Monday, May 31, 2010

Summer Movie-ing

            Excuse my absence.  If you guys would just pay me 40K/year write the blog, I could quit school, there would be a lot more posts, and everyone would be happy.  That’s only like $8,000 a year for each of my five readers, so that would be worth it right?  Anyway, now that another semester is over with, I’ll have a little more time to devote to my one true love.  I’ll get to hang out with my wife a little more, too.

            When I was in elementary and junior high school, I always had summer reading that my school required me to do.  It always bummed me out to do at the end the summer when I had inevitably put it off and had to read an entire book in a week.  It’s not that I hated reading; it’s just that I hated being forced to read.  But I always enjoyed summer movie-ing as a child.  I’d drag my mom to every new Disney movie that came out, I watched every kid-sports movie in the vein of Sandlot, and of course at sleepovers my friends introduced me to such classics as Dumb and Dumber, Tommy Boy and Billy Madison, after which my life, in the words of Galinda from Wicked, “changed for the better.” 

            Anyway, I have some serious summer movie-ing to take care of this year, which should make for an entertaining read on this blog over the next couple of months.  In the spirit of carefree summers, I have devised a loose list of movie-ing goals that I may or may not accomplish.  I will be posting several of these in the coming weeks, along with updates on how it’s going.  As always, feel free to post your own summer movie-ing goals.  

Goal #1:  Getting Down on Some Classics.

Over the last year, I have become increasingly obsessed with classic cinema.  Within the last few months I have watched A Streetcar Named Desire, M, The Third Man, The Seventh Seal, and On The Waterfront.  All are worthy of their classic status, in my opinion (in fact, Streetcar may be one of the best movies I’ve ever seen (and, as always, keep in mind I don’t say things like this lightly)).  More and more as I watch films like this, I agree with my Grandpa: "they don't make 'em like they used to."  My goal for the summer is to tear through some more classics: finish off Hitchcock’s library, introduce myself to Billy Wilder, John Ford, and John Huston, and even dabble in some Charlie Chaplin if the mood strikes me. 

My dad is THE man on classic cinema.  His television is tuned to 3 and only 3 channels on any given day: Fox News, whatever channel the Astros are on, and Turner Classic Movies.  He can recognize any actor who appeared in more than one movie between 1930 and 1960 (it’s truly amazing).  I mean, he literally might have seen everything in that time period.  As it is my mission in life to make sure I am as smart and knowledgeable as my dad in anything and everything (only half-joking…okay, not joking at all), I guess it’s time to step my game up.   By the end of the summer, I hope to be at least 25% of the way to accomplishing that goal.