Movie Madness

Soon, I will be starting a new series on this BLOG. In the past few weeks I have mentioned the Top 250 movies list on www.imdb.com. I have decided that over the next year, I want to see every movie on that list. Luckily for me, I have seen many of them already, so I only have to see 166 of them. I am intrigued about these movies - there are many classics on there that I have never seen, including Citizen Kane, which is considered by many people to be the best movie ever made. I like this list because it is based primarily on user ratings. People register at the imdb site and then they can rate the movies, and the movie's rating is an average out of ten. The top movie is The Dark Knight with a rating of 9.2 out of ten.
So I will go through and watch the movies and let you know how I think of the movie. I am already anticipating not agreeing with some of the ratings. I know Forrest Gump is ranked at number 52, but I have never liked that movie all that much. Same with Gladiator and Braveheart. They did not interest me. On the other hand, Casablanca was a phenomenal movie, and it's rank of number 10 is probably deserved.
Interestingly, Alfred Hitchcock has twelve movies in the top 250, and I have not seen any of them. In fact, I don't think I have seen any Hitchcock movie before, which is a shame, assuming his reputation for cinematic genius is deserved. I'm looking froward to those selections.
I don't know when I will start this, but it will likely be in the next few weeks, so keep an eye open.
Also, I have updated Grasp the Nettle. Check it out.

Somebody saaaa-aaaa-aaaaaaavvvvve meeeeeeeeeeh!

I just want to give props to Lionel Luthor from Smallville. He rocks, even if he is evil. And, apparently, dead (I'm not that far quite yet).
It is a tough show to watch sometimes. I understand that Clark is trying to keep his secret identity a secret, but that does not mean that he has to keep everything a secret. Yet he refuses to tell anyone anything. I bet if he started telling people things before the end of the episode, fewer people would die. Sometimes I think he has killed more people than Lex.
I'm glad sometimes that real life isn't like drama T.V. I would hate to have to pause dramatically every twenty minutes or so, staring for an awkwardly long time without saying anything while everyone else stands around, also awkwardly not saying anything.
Y'know, for a billionaire who is always talking about his security personnel, it seems absurdly easy to just walk in on him without him knowing they are coming. Security at the Luthor mansion has to be the cushiest gig ever.
My right nostril is twitching right now, all by itself. I'm not even kidding.
Something I've learned from the show is to not to meddle with people's love lives. It doesn't ever end well. Also, people suck.
Clark totally just threw a guy twenty feet through the air, sending him crashing through a solid wood counter, and then he turns and hugs the girl he rescued, telling her "don't worry, he won't hurt anyone ever again." So, what, did he just kill the guy? He didn't even bat an eye.
CARS DON'T BLOW UP WHEN A TRAIN HITS THEM!
Okay, no, the guy came back. But he hurt someone, so Clark isn't a killer, but he is a liar.
I also am quite enjoying the fact that Lois and Clark only barely like each other.
Anyhoo, I gotsta go.
Grasp the Nettle!

No seriously, check it out.

More nettle grasping fun at www.graspthenettle.blogspot.com. Check it out!

Days of Thunder

In the past two days I have heard two peals of thunder. Both of them sounded like explosions going off right above my head. Last night, it set off car alarms. It was awesome! Both were preceded by bright flashes of lightning, so I was not caught off guard, but they were loud enough to still be startling.
Then it began to rain, but it was a bit disappointing. That level of thunder deserves better rain. I enjoy a good, hard rain. That is the best time to take a walk. I am not a big fan of the days upond days of grey, dingy rain. I need the sunshine. But give me a good thunderstorm with heavy rain, the kind of raindrops that are so big you can track them from a klick up all the way to the ground. Walking in that type of rain is so cool. Of course, I have to avoid the lightning, but hey, that can be a fun game...

Grasp it I say. Grasp it!

New Grasp the Nettle post.

