Watchedmen

Hey, a movie review! It's for Watchmen.

My Year of Bonds

Yeah, it probably won't take a whole year (although that partially depends on how long it takes From Russia with Love and You Only Live Twice to come off "short wait" on Netflix), but I couldn't resist the sound-vaguely-alike with "My Year of Flops," a quasi-inspiration for this sort of reviewing method. This is all going to be on the main site, since I prefer that layout for long-form reviewing and use of pictures; I'll probably put a link up on the right when I've written a couple more, but here's Volume One, for Dr. No.

Go west, Old Men

I saw my first movie in theaters in months, No Country for Old Men, since it was the Coen Brothers and since it had been almost universally raved about by critics. Turns out... it's not really all that good. At least I didn't think so. The one positive is that it's actually got me a bit excited about film criticism again, and I'll probably try to see some more movies in the upcoming month or two as work is on the slower side and film hits its peak season. Tomorrow I'm hoping to steal off to the River East after work to catch The Darjeeling Limited before it packs up and leaves town (it's down to one screening a day, at 5:15, which works out well if I can get out of work on time) and then perhaps I can make a similar pilgrimage for Michael Clayton on Thursday. Those were two of the only movies of the fall season that really had my eyebrows raised, so catching them before they leave theaters would be nice.

To which I'm sure you might say, "Why see them in the theater?" The fact is that, in spite of its obvious cost disadvantage, I enjoy seeing movies in the theater. It's just an experience that can't be matched by simple home viewing. The good news for me is that neither Darjeeling nor Clayton is likely to have many people in the theater so late in the run. While I like the theatrical experience, I like the people-free theatrical experience even more. So, I'm a misanthrope. What of it?

Anyway, the review for No Country for Old Men is here. I've actually been engaged in a fairly lively debate with some backers of the film on the Rotten Tomatoes boards (needless to say, they feel I "don't get it"), which is something else that hasn't happened for a couple years now.

I'll take "Vague Stories" for $200, Alex

Not much going on lately. I went to an audition for Jeopardy! today; I shouldn't say a whole lot beyond that, but there isn't much to tell. I'm sure I did well on the actual question part, but personality is part of it and it's hard to cover up the fact that I'm deathly boring. They don't tell you if you're getting on; you just go into a contestant pool and either they pull you out sometime in the next year or two, or they don't. So now we play the waiting game.

...ah, the waiting game sucks. Let's play Hungry Hungry Hippos!

This lets me transition to my recent film reviews, which include The Simpsons Movie and the Netflix DVD I had for 11 months, Shopgirl, which turned out to be so bad I hate myself for having held onto it so long. Although after having a DVD that long, really, any movie short of Shawshank would have made me kick myself at least a little.

Other movies I've seen recently which form a backlog of reviews I still need to write: Meatballs, Sicko, Junebug, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The Departed, Zodiac. I am quite a ways behind.

Not the greatest day

Thank God for Alma, because if not for all the time I spent with her, today would have been a pretty bad one. First I went to a mini golf course in Libertyville and it was not fun - you know how most park district courses are either boring or ridiculously difficult for their pars? This was the latter. That stuff will be up later. Stuff that's up now: a recap of the Cubs' awful weekend, and a review of the shockingly bad Fletch. Those two links will pretty much tell you what I had to suffer through today. (Obviously if this is the worst thing that happens to me on most days I don't have anything to complain about, but in my life as it stands, this is what passes for "bad days," certainly on weekends.) But Alma elevates everything.

Slip-sliding away

It's been some time - well, a little over two months - since I've written a movie review. And for that matter I think I've only seen one movie in that time (a DVD which I ended up not reviewing). I'm a bit disappointed in my lack of movie watching over the past year, and even more so in my subsequent lack of reviewing, but it's just difficult. When I was in college, I could watch movies pretty much whenever; the convenience of Century Theaters, plus its high variety of films, made it easy to wander over after class on as many days as I wanted to and check something out. Plus, I was taking theory courses at the time so writing reviews was practically second nature.

Nowadays it's almost become a chore. I used to get back from quiz bowl tournaments and immediately write up the recaps; now I don't even copy down my tossups. It seems to have gotten that way with movies; I still like watching movies, when I get the chance, but actually sitting down and writing a review - a process which can take several hours - has reached the point where half the time I'm not even motivated enough by the film to write one, and the other half of the time it takes me several days (where, again, I used to bang them out that same day). It's too much like work that I'm not even being paid for, as opposed to the fun hobby it used to be, and the decreasing frequency with which I write reviews is making me feel like my talents (such as they ever were) have backslid.

I don't know if there's a solution here. I want to keep watching movies and I like having opinions about them, and those opinions do often manage to manifest themselves in review form, like this review for Lord of War, which I watched on Tuesday. It's a movie whose placement on my Netflix queue dates to about a year ago, when I was still trying to catch up on the movies of 2005 for an end-of-year list that still hasn't materialized. So now I'm basically two years behind. I guess these things happen. It's not like I'm giving up movies, unlike my forthcoming quiz bowl retirement, but immersing myself in them as I did in college has become far too difficult.

The BigFlax.com 2007 NCAA Tournament Challenge is awaiting participants! So far we have a list of two (myself, Tyler), but I'm sure there are many past entrants out there ready to have another go. Check out the previous entry for more details.