brokenrecord

So I went through all the episodes of TV I need to see, and I'm like 44 episodes behind. That's 2 complete seasons of TV! I am going to actually try to catch up on a lot of this stuff this week (although there's no way I'm getting to all of it, especially since right now I'm pretty obsessed with watching as many movies as possible, and I'm half-way through The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins and I'm really liking it, so I'll want to spend some time reading that. Also, I probably should spend some time on schoolwork and stuff).

I finally watched the Psych finale, and lakjsf;lkj omg Hitchcock! They even included Frenzy, which while one of my least favorites of Hitchcock is one of his lesser known, so I liked that they didn't just stick to the major obvious ones. And Lifeboat! That's one of his I haven't seen (I've actually only seen half of all his films, but I have seen all his major ones and many of his minor ones). ( Spoilers for Psych 4.16 )

( Chuck 3.11 )

( How I Met Your Mother 5.18 )

( Greek 3.18-19 )

I'm somehow already at 52 movies this year. This has never happened before for me. Even last year when I got super obsessed with watching movies in February, in March I only watched 3, so I barely got to 50 by the end of June. And of course I didn't even come close to getting 100 by the end of that year. At this rate, I'll be to 100 by the end of June, meaning that I will have reached my goal in half the time I expected. This is mostly due to getting Netflix, because before when I didn't feel like watching movies, I just wouldn't watch any for a month because it's not like it was costing me anything. But since I'm paying money every month for Netflix, I feel like I have to watch stuff (with instant watch, I'm at about 27 cents a movie, which I think is pretty good). Plus, they physically send me movies, so it's not like I have to go to any trouble to see something that I'm interested in. I'm still surprised I've managed to get so many in, though. In April and May it'll probably die down a little, though, since I have a lot of various projects and assignments this month, and in May I'll have finals and then I'll probably be driving from St. Paul to Orange County with my parents like we normally do which takes a week and a half and I'll have spotty internet connection and no permanent location to receive DVDs.

Anyways, on my last day at home I watched 12 Angry Men and Stalag 17 with my mom on TCM (both of which were very good, although neither are going to vault into my favorite films of all time or anything), and now I'm desperately wishing I had cable TV here if only so I could watch TCM whenever I wanted. (Not that I didn't know how much awesome stuff TCM played before, but when I was checking to see what they had to watch, I looked past Saturday afternoon and saw a bunch of other stuff they were showing, and I wished I was staying at home longer just so I could watch them.) Having Netflix does help, of course, but there are a good number of films that look really good that I want to watch that aren't on Netflix. I already looked at the schedule for late May (when I'll be back home for sure) and I have a list of stuff I want to watch that's airing on TCM.

I want to rec some more movies, like I did with Memento, sometime this week, but I'm debating whether I should do mini-picspams of them. I want to, but I don't know that I have the time. I mean... I probably could fit it in, and I've mentioned I don't have a lot this week, but I have so much next week and the week after that I should start now (although I do have a 3-day weekend starting April 2nd, so that'll help), and it might be hard to find caps of some of the films I want to talk about. But we'll see.

Today is Academy Awards Nominations Day! I adore the Academy Awards. I can't even explain why. A lot of the time they make stupid choices (well, in my opinion; film taste is, of course, subjective), and most of the time several of the films I consider best of the year get little or no attention. But, I don't know. It's just so much fun! I can't really describe it. I like award shows in general, but I greatly prefer movie award shows because for TV award shows, even fewer TV shows I love get any attention, and they nominate the same crap year after year and the same stuff wins and it's just horribly boring. But at least with movies, if there's something I hate, it's gone the next year. And for the past 3 years, the movie that won Best Picture at the Oscars I've really loved, even if it wasn't my favorite of the year (let's not mention 2005, which was one of the greatest movie award injustices in history, in my opinion).

Anyways, enough about that. Here are my opinions on the nominations, and what my ideal nominations would have been (for the 8 major categories: picture, director, the writing categories, and all the acting categories; despite taking a film class and looking online, I still don't know the difference between sound editing and sound mixing, I barely understand Art Direction, and I don't have much of an opinion about the other categories most of the time. Although I do enjoy score and cinematography typically. But I didn't feel like discussing them).

( Academy Awards Nominations Thoughts )

( Ideal Academy Awards Nominations )

(omg I spent way too much time in Dunn Brothers putting this together. At least there are some open tables so I don't feel like too much of a douche.)

