What’s strange about this particular
lapse in blog updates is that I’ve been blogging my ass off.
I mean, the first and most obvious location I’ve been blogging is my Disney Blog, where I recently talked about all the latest news surrounding the closure of Epcot’s Test Track for refurbishment.
I mean, the first and most obvious location I’ve been blogging is my Disney Blog, where I recently talked about all the latest news surrounding the closure of Epcot’s Test Track for refurbishment.
Most of my blogging has been behind the
scenes, though, where I’ve been working on three huge movie blogs.
It’s just that none of them are ready for print yet, so I thought
I’d put a little interim blog together… about the 3 blogs I’ve
been working on.
Blog 1 is the second half of my “BEST Best Picture” of the past 20 years. As of now, I’m down to eight finalists, and I’m still not totally sure how to pair them up. I think it’s gonna end up being a random tournament where I draw up a bracket and have essentially 3 more rounds of competition ending with a final round pitting to top two “Best Picture” winners. The idea is that.. there’s not really a good or bad draw for any movie, since the quality of the movies don’t change based on the matchups. If Movie A is better than Movie B, it will always win. That also would mean Movie B would not EVER win this tournament.
In fact… Let’s announce the bracket now… (The matchups were randomly determined by a co-worker who didn’t know what he was picking.
Schindler’s List vs. No Country for Old Men
Unforgiven vs. Forrest Gump
The English Patient vs. The Return of the King
American Beauty vs. The Hurt Locker
So… stay tuned for the final half of that tournament.
Blog 2 is my explanation of why I hate the movie “Titanic” so much. This one is taking a while for two reasons. Partly because I feel like I’ve made this argument so many times over the past 15 years that I almost feel like my points are too plentiful at this stage, so I’m working on narrowing it down to just a couple of key reasons. I’ve been accused of hating it for reasons that I don’t hate it also, so it’s important that I focus on my actual reasons, and not worry about refuting.
Partly, and more importantly, I keep debating whether I want to go see it in 3D in this recent re-release in order to a) give it one more chance and b) to better pinpoint the exact things I hated. I’ve only seen it one time, after all. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? The movie I tout as being the worst of all time, and I’ve only seen it once.
What I find most interesting, though, is that people seem to be less enthralled with it in this re-release. I’m kind of curious as to that too.
Blog 3 is a new one that my friend Alan (The Brawny Hombre) got me started with last night. It’s probably the longest winded one of all, and I have absolutely NO idea how this is going to work in practice, but he’s so intrigued by the Best Picture blog that he’s encouraged me to write a whole separate blog about the Best Movie Overall of that same time period.
That’s an insanely daunting task. So far we’ve started by listing our top three movies for each year, beginning in 1990 (Goodfellas, Edward Scissorhands, Total Recall) and going all the way through to 2011. We spent the whole night (He also has a third shift job, so we regularly bounce e-mails back and forth when our shifts line up), and we only made it through 2003 (Return of the King, Pirates of the Caribbean, Seabiscuit). Not only do we have 3 movies listed for each year, but we have a huge list of “Also considered” movies, which is currently almost 70 movies all on its own. The idea is… once we’ve determined the best 3 for each year, and we have the giant pool of also considered, we’ll go through and see if there are any things that have to be swapped out. Then we have a good old 64 movie extravaganza.
It’s all very scientific, I assure you.
So far, some quotes from the discussion include:
Me regarding the possible inclusion of “Contact” in the best movies of 1997:
“Absolutely, unequivocally, no. Contact is not ever in the top three movies of that year. I’m almost positive that Jodie Foster would agree.”
Alan regarding the fact that the discussion lasted through till morning:
“We should probably table this for now. It's hitting the busy morning period when the buffoons begin waking up and inflicting their ineptitude on the world around them (i.e., me). “
I’m already finding a glaring hole in the matrix (Not ‘The Matrix’), which is that Royal Tennenbaums neither made the final cut for 2001, nor was it mentioned at all. Mistakes all over the fucking place. Embarassing.
So… You’ve all got those blogs to look forward to, in some order. Almost certainly the Best Movie Tourney will be last, and potentially in a series of posts as opposed to one 50,000 word monolith. Maybe I should just compile the discussion and make a book out of it.
