#seethis

just chilling 

thawing out

I am apparently still madly in love with Madchen Amick.

I mean, I saw her and just....BOOM!

Essential Movies

What is an essential movie?  To me it is a movie that you give as a reason why you love movies.  It’s a movie you wish to share with everyone you know and spend hours talking about it.  It’s a movie that on some level changed your life.  These are my essential movies.

The Big Lebowski (1998)

Directors: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Writers: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Stars: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore

The Big Lebowski may be the most analyzed film by the Coen Brothers, and while I've read a few, I really don't care. Sure, it's loaded with metaphors and film technique and is quite brilliant and I appreciate all of that, but I love it because it is a terribly funny and entertaining movie.

The only subtext that speaks to me is the dynamic of Bridges' and Goodman's characters, both Vietnam veterans of a sort, and the strange friendship between two complete opposites. That dynamic, representing the divide that Vietnam created, is incredibly heartwarming. There should be terrible animosity there because of wounds that haven't healed, but we have a deep and true friendship born through America's true national past time of bowling.  Both of them are firmly stuck in their past, but commune with each other in the present.

As a comedy I feel it is quite underrated. The movie has almost a laid back Marx Brothers feel to it with quick and clever lines delivered just a bit slower than Groucho would, and quite a bit of physical comedy. Take some time to watch it just on the surface. Just be entertained.

This is a movie that has been written about way too much, so I'm keeping this brief. The Big Lebowski is an epic filmmaker's film on one level, a slapstick comedy on another, and a movie about unlikely companions, friendship, and how we aren't all that different from each other if we set aside the past, the politics, and stop to learn about each other over a simple game.

Rating: 5/5

Favorite Quotes:

The Dude: That rug really tied the room together.

Blond Treehorn Thug: [holding up a bowling ball] What the fuck is this?

The Dude: Obviously you're not a golfer.

The Dude: It's all a god damn fake, man. It's like Lenin said: you look for the person who will benefit, and, uh, uh, you know...

Donny: I am the walrus.

The Dude: You know, you'll uh, uh - well, you know what I'm trying' to say...

Donny: I am the walrus.

Walter Sobchak: That fucking bitch!

The Dude: Oh yeah!

Donny: I am the walrus.

Walter Sobchak: Shut the fuck up, Donny! V.I. Lenin. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov!

Donny: What the fuck is he talking about?

The Stranger: Take it easy, Dude.

The Dude: Oh, yeah!

The Stranger: I know that you will.

The Dude: Yeah, well - the Dude abides.

[Exits with beers in hand]

The Stranger: [to the camera] The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners.

Sherry in 'Logjammin': [on video] You must be here to fix the cable.

Maude Lebowski: Lord. You can imagine where it goes from here.

The Dude: He fixes the cable?

Maude Lebowski: Don't be fatuous, Jeffrey.

Essential Movies

What is an essential movie?  To me it is a movie that you give as a reason why you love movies.  It’s a movie you wish to share with everyone you know and spend hours talking about it.  It’s a movie that on some level changed your life.  These are my essential movies.

Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Directors: Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise

Writers: Linda Woolverton (animation screenplay by), Brenda Chapman (story by)

Stars: Paige O'Hara, Robby Benson, Jesse Corti

It's hard to say if this is my favorite Disney animated film, but at times, usually after I have just watched it again, it often is.

It is not the best animation I've seen from the studio, it lacks a level of detail that their best work has, but it is some of the best character design and background work they've ever done. The capturing of the movement of the characters, especially Belle's dresses and the Beast's movements are some of the best in all of animation. It also has a wonderful story that combines the best Disney traditions of humor, adventure, romance, and a fair bit of the darkness that all good fairy tales bring.  Plus the awesome awfulness that is Gaston, the paragon of the patriarchy and toxic masculinity.  Rarely has there been a better villain.

It is a classic, and the music is some of the best they put out at a time when they could do absolutely nothing wrong in that department. You find something new every time, sometimes something wonderful like the painterly textures on some of the backgrounds that are reminiscent of impressionist brush strokes...and sometimes something that shocks you that you never noticed it, like the fact that the curse had lasted 10 years, and ended on the Beast's 21st birthday.

He was 11 years old when he was cursed. Someone needs to do something about these out of control enchantresses! And his parents, did they just abandon him out of shame? It lends a whole different level of tragedy to the story, and explains much more about the Beast's behavior...cursed as a child, abandoned, and raised by his staff who were also cursed for no good reason.

I love this movie, and I will never get tired of returning to it.

Rating: 5/5

Favorite Quotes:

Gaston: It's not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts getting ideas and thinking.

Gaston: [rudely flipping through Belle's book] How can you read this? There's no pictures!

Belle: Well, some people use their imagination.

Cogsworth: Well, Your Highness, I must say everything is going just swimmingly. I knew you had it in you, ha ha!

Beast: [sadly] I let her go.

Cogsworth: Huh, huh, huh! Yes, yes, spled...

[stops]

Cogsworth: You what? How could you do that?

Beast: I had to.

Cogsworth: Yes, but, but, but but why?

Beast: Because I love her.

Belle: [singing] I want adventure in the great wide somewhere. / I want it more than I can tell. / And for once it might be grand / To have someone understand / I want so much more than they've got planned.

Belle: Gaston, you are positively primeval!