I didn't mention in my last post because I had so many things to complain about, but hey, it's February! January always goes by so quickly. Probably because most of the month I don't have school. Anyways, in January I watched 261 episodes of TV (which is crazy because that's way more than I usually watch in a month, 30 more than last January, and I'm like 1 1/2-2 weeks behind on TV due to not having internet), 11 movies (more than I expected considering I only watched 2 from 01/01-01/14), and read 2 books (! crazy! I don't know if I said this before, but my goal this year is to read at least one book a month. I hope to actually read more than 12 books in the whole year, but I tend to go in phases where I'll read like 7 books in a few weeks and then nothing the rest of the year, so reading at least one book a month should actually boost the number of books I read all year. Actually, I already finished one book in February, and I'll probably get to a few more what with the stupid internet not working for another few days, so that's good. I love reading, but it's too hard to work in while I have classes because even if I have time to read, I get too sucked in to whatever I'm reading and then neglect everything else so I can finish the book, and it's just easier not to read anything).

Not being able to watch the most recent episode of Chuck is physically hurting me. Okay, not really, but it does suck. Most stuff I can deal with having to wait 1-2 weeks to watch, but not Chuck. The same is true for Greek, actually, but it just came back so I'm more used to it not being around and so it doesn't seem as tragic that I haven't seen the last episode. Also, the fact that I'm going to miss the Lost premiere sucks. Although I suppose it's easier to delay watching that when I've already been waiting months and months than to delay watching something I'm used to seeing every week. I really hope I don't get spoiled for Lost, though. =/ I suppose the fact that I'm being more productive than normal (especially at this point in the term) doesn't suck. It is weird though. And I don't have enough work to take up my whole night, so I still end up with time left over with nothing to do.

Ok, time to go back to my apartment since I've been in here for like an hour and a half now.

Ok, so I managed to finish one "End of the Decade" picspam. Here are my favorite movies of the decade! ( Best Movies of the 2000s )

I forgot to mention it in my last post, but in August I watched 120 episodes of TV, 1 movie, and read 8 books (which seems like a lot of books, but they were all the Sookie Stackhouse books, so for some reason it feels like it shouldn't count). I'm going to end up getting so behind on watching movies. I don't think I'm even going to make 100 this year. Oh well.

More details from the trip: I went to the Grand Canyon for the first time. I have some nice shots of it. More importantly, there was the most adorable squirrel there who just came right up to us and started eating a berry or a nut or something and I got a lot of awesome pictures of it. Also, in the afternoon, it started raining (it rained nearly every day of the vacation. It stopped once we got to Missouri and Iowa) and as it moved through the canyon, the sun was shining, and there was a double (almost triple!) rainbow that arched into the bottom of the canyon. It was ridiculously amazing. I sadly didn't have my camera with me, but my parents got some nice shots, so I'm going to beg them to send me them.

Also, we visited my mom's uncle for the first time in 20 years. My mom's cousin, who I had never met, and she hadn't seen since she was 4, who lives in the area also came by, so I met him as well. It turns out I have a lot of random family I didn't know about. My great uncle gave my mom a bunch of pictures of her mom, his sister, who died when she was 12, and of her grandmother. There were also two letters, one from 1920 from my great uncle's uncle (I have no idea what that makes him to me) which described being in the Civil War and his living situation as a kid and stuff about my great grandfather (I guess that would make his brother my great great uncle? I have no idea), and another from 1840 or something from... someone I forget but some relative as he arrived in California, describing what it was like at the time. I found that stuff pretty cool. My uncle was very nice, although I always feel awkward in those situations. It was fine, though. He's 87, but he's super energetic. He and his wife are pretty hilarious together, too. She smokes, which he hates, and she was like "Well, I don't want to live to be 103 anyways," and he was like "Well, you better, because otherwise I'll be really lonely when I'm 113" (he's 10 years older than her).