I have every intention of writing about something other than movies at some point, but until The Crucible is done (next week), I’m pretty wiped out creatively.
I was considering writing a blog about the HBO show ‘Girls’, which I find bad, almost to the point of being repugnant.
Blog 1 is the second half of my “BEST Best Picture” of the past 20 years. As of now, I’m down to eight finalists, and I’m still not totally sure how to pair them up. I think it’s gonna end up being a random tournament where I draw up a bracket and have essentially 3 more rounds of competition ending with a final round pitting to top two “Best Picture” winners. The idea is that.. there’s not really a good or bad draw for any movie, since the quality of the movies don’t change based on the matchups. If Movie A is better than Movie B, it will always win. That also would mean Movie B would not EVER win this tournament.
In fact… Let’s announce the bracket now… (The matchups were randomly determined by a co-worker who didn’t know what he was picking.
Schindler’s List vs. No Country for Old Men
Unforgiven vs. Forrest Gump
The English Patient vs. The Return of the King
American Beauty vs. The Hurt Locker
So… stay tuned for the final half of that tournament.
Blog 2 is my explanation of why I hate the movie “Titanic” so much. This one is taking a while for two reasons. Partly because I feel like I’ve made this argument so many times over the past 15 years that I almost feel like my points are too plentiful at this stage, so I’m working on narrowing it down to just a couple of key reasons. I’ve been accused of hating it for reasons that I don’t hate it also, so it’s important that I focus on my actual reasons, and not worry about refuting.
Partly, and more importantly, I keep debating whether I want to go see it in 3D in this recent re-release in order to a) give it one more chance and b) to better pinpoint the exact things I hated. I’ve only seen it one time, after all. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? The movie I tout as being the worst of all time, and I’ve only seen it once.
What I find most interesting, though, is that people seem to be less enthralled with it in this re-release. I’m kind of curious as to that too.
Blog 3 is a new one that my friend Alan (The Brawny Hombre) got me started with last night. It’s probably the longest winded one of all, and I have absolutely NO idea how this is going to work in practice, but he’s so intrigued by the Best Picture blog that he’s encouraged me to write a whole separate blog about the Best Movie Overall of that same time period.
That’s an insanely daunting task. So far we’ve started by listing our top three movies for each year, beginning in 1990 (Goodfellas, Edward Scissorhands, Total Recall) and going all the way through to 2011. We spent the whole night (He also has a third shift job, so we regularly bounce e-mails back and forth when our shifts line up), and we only made it through 2003 (Return of the King, Pirates of the Caribbean, Seabiscuit). Not only do we have 3 movies listed for each year, but we have a huge list of “Also considered” movies, which is currently almost 70 movies all on its own. The idea is… once we’ve determined the best 3 for each year, and we have the giant pool of also considered, we’ll go through and see if there are any things that have to be swapped out. Then we have a good old 64 movie extravaganza.
It’s all very scientific, I assure you.
So far, some quotes from the discussion include:
Me regarding the possible inclusion of “Contact” in the best movies of 1997:
“Absolutely, unequivocally, no. Contact is not ever in the top three movies of that year. I’m almost positive that Jodie Foster would agree.”
Alan regarding the fact that the discussion lasted through till morning:
“We should probably table this for now. It's hitting the busy morning period when the buffoons begin waking up and inflicting their ineptitude on the world around them (i.e., me). “
I’m already finding a glaring hole in the matrix (Not ‘The Matrix’), which is that Royal Tennenbaums neither made the final cut for 2001, nor was it mentioned at all. Mistakes all over the fucking place. Embarassing.
So… You’ve all got those blogs to look forward to, in some order. Almost certainly the Best Movie Tourney will be last, and potentially in a series of posts as opposed to one 50,000 word monolith. Maybe I should just compile the discussion and make a book out of it.
I have every intention of writing about something other than movies at some point, but until The Crucible is done (next week), I’m pretty wiped out creatively.
I was considering writing a blog about the HBO show ‘Girls’, which I find bad, almost to the point of being repugnant.
1 comment:
Sounds interesting; I always love reading a good movie blog.
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