Slaughterhouse-Five-stars

I was hoping for a good WWII story, but I got a satirical, at times confusing, story of a man who lives his lifetime out of order, and eventually ends up on a different planet. I suppose I should've known, it being a story written by Kurt Vonnegut, not that I've ever even opened one of his books or can name any other he's written. A little too weird for me, I guess. I want John Waynes and Clint Eastwoods sneaking around shooting up Nazis and blowing up airplanes. I prefer my WWII film dumbed-down, I suppose.

Any of you read the book? Any good? Am I just not cultured enough?

Heartbreaking Comedies

This is my first time writing for a blog so I apologize in advance if this turns out bad or I make mistakes.  I also can't promise I am as good of a writer as Sitzman or Dusty.

I recently watched Seeking A Friend At The End Of The World.  I went into the movie expecting a dark, slightly goofy, comedy.  While it is those things, I unexpectedly found myself feeling extreme sadness throughout the entire film.  For those who don't know, Seeking A Friend stars Steve Carell and Keira Knightley going on a road trip across New England while an asteroid is quickly approaching promising the apocalypse.  As with other road trip movies, the two encounter a wide array of great character actors and goofy situations.  My favorite was a party that Carell goes to in which the adults are getting kids drunk and trying heroin because, honestly, who cares, the world is ending in two weeks.  What makes this movie different from other road trip films though, is the impeding doom that looms over the entire film.  Nearly every scene has a feeling of urgency and fear.  This seems strange for a comedy, but is also one of the reasons I found it so interesting.  Carell's character spends the first part of the film doing what he would normally do any other day.  He goes to work (as an insurance salesman), comes home and watches TV.  He doesn't act like someone who KNOWS he will die in less than two weeks.  While he is doing normal things, very abnormal things are happening in the background.  People are constantly committing suicide, riots are starting, parties eventually turn into orgies, etc.  It makes the movie feel extremely real.  I kept finding myself thinking of Children of Men during a lot of these scenes.  I also found myself wondering what I would do if an asteroid was going to end the world.  Would I be a different person?  Would I start doing drugs and getting drunk constantly (something I don't do now)?  Would I regret the life I've lived thus far?  These are questions that are very strange to ponder, especially during a comedy.  The end was extremely heart-wrenching.  I actually felt scared when the asteroid was imminent and jumped when I heard it hit.  Then I cried harder than I've cried during a movie in a very long time.

This made me think about other great comedies that are hysterically funny one moment and dreadfully sad the next.  Judd Apatow and John Hughes made their career making these films.  Every Thanksgiving our family watches Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and every year I want to cry for Del Griffith when Neal realizes that his wife has been dead (sorry for the spoiler if you haven't seen it yet, and if you haven't GO WATCH IT NOW!).  I love it when a movie can make you feel so strongly for a character, in a hilarious comedy no less, and make you cry while you've been laughing.  They seem very realistic and true-to-life in that way.

I didn't realize it before, but I've kinda been on a phase of these "heartbreaking comedies."  In the past week, I've watched Planes, Trains, Seeking A Friend, The Royal Tenenbaums and 50/50 (which is one of my favorite sad comedies of all-time).

Here is a list of my Top 5 Favorite Heartbreaking Comedies:

1. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (John Hughes)
2. The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson)
3. Knocked Up (Judd Apatow)
4. 50/50 (Jonathon Levine)
5. Lars and the Real Girl (Craig Gillepsie)

Dustin falls down at the landfill and then watches Madagascar

It seems weird having my first movie post be about two short kid's movies, but I guess that's just how it goes sometimes...

Since I made a trip to the landfill, in which I fell down trying to pull out a king-sized mattress out of the back of my new truck (I bought Keith's old truck), and was getting home later than usual for dinner, Sam ordered Chinese. She also suggested the three of us eat dinner in our newly rearranged basement while we watch something on Netflix Instant. Since it is the holiday season, and since we needed to choose something for Evelyn to watch too, we chose a couple of Madagascar Christmas shorts to watch. I've never watched any of the Madagascar films, but after watching these two, I was intrigued enough to watch the original Madagascar some day. Both were pretty funny and well played out. The best part was, though, when Evelyn coughed up some broccoli. We had a good laugh over that.

Get ready for The Hobbit!

My friend Alec is a genius. He texted me and said in order to get ready for The Hobbit he's going to watch the chapters of the dvds of The Lord of the Rings trilogy in reverse, starting with Return of the King, naturally. Brilliant!

Spaghetti Western Star Wars!

Here's a couple of posters I ran across while riding through the Sitz's post reminded me that I had saved them.

Carbonite Is Forever

I know that Star Wars fans, especially a few years ago, seemed to get into a sort of "Boba Fett" fetishism ("Boba Fettishism"?), and I don't really want to be like that. Still, this looks like it would be pretty cool:

Sitz's First Review: Get Low

Actually, Deuce, I like the way you review movies, if it's like the movie diary thing you showed me. I looked again at what you emailed me a while back, and it was mostly comments, but without the "extra" stats like ratings, years, if you'd seen it before, etc. (By the way, I think the stats are cool). I tend to NOT write reviews sometimes because I think they need to be big and meaningful, and it's hard to live up to one's own expectations. Anyhow, a short paragraph will likely suffice for 95% of what I want to talk about, even if I do write five paragraphs. But that's just how I am sometimes: wordy.

This poster is actually nothing like the movie. Well, except the beard.

Anyhow, we watched Get Low tonight. I'd gotten it from Paul for Christmas this past year but we'd not watched it yet. For shame! It was very good. Bill Murray has always been one of my favorite actors, and he was great in this. I've never been much of a fan of Robert Duvall, but he was a good lead in this movie. I won't talk too much about the plot, since you can see it if you want, but it does involve the idea of a living funeral, which I think is a pretty cool idea. I guess on the whole I'd give the movie a 7 or 8 out of 10.

What have you been watching? Reading? Listening to? I'm hoping we can also talk about other kinds of things going on besides just movies. As you said, it can be a sort of way to talk about what's going on in life, too. 

Good to see you here!

Hi.

I hope I don't let Sitz, and anyone else who might read this blog, down.  I'm a little nervous.

I hope my posts aren't too bland.  I've been using my movie-diary entries recently as not only what I thought of the movie, but also what I've been up to lately and how that has brought me to find and watch this particular movie.

So, I guess anyone who chooses to read this blog, now knowing how I write my posts, can skip over mine and just read Sitz's.

Welcome!

Since we originally intended this to be a movie blog, this seemed like a good video to start off with: