Tonight I planned on writing about the #99 movie on my top 100 list, but since the only posting I have in the last two weeks is about basketball I thought I probably should give you an update on some things that have been bothering me lately and also some general catching up.
As I mentioned in my last post I took last Thursday and Friday off from work. Four day weekends are great, but the alarm clock on your first day back to work is like a punch in the stomach. Also in those four days you forget about some of those things that really piss you off about the work week… Read the rest of this entry »
I am back after a short hiatus. Last weekend was my birthday and the opening two rounds of the NCAA Tournament. I was too occupied by eating, drinking and basketball to get my ever growing ass in front of the computer to do anything other than check and see how I am doing in the many pools that I entered. If you’re wondering, I’m not doing horrible. I was also busy doing some things around the apartment such as putting together some back patio furniture. I got the thing put together (with a little bit of help from my girlfriend), but not before it took a small chunk of flesh from the tip of my middle finger. It’s not a terribly interesting story of how it actually happened, but it hurt like hell. Aside from that it was a pretty solid weekend. I took Thursday and Friday off so I could sit around and watch games all day. The fact that my birthday lands during March Madness every year is fantastic. I am pretty much given free reign to be as lazy as I want and watch basketball without my girlfriend telling me I have to clean something up, go on a walk or do whatever other chore she has in mind. I have to hand it to her though; she took me out on Thursday night for a fantastic dinner at Nopa. If you haven’t been there and live in San Francisco you have to try it out. Great food, great drinks, great atmosphere and the service there is second to none. Aside from dinner she gave me some very cool sunglasses and a new book about Woody Allen that I am very excited about. She gave much more than this newly 31 year old deserves, and it’s very much appreciated. After dinner we went and saw my friend’s band The Cons. They play around the city every so often and are more than worth a look. I would listen to them even if they weren’t friends. Very good band. The rest of the weekend was nothing to complain about either. It was capped off by my friends taking me and another friend who happens to have a birthday the day after mine out for steaks at Izzy’s on Saturday night and a day with the family on Sunday. I haven’t mentioned my thoughts on the tournament so far because I am about to get to that and I want to really lay on the excuses to why the site has been inactive. So without carrying on any longer about stuff that you probably couldn’t care less about I will move on to what this posting really is about. Read the rest of this entry »
When I first saw this movie I absolutely loved it; I thought it was going to be one of the all time greats – a classic. Over the last year or so, my opinion of this movie has tempered a bit. Because of this, I ranked the movie 100 which plainly means that the next great movie I see (maybe There Will Be Blood, which I have not yet seen but plan to asap) will probably knock it off the list. With that said, as of now The Departed is on the list and deservedly so. Read the rest of this entry »
Before all of you fall off of the edge of your seats and hurt yourselves, I thought I should probably start the unveiling of my Favorite 100 Movies of All Time. Please note the word favorite. It’s very important to this system. Before getting to the list, I want to give you a run down of how this came about, the criteria and some of the movies that just missed the cut.
HISTORY
It started in college. I got a book for Christmas my junior year that had every movie ever released on VHS. At roughly the same time, the AFI came out with their 100 Years 100 Movies or in other words, their list of the best movies ever made. Me, being the movie geek that I am thought I should have a list of my favorite 100 movies. At first it sounded like a simple thing to do, just think of my favorite 100 movies and put them in some sort of order. I already had the top 10 worked out in my head. It was harder than I thought though. Then I remembered the book I got for Christmas. I went through it, wrote down every movie in there that I have seen in a spiral notebook, gave each one a grade and came up with a top 100. It took forever. There were a total of over 1300 movies that I pulled from the book initially. I brought the stupid book to class and went through it and skipped class to go through it. A lot of time was spent (or wasted, depending on your point of view) on it. Eventually I finished, my friends and I some fun with it and then sort of forgot about it. Some time passed. My old top 100 list sort of became irrelevant. I had seen a lot since it was first made and my taste had matured a bit. It needed to be updated. I had been out of college for 2 or 3 years and out of work for 2 or 3 months. Those 2 or 3 months slowly turned into 7 or 8, but that’s another story for another time. This wonderful time of unemployment checks and sleeping in until noon on weekdays also became a wonderful time to bring my list in to the new century. I had the updated version of the movie book and now instead of a spiral notebook I had an excel spreadsheet. With this I can keep a full database of every movie I have ever seen and easily keep track and update my list. What a loser. Last time I updated the list was late 2005, but I just reworked it a tad last week and it is ready to go. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s about 10:45 on Tuesday night. I was hoping to write about my 100th best and 100th worst movies but I realized that I still have some work to do on both lists; mostly my top 100. I have seen a ton of movies since I last updated everything and definitely need to make some changes. The reason my bottom 100 is a little more stable is that I see less movies these days than I used to, so I try harder to see the good ones and not waste time with the bad ones. Many of the movies on my worst list were seen while I was in college. We had a black box with every channel and no one taking attendance at our classes. As crazy as it sounds, Tango & Cash was more interesting to me than my Native Peoples of the Southwest class. Anyway, I am working on it and it will be done very soon. Definitely by the end of this week.
In the meantime here are a couple things that are on mind today: Read the rest of this entry »