Once again while I hate to post two DVDs in a row, nothing drove me to post in between. So here we go.

This time I am once again on my quest to watch all of the 100 Years 100 Movies list the AFI put out in 1997. They just announced that they are going to revise the list this year for the 10th anniversary of them originally putting out the list. I need to get my pace up! I started this process at #100 soon after they put out the list. M*A*S*H is #56. Which means I have watched 45 of these movies in 10 years. I need to watch the next 55 a lot faster if I’m going to watch them all before they revise the list! Who am I kidding, I’m not going to get them all watched that soon. But I’ll finish off the old list (it’ll probably take another 10 years) then I’ll go back and pick up whatever new movies they add since then. :-)

Anyway… M*A*S*H. It was nominated for some awards when it came out. It made #56 on this AFI list. I must admit I don’t see the appeal at all. Now, maybe it is because I watched the TV show a lot when I was younger and was used to that, but it just did nothing for it. But I’m not sure that is really it. It is more that this movie was not a single coherent story. It was more like several separate episodes of the TV series (or a TV series) . But they weren’t funny. And there was never enough length to really get to know the characters. And you (or at least I) never really cared about them at all.

It was neat seeing Radar, cause of course unlike all the rest, he was played by the same actor in the TV series. But otherwise, it felt like there was nothing to see here. It plodded forward. A few things happened. Hearing the theme song with the actual lyrics rather than the instrumental version used in the TV show is neat. But that really is about it. There is the shower thing with Hot Lips, there is the whole fake suicide thing the theme song was written for, and there is a stupid football game thing at the end. And then it ends.

Woo. Anyway, no need to see this one again. Once was more than enough. Before I started this I actually thought I’d seen it before many years ago, but after seeing it I realized I’d only seen bits and pieces on TV… and I’d always switched to another channel after watching only a few minutes at a shot. Now having watched the whole thing, I understand why.

I was going to try to post something else before I posted another DVD, but in several days I haven’t had anything to say yet. Closest I came was talking about how Roscoe really liked to roll around in the snow. But I didn’t even have a picture even, so that was about all I had to say on that. And I just did.

Oh, the movie… this was (if you couldn’t guess) an Amy chosen movie. We watched the “unrated” version on the DVD rather than the theatrical version. Which basically meant a few more swear words and a little more sexual innuendo. I gather anyway. Didn’t actually watch the original to compare.

This is about four teenage girls who conspire to ruin the reputation of a guy who cheated on three of them (with the others of them) and then later when that fails to break his heart using the fourth girl as bait. Given that sentence, you can probably pretty much work out how the rest of the movie works out.

As with most of the movies that are Amy picks lately, this gets essentially the same summary from me… it was slightly amusing and I didn’t want to run away screaming, but it was not memorable at all and definitely nothing I would ever pick on my own. But I fully acknowledge that if I were an 11 year old girl my opinions might well be quite different. I believe Amy watched it at least twice before she was ready to send it back.

This had been on my list to watch, but it was WAY down the list… like I’ll see it in a decade or two down the list… but while my mom was visiting she wanted to see it, so I moved it to my top of my list and we watched it while she was here. Well, my mom and I did. Brandy went to sleep and Amy opted out since I told her it was a boring documentary. :-)

For those not familiar, this is of course the Al Gore global warming movie. I had of course figured it would be a boring Al Gore movie and just have the usual sort of green activist sort of stuff and end up annoying me. I was wrong. After the first few minutes the movie had me hooked. There is no NEW information in this movie… at least not for anybody who has been following such issues and reading articles on it as they pop up over the last few years. But it was just all put together in one place in a very well done, compelling package.

I believe I actually told Brandy the next morning that it was the best movie I’d seen in the last 18 months or so. Now, I’m not sure that is entirely due to this movie being absolutely incredible, but also due to the mostly non-memorable nature of the other movies I’ve seen in the last couple of years… but it was really good. It had my attention the whole time. It manipulated my emotions in the way it meant to, and presented a lot of information in a nice easy to digest way. And Al Gore showed humor and warmth which if he’d shown in 2000 might have served him well.

I highly recommend this movie. Go rent it. It is important stuff.

Having said that, I wouldn’t necessarily say that I’d end up promoting any of Al’s specific ideas about how to deal with any of it. I’d probably disagree with most of it, as I’m not a fan of government regulation of stuff and he is. But it is still an important issue and this is an important contribution.

Good stuff.

So early Tuesday (UTC) we watched Gotcha! which is apperantly one of Brandy’s favorite films, although she hadn’t seen it in about a decade. The main character in this was played by Anthony Edwards who by coinicence was the husband in the last movie we watched earlier in the weekend. He was much younger and had hair in this movie though.

It was a fun little movie. I don’t think it has leapt to the “favorite movie” type status for me like it is on Brandy’s list, but it was fun as long as you didn’t think about it all that much. College kid has some spy adventures, and in the end the little games he plays on campus give him skills he needs to help foil the bad guys.

It is a cute little movie. Worth watching. We watched it on a laptop though. Probably should have watched it on the projector. BUt Amy was busy using that to watch something else. Anyway, fun little movie.

Last weekend we watched one of Amy’s movies. This was supposedly loosely based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night”. But I had never seen or read that play, so I can’t evaluate that. But basically it is all about a girl who decides to pretend to be a boy (taking the place of her brother in order to prove she can play soccer as well as the boys) and all the hi-jinx and romantic triangles and rectangles and such that ensue.

There were a few funny moments. But this most definitely was aimed at the 10-13 year old girl demographic, not at 36 year old men. It was cute and all, especially if you managed to completely and totally forget about the fact that she was not a convincing male and all the huge plot holes. But forgetting that, it was cute and there were a few moments to laugh at.

And if you happen to have a 10 to 13 year old girl around, they will enjoy it I am sure. :-)