The Triumphant Return

The Triumphant Return

I, uh, haven't updated this thing in forever. I've been working to some fair extent, but that hasn't really been a big part of not updating. I got into the daily routine of things and blogging just wasn't part of that routine. A-whoops.

I just got a job promotion, a job which should have started today. I went in and everything. I only found out after working for nearly two hours that the shoot date had been pushed a week. Some pretty poor communication on that front. No big whoop, though. I got some stuff organized, saved the company almost $2000 and charged them for a full day as I left at lunch. All in a half day's work for this guy.

Other than that, I made a promise to myself to watch decent movies again. As such, I have a pretty extensive movie list this go-round. Certainly not all decent, but it's definitely got more gems in it than usual.

Oh, I picked up my first laptop, too. I got it as a work organizer/writing aid. It's pretty cool. It's got Windows Vista and--after the updates, of course--I'm up and running smoothly. I've even got a little LAN setup in the apartment. I got so excited when I discovered that I could watch movies from Jessie's hard drive on my laptop across the LAN. Oh, the nerdry!

For those keeping track at home, that's a wedding ring, a computer and a car in about two months. My credit's going to be a force in about ten years.

I think I'm going to try out Netflix's "Watch It Now" feature where they stream a movie straight to your computer. The way it breaks down is--at no extra charge--Netflix will stream you an hour of movie for every dollar you pay a month. I pay about $25 a month for their service, so I would get 25 hours of streaming movie. I'll report back how it works.

*UPDATE* I just watched The Motel with Netflix's "Watch It Now" feature, and it was great quality with no lag or hang-ups the entire movie. The film itself reminded me of indie movies made in the early nineties when there was still an indie scene to speak of. You know, it had the thrills of bucking the system and the pratfalls of a student film. Still, it was nice to watch an immature, small movie again. I had no idea people were still making them like this.

Watching:

The Motel

Spider-Man 3

Hot Fuzz

Point Break

Lethal Weapon

Lethal Weapon 2

Lethal Weapon 3

Jason and the Argonauts

Dreamgirls

Young Sherlock Holmes

Rocky

Rocky II

Rocky III

This was the first time I'd seen Rocky III. Things were different in the eighties, clearly. Exhibit A: Skip to the 3:00 (or the :25 remaining) mark in the video below to see a grown, married man in short-shorts splash around in the beach's surf with another grown, married man in short-shorts. Some unorthodox uses of the male gaze in these running sequences, too.

Rocky IV

Exhibit B: Robots flew completely under the radar in the 80's. I'd completely forgotten it until I watched Rocky IV again. Apparently the 80's had so innoculated me to robots that it made no impression on me whatsoever when I first saw the film.

Rocky Balboa

Goodfellas

State of Grace

Dead or Alive Final

"Jonestown: Paradise Lost"

Cars

Invincible

For Your Consideration

Kicking and Screaming (The Noah Baumbach film, not the Will Ferrell one.)

Black Orpheus

La Dolce Vita

Amarcord

Pandora's Box

Diary of a Chambermaid

Clean, Shaven

The Phantom of Liberty

Shaolin Soccer

Kung Fu Hustle

Reading:

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter (Finished. Fiiiiiiinally.)

The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching, Terence & Dennis Mckenna

D