Worst ever

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that Dark Knight was rated the number one movie at www.imdb.com (it still is, incidently). There is a list of the top 250 movies, based on viewer ratings on the site. Today, I noticed that they also have a list of the bottom 100, which would be the worst rated movies. I looked at the list and noticed something - the vast majority of the movies are from the last twenty years. In fact, there are only 12 movies that were made before 1990. On the top 250 list, there are 40 movies in the top 100 from after 1990.
This makes me wonder why. Are movies just getting that bad? Are there just more movies being made so the potential for bad is increasing? Actually, that's not a bad theory. I think it is partly a combination of the two. I do believe that there are too many movies made these days that are depressingly bad. Like in any other venue, when money becomes the sole driving force behind something, then it quickly loses quality in the interest of quantity. Instead of raising the effort to an art form, most movies seem to go for the lowest common denominator, and it is the lowest for a reason.
Ah, maybe I'm just too critical, but I am finding most of the main stream movies these days to be sadly simple and uninteresting, and even the ones that are hailed as amazing and fresh are not that interesting. I'm thinking specifically of Juno and Knocked Up, kind of. Those sorts of movies. I haven't actually seen either of the films, so maybe I would like them, I don't know. They seem that they fall in to a certain mood and style of film that is being produced lately that is not appealing to me.
Is it so bad to want quality without having to resort to overly emotional independent films? Am I seeking contradictory things here? I don't know, I just don't know.
Oh, the #1 worst movie is called Kis Vuk, a Hungarian animated movie which I have never heard of. It came out this year some time, though.

A Sequel I Want To See

So last night I had a dream that needs to be made in to a movie. I dreamed that E.T. teamed up with Samuel L. Jackson. Frankly, there is not much more that needs to be said!

New Post

A new chapter of Fools of us All has been posted at Grasp the Nettle, the BLOG I set up for my ongoing stories (in case you had forgotten).

Definition

The Internet: n. A place where anyone can talk about whatever they want, no matter how inconsequential or insignificant. For example:

I don't know why, but it drives me crazy when I see someone write 'should of, could of, etc.' instead of 'should have, could have, etc.' But hey, it's the internet so I suppose that means it is okay. Proper grammer is no longer important. Still bugs me though.

Catfish Noodling

Yes, Catfish Noodling. That's all I have to say.

Oh, um, also, I have not actually watched the video, so I make no promises of what exactly is on it, but, y'know...catfish noodling!

Why so serious indeed?

I have seen Dark Knight, and I was impressed. I think it is probably the best Batman movie ever made (though, to be fair, Adam West was in a class of his own...what that class is, I'm not sure. But I digress)(one of my true talents). It is not perfect, but we will have to see what the next Batman movie will be before I am willing to say that my biggest complaint is actually a complaint. Also, I can't say what it is specifically because it involves the end of the movie and I don't want to ruin anything for anyone who has not seen it. Something else that kind of bugged me occurred during a scene where Batman is driving his motorcycle thing (which was REALLY cool). It seemed like they cut out some footage from the ride. I know that they couldn't do the whole thing (he had to drive all the way across town and they weren't going to show the whole ride), but the parts that were missing felt a bit jarring to me. It is as though they either should have cut away from him riding on the bike to someone else in the movie for a moment, or that they forgot a bit to show how he got from the previous cut to here. It was not a major thing and I bet no one else will notice or even know what I am talking about, but I did notice.
However, that is a minor complaint. All in all, it was a fantastic movie. It is very dark, appropriately, and packed full of fun explosions, fights, and an interesting scene with a pencil.
Heath Ledger's Joker is much better than Jack Nicholson's Joker. I've always felt that the reason the Joker was such a dangerous villain was because he was completely off his rocker. In all of comicdom (ooh, nice word Darrell) there is no villain as meaninglessly insane as him. He does not want money or power or anything. He just wants chaos and destruction and explosions. Heath Ledger actually made me feel creeped out most of the time he was on screen. I never wanted to laugh because he was so goofy, though I did laugh at times because he was amusing.
Interestingly, at www.imdb.com, this movie is, as of Saturday night, rated their number one movie of all time, based on viewer votes. I'm not sure exactly how you can vote, I think you have to register or something, and I never have, but I do know it is based on viewer votes, not on the opinions of film critics like most top # movie lists. It has an average rating of 9.7 out of 10 from over 20,000 votes. Now, you know me, and you know that I am not one to follow hype (and in fact I tend to roll my eyes and ignore hype. I still haven't read Harry Potter, and I've only seen two of the movies...and not the first one), but I don't have any argument with the ratings. I want to see it again a time or two more. Most movies, I find, don't really show me their full impact unless I see it more than once. That is when I feel able to fully give an opinion. That being said, even after just one viewing, Dark Knight was a very good movie.

