Movies in bold are ones I hadn't seen before. Ones with asterisks, I saw in a theater.

Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
Limelight (1952)
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World* (2010)
Dancer in the Dark (2000)
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
Valley Girl* (1983)
Get Crazy* (1983)
Harold and Maude (1971)
Evening Primrose (1966)
A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
In Cold Blood (1967)
Nicholas Nickleby (2002)
Shakespeare in Love (1998) (don't ask)
Hearts of Darkness (1991)
Queen Kelly (1932)
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1973)

My comment for the month? Seriously, why had I never seen In Cold Blood? I'm totally blown away.

( October movies )

I think I'm going to do NaNo, which means starting today. Of course it also means figuring out something to write about--I am leery of this because it seems these days I can't finish 1,000 words, let alone 50,000, but the rest of the household is doing it and maybe that's incentive enough. If I have to wait to watch The Wire anyway... I have a few ideas that might stretch that far, though none are "original" fiction. (I did once have a roleplay character who was sort of based on a male version of Carlotta as played by Orson Welles who got turned into a werelynx, but I do not know what that novel would be about.)

Anyway, the two fannish ideas I've had that might be novels are:

1) A sort of mash-up of Phantom of the Opera and Sunset Boulevard, wherein Erik=Norma, Christine=Joe, and I get to deal with gender reversal as well as the noir setting and Hollywood and all that.

2) A TOS Star Trek fic with time travel, sort of like if The Time Traveler's Wife was about Kirk and Spock and Kirk kept popping in and out of Spock's life and he had to deal with covering for Kirk as well as dealing with the out-of-joint nature of their relationship.

The problem with either is that I started them, and didn't get past basic logistic note-taking before I decided they wouldn't work or were too hard, and at this point I can't exactly remember the point of either.

This... is not an auspicious beginning.

ETA: Well. That lasted six whole hours!

I'm in a slump. I'm trying to catch up on flisty things, but I'm not finding any acting "work" and I'm uninspired in writing (even fannishly), and it makes me a little disengaged.

Anything exciting going on, guys?

Movies in bold are ones I hadn't seen before. Ones with asterisks, I saw in a theater.

Bigger Than Life (1956)
City Lights (1931)
Cairo Time (2009)*
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Ran (1985)*
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Hamlet (2009, television movie)
Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)*
Barry Lyndon (1975)
A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
Casablanca (1942)
The Dawn Patrol (1938)
Pretty Poison (1968)
The Dawn Patrol (1938)
Joy Division (2007)
Modern Times (1936)
How to Steal a Million (1966)

I have also:
-Just finished S1 of Avatar: TLA
-Watched some Jeremy Brett Holmes for the first time in years!
-Gotten almost to the end of S3 of The Wire

Haven't been watching much, and I have Hawaii to update about!

Movies in bold are ones I hadn't seen before. Ones with asterisks, I saw in a theater.

End of Evangelion (1997)
Fedora (1978)
I'm No Angel (1933)
Winter's Bone (2010)*
Little Women (1978)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Defendor (2009)
Inception (2010)*
The Ninth Configuration (1980)
Brick (2005)
The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
The Beguiled (1971)
Repulsion (1965)

As a bonus, it was lettered's birthday yesterday, and in the grand tradition, I made her a cake!



Okay, it's really hard to draw with those little tubes!

Man. I really haven't watched much this month: probably between rehearsals, and The Wire

Movies in bold are ones I hadn't seen before. Ones with asterisks, I saw in a theater.

Batman: The Movie (1966)
Doctor Who (1996)
The Great Dictator (1940)
Horatio Hornblower: Mutiny (2001)
Horatio Hornblower: Retribution (2001)
A Single Man (2009)*
Chaplin (1992)
The Kid (1921)
Baby Doll (1956)

Movies in bold are ones I hadn't seen before. Ones with asterisks, I saw in a theater.

Horatio Hornblower: The Duchess and the Devil (1999)
Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)*
Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)
Horatio Hornblower: The Wrong War (1999)
Iron Man 2 (2010)*
Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
The Importance of being Earnest (1954)
Le Concert (2009)*
Gentlemen Broncos (2009)
Leonard Cohen: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 (2009)*
The Rutles: All You Need is Cash (1978)
The Thin Man (1934)
The Sword in the Stone (1963)
The Secret of Kells (2009)*
The Road (2009)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Movies in bold are ones I hadn't seen before. Ones with asterisks, I saw in a theater.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)*
Orlando (1992)
An Education (2009)
Hudson Hawk (1991)
Ugetsu (1953)*
30 Century Man (2006)
Starman (1984)
Oldboy (2003)*
The Life of Oharu (1952)*
Big Fan (2009)
Wuthering Heights (1967)
Southland Tales (2006)
Wet Hot American Summer (2001)*
Utamaro and His Five Women (1946)*
Rope (1948)

Also finished Deadwood (for the second time--why does your ending suck, Deadwood?) and am in the middle of a Mysterious Cities of Gold rewatch and season three of Mad Men and season one of The Wire, which I got for my birthday.

( Initial thoughts on Mad Men S3 )

( Initial thoughts on The Wire )

Movies in bold are ones I hadn't seen before. Ones with asterisks, I saw in a theater.


Samurai I: Miyamoto Musashi (1954)
That Thing You Do (1996)
Big Bad Mama (1974)
The Long Goodbye (1973)
Sadie Thompson (1928)*
A Single Man (2009)*
Up in the Air (2009)
Alice in Wonderland (2010)*
Regarding Henry (1991)
Alice in Wonderland (1976)*
Sherlock Holmes (2009)*
Zardoz (1974)
The Princess and the Frog (2009)
Naissance des pieuvres (Water Lilies) (2007)
Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
Taps (1981)

Movies in bold are ones I hadn't seen before. Ones with asterisks, I saw in a theater. I know I've been bad about reviews, but if you want to hear my take on any of these let me know, please. I'm probably more likely to talk if prompted than sit down to write a formal review, these days.

Stray Dog*
Look Back in Anger
The Devil's Rain
The Tenth Level
High and Low *
The Bad Sleep Well
Seven Samurai*
The Time Traveler's Wife
Hedwig and the Angry Inch*
Night of the Iguana
Zodiac
Drunken Angel

Lots of Kurosawa this month! I'm reading a huge dual biography of him and Mifune, The Emperor and the Wolf, which is fascinating. They're both badasses, and what strikes me most initially is how impossible it is for me to understand the experience of growing up in Japan in the pre-war years (not to mention the war) and have gone through the experiences they did. How most of it is incomprehensible to me. And yet, their films and characters are, with allowances made for cultural differences, totally comprehensible. Everything really boils down to being human in the end, to the extent that watching them without any background knowledge really doesn't clue me in to how different their experiences are. I don't know where I'm going with that, if anywhere, but it's interesting.