Christmas & New Years DVDs
2011 was the year when I almost stopped watching TV. Weekday
mornings I have it on when I’m getting ready for work to catch up on news and
current events. In the evening I watch the news (again) and some of whatever
catches my eye for a half hour or so before gaming time. Weekends I don’t watch
TV at all from when I get home on Friday afternoon till Monday morning when I
get up for work. This Christmas and New Year break has been no exception with
the TV being on only to watch DVDs at any point in the last 17 days. If I
wasn’t such a movie fan I might even consider not having a TV at all. I really
don’t think I’d miss it all that much. But with a stack of DVDs to watch and
plenty of time to watch them I most certainly made serious inroads to the pile
stacked in front of the TV. They where (in chronological order):
There Will be Blood
The Breakfast Club
Weird Science
Black Swan
Pale Rider
Déjà Vu
The Runaways
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Emma
Mr Nobody
Unforgiven
I also finished off Season 4 of Futurama, saw Puss in Boots
at the cinema and watched the first episode of the ITV classic Inspector Morse
detective series. I tried, and failed, to watch Blue Valentine only managing to
sit through 50 minutes (after two attempts) before giving up. Oh, and I watched
all 14 episodes of Firefly back-to-back on New Years Eve just because I could.
So numbers wise it wasn’t not too bad though I couldn’t help but be
disappointed with the overall quality. Maybe I’ll have better luck with new movies
in 2012 – but I’m not exactly holding my breath here.
7 comments:
Fourteen hours of Firefly! Wow. I've watched four episodes in a row before, but never the whole set. Did you run out of time for Serenity? ;)
I could have watched Serenity too - I finished the series at about 10pm - but opted to play a bit of WoW instead.
BTW - it's only around 12 hours. The first episode was about 90 minutes, the rest ran to about 42.
One previous Christmas I watched the extended editions of all three LotR movies. Now *that* was a marathon!
We just watched Serenity the other night and started back through Firefly (I believe my 4th time through).
I wish we got your news over here. I absolutely cannot watch American news. Local news is inane and cutesy. And with national news, you would think that FOX is the only one with a problem, but it's not. For what the other networks lack in bias, they make up for in incompetency and irrelevancy.
I've seen most of the movies you listed and I'm a big fan of There Will be Blood and Unforgiven especially. I keep meaning to see The Runaways but just haven't got around to it yet.
BTW, my word verification was 'cycon'. That's close enough to Cylon and I believe it's some kind of sign for me to go watch Battlestar Galactica again.
dbackdad said: We just watched Serenity the other night and started back through Firefly (I believe my 4th time through).
I'll probably watch Serenity next weekend. Reviews forthcoming on both series and movie.
dbackdad said: I wish we got your news over here. I absolutely cannot watch American news. Local news is inane and cutesy. And with national news, you would think that FOX is the only one with a problem, but it's not.
I do find some of your 'news' programming astonishing. Some of ours isn't much better but is usually advertised as light entertainment rather than news. Our local news can be very cutesy too - though it does have its serious side. I watch local news purely for the weather. For national and international news I still trust the BBC but it helps to understand their inherent bias. My favourite news show is on our Channel 4 which I find refreshingly and savagely liberal.
dbackdad said: I've seen most of the movies you listed and I'm a big fan of There Will be Blood and Unforgiven especially.
I didn't like 'Blood' and I think it was the first time I'd watched 'Unforgiven' all the way through for the first time last week. I can see its appeal but its not one of my favourite westerns.
dbackdad said: I keep meaning to see The Runaways but just haven't got around to it yet.
I thought it was a reasonable music based film. Kristen Stewart was surprisingly good as the young Joan Jett.
I think my affection for dark movies Blood and Unforgiven is (1) disturbing and (2) reflective of my sometimes dour view of modern society. In many ways I feel society is deeply flawed and bent on self-destruction, like the characters in these films. Though I grew up on the classic westerns, they really don't appeal to me unless they say something on a larger canvas about life. Unforgiven was largely a deconstruction of the western genre and that's probably why I liked it.
I've seen most of those movies. M is a huge movie goer so I end up seeing a lot of movies. I don't get to read books as frequently as I would like. My new year's resolution is to read more books for pleasure this year, and try to quit working so many crazy hours and multiple jobs. Let's see how long that resolution lasts.
I do hope that your New Years Resolution pans out. Reading is good for you!
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