about getting up for school in the morning – this may have contributed to the appeal) and each successive one I saw was better than the last (though I think I watched them in the wrong order). The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly was my favorite, and would probably show up in my favorite all time movies list…
  • Honorable Mentions: Ghostbusters, Real Genius (I actually tried to build a laser after watching this movie. Unfortunately, flashlights and magnifying glasses do not a laser make.), Back to the Future, Top Gun, Commando, Predator, and Trading Places. Special notice goes to Halloween and Aliens for introducing me to the horror genre (I was a scaredy cat for most of my childhood, but those films started an interest that still holds today. I was forced to watch Halloween on, well, Halloween night one year when I was staying with a friend. I watched Aliens because someone told me that it was made by the same people that made The Terminator… In both cases, I realized that I liked the tension of the experience, and so I got over my fear of horror villains and monsters and started devouring horror movies). Really, there are a ton of others and I’m probably leaving some out here, but those were the ones that came to mind…

Because the grand majority of these were not seen in the theater, I find it difficult to place these experiences on a timeline. I saw most of them on cable (HBO for a time, then we switched to Cinemax when the family moved), which means it could be anytime up to a few years (and in some cases, a few decades) after the film was originally released (I had this same issue with my Atari retrospective because I only got gaming systems once the price came down significantly, so all my memories are displaced by a few years).

Also, there really needs to be an easier way to insert IMDB links into an entry or something. It looks like there might be some Movable Type hacks for this, but nothing that looks too comprehensive or stable. Maybe I should put on my programmer’s hat for a change (but don’t count on it).

Feel free to post your early movie memories in the comments!