I'm ridiculously excited for Glee. When I saw the Glee pilot back in May for the first time, I liked it, but I didn't get quite why everyone was going crazy over it. I think part of it was I saw the 10 minute (or 5 minute, whatever. I can't remember how long it was) preview and the show didn't really show me much that the preview didn't. And the show wasn't quite what I expected. I mean, I was still looking forward to it, but I just wasn't quite as crazy over it as everyone else. But I randomly decided to rewatch the pilot today and I think I'm loving it a lot more. Matthew Morrison in that last scene is just amazing. He looks like he's totally about to break down at the beginning, seeing them singing together, and then there's this moment where he's like "Yeah, ok, I'm going to do this" and then he walks forward, and ugh. He was one of the few things I totally adored the first time I watched it (in addition to Emma and him with Emma), and I somehow loved him even more this time around. I also didn't really care for Rachel/Finn for most of either time I watched it, but during Don't Stop Believing, the way Finn looks at her (not that I think there are even any feelings on his end. I can't really explain it. He's just so into the song and the performance!) kind of makes me ship them. I'm ridiculously excited for the new episode on Wednesday. It's going to make getting through the first day of classes so much easier knowing I have a new episode to look forward to.

ajksdf ok addendum to previous post: So Li also happens to be in the group for the differential equations project, and we were all supposed to meet at 8 tonight. Well one of the guys was in Wisconsin over the weekend and didn't get e-mailed about the meeting until today because I didn't have his e-mail, a different guy did, so we were expecting him not to show up. But Li said 8 would work, and then she e-mailed me at 7:30 to ask me when we were meeting and I told her 8, and guess who didn't show up again? ugh I don't understand what's going on! I feel like I'm not asking that much! I wouldn't even care if she was 15 or 20 minutes late, as long as she shows up. But by 9 she still hadn't shown up, and her phone was off. gah. This is why I hate group projects! It's better if I'm the only one responsible for the work so if I screw up, I have no one to blame but myself. At least the other guy showed up. But 50% of a group doesn't quite work. And I have a better understanding of what's going on in the class than he does, so we basically wasted an hour doing nothing but waiting.

And the thing is, when stuff like this happens, I just want to try to relax and forget about it and bring my mood up, and right now that means watching movies. I did end up watching The Apartment earlier (which I really liked, even though it wasn't quite what I expected), and now I want to watch another movie, but I really can't or I'll be wanting to shoot myself on Wednesday and Thursday. Except I think I might still do it anyway because I really can't focus on work right now. I know I'll end up getting everything done, anyways, because I always do. Apparently my study habits aren't going to be better this semester like I had intended. Whatever, I'll get up early tomorrow and be productive. And I was kind of productive earlier, anyway. I finished my German homework and I memorized all my German vocab for the next test which is the majority of the studying I have to do for the test and I usually do it the night before, so at least I'll have a little more time on Thursday if I need it (which I'm sure I will) to finish up the research proposal for stats. So I think I'll go take a shower, watch His Girl Friday, and then wake up early tomorrow and work on my stats lab and whatever else I need to do. (I mean, I'm done with all the work that's due tomorrow, it's more just whether or not I should start getting stuff done that's due later in the week so I won't go crazy when the work starts piling up.)

I was doing reading for my Research in Psych class and the chapter I was reading is about the internet and research and it's just very amusing. It starts off my discussing how the internet is an indispensable tool for researchers, especially for communication via electronic mail and then in parentheses it says ("e-mail") and it's like, yeah, thanks, I really didn't know what you were talking about. But then what was even more amusing to me was it started talking about discussion groups on-line where you can discuss psychological issues of interest to you, and it's like "Some are open to anyone who wishes to take part in the discussion, including those who only want to participate passively ("lurk")." And for some reason that just totally cracked me up. And from the way this chapter was going I was like "Was this book written in like 1997 or something?" But then I checked and it was written in 2006, so I don't understand why it's treating the internet like no one reading the book has ever used it.

Anyway, I was ridiculously productive on Saturday and really proud of myself, and then I did absolutely nothing on Sunday. I should have at least started my lab for Multivariate Stats (I'm starting to increasingly regret taking this class. I mean, yeah, it's interesting, but it's going to be way too much work in comparison to how good the class is and now that I think I'm just going to minor in math, I totally didn't need to take it. I should have stayed in Linear Algebra. Or come to this decision a month ago. Or never come to the decision to double major at all. I'm far too indecisive. :( ), but instead I watched the BAFTAs.

And then I started arranging a list of every movie I've ever watched from favorite to least favorite. ( Rambling about movies in general. )

Yes, I realize I'm probably taking this too seriously or spending too much time think about it. But I'm on a serious movie kick right now. I don't know why. It goes in phases. The Academy Awards coming up certainly helps that, though. I always feel like watching more movies before and after them. And I also just really felt like doing nothing yesterday. Which is exactly what I accomplished. Now I just have to hope that I understand my stats homework better than I think I do so it doesn't take forever. Anyway, I'm still fiddling with the list of all the movies ranked, but I'll probably post a link to it once I'm done. (ugh I really need to stop procrastinating and do work.)