Update

New Thunderfunk story at Grasp the Nettle.

I get it now

I have learned something about myself that is very useful to know: I do not instantly understand things. By that I mean, in general, the reason behind decisions and policies. That being said, I am usually quite good at coming up with possible/plausible explanations.
For example, today I went to get my German driver's license changed to an Alberta driver's license so I can insure my vehicle (which I don't yet have) here and all of that fun stuff. They told me that I have to get my driver's license (the German one) translated into english by an official translation service (yes, apparently there is such a thing). I shrugged and said okay, because it is a policy and me complaining about it wasn't going to change anything. But it seemed very silly and unreasonable to me.
But as I was walking home, I started to think about it, and it dawned on me that it was actually a pretty good idea. Because it is in German, they don't really have any way of knowing what it might say, and that would include not knowing if there are any restrictions or anything like that on it. And if I bring in my own translation, they have no way of knowing how accurate it is because I could just make up anything I wanted. So thus, the policy is in place.
It makes sense, but only after I had let the idea process for a bit. That happens to me quite often. I will hear something and have no idea why for a while until I can think it out. It is pretty common for me to ask someone else for a reason and as I am asking I realise the answer. It is like I cannot come up with an explanation until I say the problem out loud, almost like I have to argue with myself to get the point.
What I don't like is when I think something is dumb or wrong and I criticize it and as I do I understand the reasoning behind it and no longer think that it is dumb, but in face I agree with it. That is partly why I don't take strong positions on many things, especially at first. I try to be pretty forgiving until I have had time to process it and really think about it, or at least say it out loud.
Sometimes I wish more people would take more time to process things before they critiqued (or, more precisely, whined).

Grasp the Nettle

I have put a new post up at www.graspthenettle.blogspot.com. If you don't know what that is, check my post from July 10th.

Oddness

Meaningless, meaningless. Everything is meaningless.

I don't know offhand who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, but I can often understand how he felt. Now before you get all worried about me, I want to say that I am not saying I am depressed or that I think life has no meaning. That is not really the level on which I connect to the sentiments presented in the book. No, my moments of meaningless...ness...are somewhat different.

I will often find the most mundane things to have lost all meaning, all sense of purpose. I will suddenly be unable to come up with a valid reason for the actions that are taking place.

For example, sometimes I find cooking to be an extremely meaningless task. No matter how long we live, we have to keep eating to survive. Our bodies need the nutrients found in the food. There are days where that information overwhelms me, and I find no difference between mixing spices and other ingredients into hamburger to make chili and just eating every ingredient separately. Cooking loses its purpose.

It's more than that, though. It's like, I sometimes lose context for what is occurring around me. I compare it to the difference between a canine sense of smell and a human sense of smell. When I smell chili cooking on the stove (maybe I should have written this post after supper...I'm hungry), I smell...chili. But when a dog smells chili, he smells (or so I have been led to believe) hamburger, chives, beans, chili powder, garlic, tomato paste, water, and whatever else you throw in there. Ooh, onions. Gotta have onions. Anyway, the difference is, I smell the chili as a whole, the dog smells the chili as its individual parts. And sometimes, that happens to me in how I perceive the world.

I don't just see the whole of what is going on around me, but I see the individual parts that make up the whole, and they quickly lose their meaning. I go to write something on paper, and instead of writing words with a pen on the paper, I am suddenly aware of the ink flowing from the pen, the curves and lines of the letter, the colour and grain of the paper and it is like what is being written has no connection to how it is being written. The words begin to lose meaning.

It is especially difficult with tasks that must be repeated, such as cooking. I see the individual components, the effort that goes into each step and the whole begins to break down. I no longer find the steps being taken to be worth the end result, especially when it must be done again soon.

