A blog in review

Here is a list of posts from 2009 that I'm especially proud of:

I started The Audacity of Rock series mostly to show that new rock and old rock are equally ridiculous. The posts themselves are pretty ridiculous, but they give me an excuse to bum around the internet for an hour and find good musical matches. Anyway, you can look at all 34 parts (so far?) here.

January

• Sylvia Scarlett is a really random movie, that I think is best remembered through pictures.
• I love that the post that got the most traffic this year was my Buffy vs. Twilight one. For such a short post, it got a lot of comments both from haters and lovers. Seriously, go read the comments.
• A Medley of the Day of creepy songs about teenage girls.

February

• Considering two classic films in Actor Appreciation: Jean Gabin
• Staring into the most haunting eyes in cinema.

March

• In which I tackled both Grease and Grease 2.
• A soundtrack edition of Medley of the Day.
• The original Some great beards.

April

• A post about How to Steal a Million because you should see it.
• Jesus Christ Superstar because I like to post about random movies.
• Some great beards 2.

May

• Because no one else spent this much time analyzing the merits of the Mormon Pride & Prejudice.
• A quote-heavy post about one of my all-time favorites, That Thing You Do!
• Delicatessan is pretty.
• In which the brilliantly done miniseries North & South and Daniel Deronda are discussed.
• A lesson in sexy, Some great rolled-up sleeves.

June

• Medley of the Day: Desperate love song edition. I'm going to go ahead and say it's a brilliant mix on my part.
• Viewing the miniseries He Knew He Was Right as camp.
• Thoughts on Band of Brothers.
• Again with the Pride and Prejudice, but this time the awful Lost in Austen.
• Another guide to attractiveness, Some great glasses.

July

• A Scorsese film I liked! Taxi Driver.
• I really enjoyed my week-long Shyamalanathon 2009 series. While M. Night Shyamalan may need the wake-up call George Lucas never got, I hope people reconsider writing him off altogether. Here are my reviews of

1. The Sixth Sense,
2. Unbreakable,
3. Signs (a vlog with quiet sound!),
4. The Village,
5. Lady in the Water,
6. The Happening,
7. and the lovely music by James Newton Howard.

• Bringing Up Baby vs. My Man Godfrey: Who will win?

August

• Looking at the similarities between (500) Days of Summer and Two For the Road.
  
• The 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice may be my favorite (besides the BBC miniseries, of course).
• So I finally figured out the title of the movie was Far from the Madding Crowd, although that didn't change the fact that Terence Stamp is the best part.
• So I kept noticing that the phrase "silver spoon" kept popping up: Medley.

September

• A look at 1980's Raging Bull and The Elephant Man.
• Prostitutes in musicals = great songs.
• So I was really bored waiting for school to start and unofficially started a Shakespeare-athon, mostly based on watching all of the Shakespeare-Retold versions:

1. The Taming of the Shrew
2. Macbeth
3. A Midsummer Night's Dream
4. Much Ado About Nothing

• Some great beards 3.
• The very helpful first edition of Taking advice from the media: How to make friends.

October

• Part 2 of Taking advice from the media: How to make friends.
• I trace the roots of "Elephant Love Medley" from Moulin Rouge!.
• Oh, Dune.

November

• I love a good key change.
• In which I prove small children are funnier than Andy Samberg.
• A book review of Wuthering Heights (an earlier movie review)

December

• A review of The Things They Carried.
• Hollywood at its most ridiculous (read: racist).
  

Shirley Valentine (1989)

I don't have much to say about Shirley Valentine except that people should know it exists. It's about a woman who used to a rebel in school, but is now a 40-something housewife who speaks to her wall*. She's due for a life/sexual awakening when she runs off to Greece with her girlfriend Jane and rediscovers her old self--Shirley Valentine--with an affair with a Greek bar owner guy.

Originally a one-woman show, the transition to full-fledged movie is choppy and awful. And honestly, Pauline Collins is painful onscreen, with her inability to convey feeling through her eyes or lilting speech, and Tom Conti is a British man playing a Greek man, 'nuff said.

The one redeeming thing about this movie: the title sequence.




*If only that wall could talk back, it might have been entertaining.

148 minutes of propoganda and fake Asians

Apparently,

Dragon Seed is a 1944 war drama film starring Katharine Hepburn. Based on a best-selling book by Pearl S. Buck, the film portrays a peaceful village in China that has been invaded by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese war. The men in the village choose to adopt a peaceful attitude toward their conquerors, but Jade (played by Hepburn), a headstrong woman, stands up to the Japanese. (wiki)

All I know is that I cracked at about 1 hour in, started singing narration to the movie right before the 2 hour mark, and nearly missed the movie ending, feeling like there was never a time before this movie started. I'm just grateful I had a friend* to survive another ridiculous movie from the Katharine Hepburn collection I got last Christmas (see also: Sylvia Scarlett).

Anyway, it's a really long movie that takes about 45 minutes at the beginning to blandly develop the main core of characters as if to prove that Chinese people are people too. Except the main characters are all played in yellowface. Facepalm.

With all the subtlety and accuracy of a Harriet Beecher Stowe novel, I give you narrated stills from what has to be one of the worst movies I've ever seen:

Not one of these actors are Asian. Except maybe the baby.

Spot the one that doesn't fit.

The one on the right played Clarence the Angel in It's a Wonderful Life. My soul just died.

At least the children are Asian?

The two guys sandwiching Akim Tamiroff (whose accent was at least Russian and not faux-Chinese) got some lines. It was incredible.

I think Kate was trying to harness a demure and wifely attitude, but instead her performance was creepy and stilted.

Japanese soldiers after a self-sacrificing mother proving that mustaches are an international sign of villianry.

What I felt like watching this movie.

This baby was the only thing that entertained me for the last hour of this movie. Um, the poor thing is in a basket.

I think I was supposed to get some message that even the good guys can get caught up in the carnage of war. All I got was "this guy is frightening. Also, not Asian."

This attractive bespectacled soldier comes to the door at about 105 minutes into the movie for a total of 10 seconds. I should state that Dragon Seed's plot, as described in synopsis, all happens after this point, but I honestly stopped paying attention. This moment was the last time I felt pleased about anything in this movie, and I'm really only writing about Dragon Seed to let other people know that there exists a movie in which Katharine Hepburn is playing a Chinese woman. You're welcome.

*Thanks, Margaux!

25 Days of Christmas Music: I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day

Merry Christmas! My last musical gift to you is the 1977 performance by Johnny Cash and June Carter for a Christmas program with Billy Graham and family:


These two are the sweetest couple. I love them so much.

25 Days of Christmas Music: She's Right On Time

This music video is ridiculous, but I always find Billy Joel's love songs heart-warming in their originality. 1982's "She's Right On Time":

25 Days of Christmas Music: Cryin' Christmas Tears

A 1998 performance by Eric Clapton. Blueseriffic. "Cryin' Christmas Tears." Go.


Hey, look! The Clintons!