It's Alive!!!

Thank freakin' Christ it's back!!!

Dear readers,
Over the past year I have embarked on a life altering move to the metropolitan monolith that is Chicago. While there I got a job working for an Americorp program the details, for legal reasons I cannot specify here. Needless to say what I am doing is vital, civic minded, and sure to #makebetterhappen.
Having met new friends, enjoyed the local cuisine, made a difference in the lives of youth and neutered a pet or two, I have grown up over the last year or so. I no longer have the same caustic mindset that I did while working just north of minimum wage at that infernal movie theater. Well maybe I do still have a caustic mindset, but its one where I am proactively caustic, not fatalistically so.

But much like the proverbial and I suppose quite literal rock of Gibraltar, some things never change. The grass will always grow, the birds will always chirp and  Lindsay Lohan will always be on something. For in the words of infamous Pharaoh, chef and space adventurer Bender Bending Rodriguez, "I'm back baby!"

After a few months of absence I have decided to dig up the bloated corpse that once was my beloved blog, exhume the remains and build a stronger, leaner, more exciting film discussion blog for the world to enjoy. You may recall this all started about a year ago, when I promised to no one in particular that I would be watching a preselected list of 100 movies that my friends chose and I had never watched. The 100 were to

serve as a countdown for my 3,000th movie. The results of that experiment: 61.5% completion. I sat down and tried to watch Session 9 (2001) but ended up falling asleep. Overall a pretty respectable score considering I had to sit through a few Twilight movies (2008-2012), Xanadu (1980) and Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married Too (2010).

In case you were wondering my 3,000th movie was not from that list. Instead of delving into another Feast sequel (2005-2009), I went to the local bijou and went to go see Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) with friends. Boy was that a good pic to pick for my 3,000th flick. The acting; mostly done by non-actors was naturalistic and earthy, the story was a wonderful modern fairytale and the cinematography was astounding.

Little 6-year-old Hushpuppy lives in an isolated bayou community called The Tub. There her hot-tempered father and a cavalcade of hard-drinking, ill-mannered misfits carve a cobbled and stitched existence for themselves. That is until a storm and Hushpuppy's fathers declining health turn her world upside down. Fearing the global icecaps

melting will lead to the unleashing of unnatural creatures known as aurochs, Hushpuppy goes on an odyssey to look for her absent mother.

It's a gritty, emotional roller coaster of a movie that made many in my group cry several times. I didn't...I swear! But I was emotionally moved by the experience. I particularly enjoyed the musical score and was surprised to find it wasn't nominated for and Oscar. I downloaded one of the major songs and play it in the mornings to get pumped for the day. It's that good.

But now on to my next conquest. Don't get me wrong, I'll get to the other 38.5 movies over the course of this lifetime. My new goal however is a little less constricted yet still ambitious. My hope is to reach 4,000 movies before April 1, 2016. I'm at 3,050 right now; give or take a few and so far I have been indulging in Oscar nominees, old film noirs and experimental movies; you know fancy high-quality type stuff.

Sleepwalking can be so fly

My most recent foray into deep film-nerd territory was a film called Sleep My Love (1948); a Douglas Sirk joint about a woman suffering from major somnambulism. She wakes up on a train headed for Boston with a gun and no memory of the recent past. Needless to say things get more interesting from there. I'd recommend it if you're not unswayed by the black and white cinematography. The acting is pretty good and the story, while a little contrived at times, is pretty pulpy and fun. Check it out on Netflix when you get the chance.

But now I must leave my reading public. The goal is to have a new entry every week sometime over the weekend. With 1,097 days to go, I'll need to watch approximately six movies a week. Yikes.