AFI's 100 Years, 100 Movies

I want to compare a little bit with the TIME list, and see which of THIS list I have seen- AFI's list does seem to include more popular films. Anyway, they also replaced 23 of the films in 2007 with some old, some newer films. So, this list will include those that were deleted in 2007 as well, and be a bit long. ! following the date means that I have seen the film. I will make notes on those I have seen at some point.

1. Citizen Kane 1941
2. Casablanca 1942!
3. The Godfather 1972!
4. Gone with the Wind 1939!
5. Lawrence of Arabia 1962
6. The Wizard of Oz 1939!
7. The Graduate 1967
8. On the Waterfront 1954
9. Schindler's List 1993!
10. Singin' in the Rain 1952!
11. It's a Wonderful Life 1946
12. Sunset Boulevard 1950
13. The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957
14. Some Like It Hot 1959!
15. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope 1977!
16. All About Eve 1950!
17. The African Queen 1951
18. Psycho 1960!
19. Chinatown 1974
20. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 1975!
21. The Grapes of Wrath 1940
22. 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968
23. The Maltese Falcon 1941
24. Raging Bull 1980
25. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial 1982!
26. Dr. Strangelove 1964!
27. Bonnie and Clyde 1967
28. Apocalypse Now 1979
29. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 1939
30. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 1948
31. Annie Hall 1977
32. The Godfather Part II 1974
33. High Noon 1952
34. To Kill a Mockingbird 1962!
35. It Happened One Night 1934!
36. Midnight Cowboy 1969
37. The Best Years of Our Lives 1946
38. Double Indemnity 1944
39. Doctor Zhivago 1965
40. North by Northwest 1959
41. West Side Story 1961!
42. Rear Window 1954!
43. King Kong 1933
44. The Birth of a Nation 1915
45. A Streetcar Named Desire 1951
46. A Clockwork Orange 1971
47. Taxi Driver 1976
48. Jaws 1975!
49. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1937!
50. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 1969
51. The Philadelphia Story 1940
52. From Here to Eternity 1953
53. Amadeus 1984
54. All Quiet on the Western Front 1930
55. The Sound of Music 1965!
56. MASH 1970
57. The Third Man 1949
58. Fantasia 1940!
59. Rebel Without a Cause 1955
60. Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981!
61. Vertigo 1958!
62. Tootsie 1982!
63. Stagecoach 1939
64. Close Encounters of the Third Kind 1977
65. The Silence of the Lambs 1991!
66. Network 1976
67. The Manchurian Candidate 1962!
68. An American in Paris 1951
69. Shane 1953
70. The French Connection 1971
71. Forrest Gump 1994!
72. Ben-Hur 1959
73. Wuthering Heights 1939
74. The Gold Rush 1925
75. Dances with Wolves 1990!
76. City Lights 1931
77. American Graffiti 1973!
78. Rocky 1976!
79. The Deer Hunter 1978
80. The Wild Bunch 1969
81. Modern Times 1936
82. Giant 1956
83. Platoon 1986
84. Fargo 1996!
85. Duck Soup 1933
86. Mutiny on the Bounty 1935
87. Frankenstein 1931
88. Easy Rider 1969
89. Patton 1970
90. The Jazz Singer 1927
91. My Fair Lady 1964!
92. A Place in the Sun 1951
93. The Apartment 1960
94. Goodfellas 1990
95. Pulp Fiction 1994!
96. The Searchers 1956
97. Bringing Up Baby 1938
98. Unforgiven 1992!
99. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner 1967!
100. Yankee Doodle Dandy 1942

Added in 2007, replacing others:

50. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)!
71. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
83. Titanic (1997)!
89. The Sixth Sense (1999)!
18. The General (1927)
49. Intolerance (1916)
59. Nashville (1975)
61. Sullivan's Travels (1941)
63. Cabaret (1972)!
67. Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
72. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)!
75. In the Heat of the Night (1967)
77. All the President's Men (1976)!
81. Spartacus (1960)
82. Sunrise (1927)!
85. A Night at the Opera (1935)
87. 12 Angry Men (1957)!
90. Swing Time (1936)
91. Sophie's Choice (1982)
95. The Last Picture Show (1971)
96. Do the Right Thing (1989)
97. Blade Runner (1982)!
99. Toy Story (1995)!

123 total. 46 seen. Hrml. I guess I'll try to get through TIME first, but these movies are a lot more fun.... should I switch?

Border Crossing- Review

Border Crossing by Maria Colleen Cruz.

Review for Facebook, because Amazon is too daunting right now O.o:

It's nice to find a book out there dealing with the experiences of multiracial children, but this book was only decently written. Sometimes, it felt more like a lecture than an illustrated lesson, and the coincidences were a little too far-fetched to be believable. Plus, there was a pretty noticeable typo regarding which country San Diego was in- at one point the narrator gets off the bus in San Diego and is suddenly in Mexico. Overall, though, the novel covers themes not expressed at all or at all effectively elsewhere and fills a gap with mediocre skill.