So I did manage to get to 100 movies this year! I only got to 14 books, unfortunately, but oh well. Anyways, here's a list of everything I saw/read with ratings and short reactions for the movies.

( Movies in 2008 )

( Books in 2008 )

Last year I was attempting 150 movies, but that was clearly going to fail a few months into the year. I think I'll just go for 100 again, since it's still somewhat of a challenge. I think I'll try for 20 books. And I think I'm going to keep track of all the television episodes I watch in the year because I'm curious as to how many it'll actually be. I might get bored of that or forget about it after a little while, though.

Hope everyone had a happy New Year's Eve! Mine was pretty fun. Didn't get back home until 5 AM, so I just woke up like 30 minutes ago (around 1:15). That isn't really that late, but I'm pretty sure it's the latest I've ever slept in, which is kind of weird since I've totally stayed up later than that before. But whatever. It was kind of creepy driving home because it was ridiculously foggy and I've never driven in the fog at night before, and there was no one around. It was actually kind of pretty, though, too.

So I left all my purses/bags at school brilliantly and I've been borrowing one of my mom's whenever I go out, but I felt bad about it since I was pretty sure her purse would end up disappearing in my room never to be seen again if she kept lending it to me. So I went shopping with her yesterday and I got this awesome purse that I'm totally in love with. It's by Michael Kors and it was originally $498 but it was only $230 because it was on sale and I had a $200 gift card to Nordstrom from like 2 years ago that I never used because I never go there, so I ended up paying $30 for a $498 purse. Two pictures of it: here and here. After that we went to Old Navy and I got three new shirts. Shopping makes me very happy. :D

Then I went to Emma's for Secret Santa. I got Scrubs season 1 on DVD from Richard. I asked for a bunch of stuff but I knew that if I asked for that I'd get that no matter who drew my name since all of my friends love that show and I figured they wouldn't be able to resist. Anyways, it should be fun to watch it, although I'll probably wait until at least after New Year's to watch it.

I only have 5 movies to watch to get to 100! The DVD box set of Hitchcock movies I got for Christmas is definitely helping. I'll probably watch another of those tonight.

I'm starting to fail at updating again. blah. Nothing much has been going on this week. I've been kicking ass at school so far. I got 20/20 on the first two quizzes in Multivariable Calculus (we have a quiz every Friday and no tests except a mid-term and a final. We'll see how that goes), a check plus on my Research in Psych homework (...ok, that doesn't sound very impressive, but whatever. It's the only thing we've done so far, so it means I have 100% in the class. I'm sure that won't last, though.), and a 98 on my first German test. Haven't done anything in Developmental Psych, though. We got assigned into groups for these projects that will be presented from the first week of October until late November. I, of course, got put into the first group which is presenting in three weeks. sigh. Oh well. It'll probably be good to get it over with before the end of the semester. I have a lot of projects in that class, which kind of sucks. I mean, they all seem really interesting, but a pain to have to deal with. =/

I've been sucking at watching 150 movies in 2008. I had just about caught up at the end of July, and then I saw like one or two movies during August. I mean, I was pretty much just watching the Olympics 24/7 and working until I left for school, and then I was basically on vacation for a week. So I guess it's not without reason. But yeah, anyways, I need to watch more movies. I'm at 72 which is still pretty impressive for me considering two years ago I was only at 67 by the end of the year, and last year I got to 100 just a few days before the end of the year. But I would like to get to 150, so I'll attempt to watch more.

I was going to go see Burn after Reading yesterday, but it was raining all afternoon, and I didn't really want to spend 20 minutes in the rain walking to the movie theater. Especially since my umbrella is screwed up. And today I have homework to do and my room is still a mess and I really need to fix that. I might go next weekend. We'll see.

For some reason lately I've really been in the mood to watch 40s movies. Over the summer I was more into late 50s, early 60s movies, but now it's shifted more to 40s and early 50s. Don't really know why. I've also found that I'm totally in love with both Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart (Cary Grant I knew I loved over the summer, but Jimmy Stewart is a more recent discovery). But yeah, anyways, does anyone want to rec me any movies from that time period? I've seen like less than 10 from that time period, so you don't need to worry about if I've already seen the movie before because I probably haven't. I want to see more movies from that period, but there are so many to choose from that it's hard to know where to get started. So yeah, I'd really appreciate it.

Ok, homework time.