Sometimes it makes simple tasks more difficult because I cannot view a task as a whole, but I become aware of the individual parts that go into the whole, as opposed to taking the whole for itself. For instance, do you ever really think about how you walk? There are muscles that have to contract and expand all over your body just to take a step. Your knee joint must bend. Your ankle pivots. Your toes take the weight and then push off, propelling you forward, even though, and this is the part that gets me, the other foot is not moving at all. It is planted firmly on the ground, yet it is still involved. Have you ever been aware of the non-moving foot when you take a step, unless it is in significant pain? I have.

This whole phenomenon was especially prevalent in my last months/weeks at BFA. I think it must be related to other events going on in my life, because it hasn't been nearly so bad since I returned home. And it is not something I control. I don't decide to be aware of everything. It is more like a feeling that washes over me - I am suddenly, without warning, hyper aware of individual components, and that starts to render the whole as being meaningless. It becomes like trying to conceive of the whole of an aircraft carrier while standing with your nose pressed firmly against the side. All you can see is the one spot of grey paint directly in front of you. The whole is simply non-existent.

The worst is when it relates to conversations. Sometimes I find talking to be completely bewildering, even when there isn't a pretty girl in the vicinity. And it is not just my own words that become meaningless. It is language in general. It is like my brain picks up the words and just stares at them, like it hasn't encountered anything like it before, and it does not know what to do with it. This happens very easily when I am in large groups. I get overwhelmed sometimes when I am around too many people, especially people I don't know, and I just can't comprehend what is being said.

Now for those of you worried about me, take a deep breath and relax. This is not something that incapacitates me. I do not suddenly freeze, unable to take a step or to do anything. It is not a phobia or anything like that. I don't even find it disturbing or frightening so much as I find it weird and intriguing. I would not say that it is a medical problem or that I have a deep psychological disorder. It really just comes down to a matter of perception. And like I said, it happens more often when I am under considerable stress (actually, I can't pinpoint its cause that specifically. I just know that it happens more often under different circumstances, but whether it is stress that is the unifying cause or not I am not sure).

Meaningless, meaningless. Everything is meaningless. I know what you mean, buddy. I know what you mean.

Nuse

All right. Those of you who have been following my BLOG for a while will know that I like to type BLOG in all caps. I don't know why I do that, but I do. Something else you may remember is that I have had various stories started that I have let go for various reasons. Well, I decided to change that somewhat. I will not be putting stories up on this BLOG. Instead, I have started a new BLOG. It is called Grasp The Nettle. I will be updating it twice a week.
On Fridays I will be telling the life and times of Thunderfunk, the Superchicken. He is an evil genius who also happens to be a giant chicken. It is a humourous look at superhero stories, told from the point of view of the evil side.
On Tuesdays will be Fools of us All, the time travel story which I had going for quite some time. It tells the story of Caz, a girl from the future, and Spin, a man from our present who must unite to battle the evil corporations and fulfill the prophecy. But is there more going on than they know? You bet yer booty. I'm sorry. I'll never write that phrase again.
So check in tomorrow for part one of Thunderfunk the Chicken!
I will be keeping this BLOG as well to write out my random thoughts and ideas.
Oh yeah, and a special prize (okay, I don't have any prize in mind, but maybe something will come to mind, we'll talk) to the person who can tell me where the title of my new BLOG comes from.
Oh yeah, there is a link to the new BLOG on this BLOG (I called it Thunder Time's BLOG). Also, I created the new BLOG back in January but it wasn't feasible for me to start a regular update on it back then, so the first to posts were mostly just little reminders for myself. You can ignore them.

Cow-Town

Well here I am in Calgary, back home as it were. It has been good to get back, though I think it will be better once I have a job. Luckily that will be soon. Right now I have some leads on a variety of jobs, from landscaping to being a porter in a hospital. Of course, I don't have any specifics quite yet, but in the next day or two I should get all of that info and should be able to work things out from there. And then I can get off of my lazy butt and work again.
It has been a while since I have had anything like a regular job. Even the year before I went to Germany was kind of odd. The job I had then was a bit irregular at times. And before that I was at the Sign Guys, which was an odd job as well. Y'know, now that I think about it, the last few years have been odd in my work life, even for me. But I guess a job's a job, eh?
Well, check back tomorrow when I'll have more news.