4/5

Things and Whatever

Too lazy to come up with a title. So, starting a new job on Monday after forevers of being unemployed. Hope hope hope it goes well and hope hope hope school goes well too. I'm scared that they'll both be beyond what I can handle. I guess we'll see- it's scary to begin two big things at the same time. Plus, November is Nanowrimo, and, as much as I joke about it, I'm very serious about being successful. It's good to expunge creativity in one go- force your mind open with a crowbar and spill out all the pretties.

This year, I have two story ideas I'd like to develop into novels, though I think that planning beyond just the one might be a little idealistic. The first is a road trip/coming-of-age thing, three jr high students voyaging to the San Diego Comic Con. Yes, nerds. There aren't enough nerds in children's/young adult novels. The other is a sci fi story I've been working on forever internally, but have little to show for. I'll put up better summaries in November. Must do some planning.

A new chronic pain support group opened up in my area on Meetup.com- I joined it but no actual meetups are planned yet. Might be able to make some of the Fibromyalgia support group's meetings when school starts. Ugh- pain.

Need to find some interesting books- after reading Let Me In, I'm in the mood to some more unique books than usual. Another really interesting book was The Exquisite by Laird Hunt. Anyway, let's do some searching online.

Oh, at the library I found The Gargoyle on the paperback picks shelf:

he narrator of The Gargoyle is a very contemporary cynic, physically beautiful and sexually adept, who dwells in the moral vacuum that is modern life. As the book opens, he is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and suffers horrible burns over much of his body. As he recovers in a burn ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned, he awaits the day when he can leave the hospital and commit carefully planned suicide—for he is now a monster in appearance as well as in soul.

A beautiful and compelling, but clearly unhinged, sculptress of gargoyles by the name of Marianne Engel appears at the foot of his bed and insists that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly injured mercenary and she was a nun and scribe in the famed monastery of Engelthal who nursed him back to health. As she spins their tale in Scheherazade fashion and relates equally mesmerizing stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy, and England, he finds himself drawn back to life—and, finally, in love. He is released into Marianne's care and takes up residence in her huge stone house. But all is not well. For one thing, the pull of his past sins becomes ever more powerful as the morphine he is prescribed becomes ever more addictive. For another, Marianne receives word from God that she has only twenty-seven sculptures left to complete—and her time on earth will be finished.

-- what else? Let's search- weee!

Beastly by Alex Flinn sounds good, and will be a movie soon:

A beast. Not quite wolf or bear, gorilla or dog but a horrible new creature who walks upright—a creature with fangs and claws and hair springing from every pore. I am a monster.

You think I'm talking fairy tales? No way. The place is New York City. The time is now. It's no deformity, no disease. And I'll stay this way forever—ruined—unless I can break the spell.

Yes, the spell, the one the witch in my English class cast on me. Why did she turn me into a beast who hides by day and prowls by night? I'll tell you. I'll tell you how I used to be Kyle Kingsbury, the guy you wished you were, with money, perfect looks, and the perfect life. And then, I'll tell you how I became perfectly . . . beastly.

-- sounds interesting and I already like the voice. Dude, Neil Patrick Harris is going to be in the movie, which means I have to see it, which means I should read the book.

Max Brooks' World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War sounds AMAZING! SOOO interesting! I love it- like a mock version of something I'd read for class:

Brooks, the author of the determinedly straight-faced parody The Zombie Survival Guide (2003), returns in all seriousness to the zombie theme for his second outing, a future history in the style of Theodore Judson's Fitzpatrick's War. Brooks tells the story of the world's desperate battle against the zombie threat with a series of first-person accounts "as told to the author" by various characters around the world. A Chinese doctor encounters one of the earliest zombie cases at a time when the Chinese government is ruthlessly suppressing any information about the outbreak that will soon spread across the globe. The tale then follows the outbreak via testimony of smugglers, intelligence officials, military personnel and many others who struggle to defeat the zombie menace. Despite its implausible premise and choppy delivery, the novel is surprisingly hard to put down. The subtle, and not so subtle, jabs at various contemporary politicians and policies are an added bonus.

-- they also think this'll be a movie- it says "in development" hrm.

Been meaning to read The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova for a long while:

If your pulse flutters at the thought of castle ruins and descents into crypts by moonlight, you will savor every creepy page of Elizabeth Kostova's long but beautifully structured thriller The Historian. The story opens in Amsterdam in 1972, when a teenage girl discovers a medieval book and a cache of yellowed letters in her diplomat father's library. The pages of the book are empty except for a woodcut of a dragon. The letters are addressed to: "My dear and unfortunate successor." When the girl confronts her father, he reluctantly confesses an unsettling story: his involvement, twenty years earlier, in a search for his graduate school mentor, who disappeared from his office only moments after confiding to Paul his certainty that Dracula--Vlad the Impaler, an inventively cruel ruler of Wallachia in the mid-15th century--was still alive. The story turns out to concern our narrator directly because Paul's collaborator in the search was a fellow student named Helen Rossi (the unacknowledged daughter of his mentor) and our narrator's long-dead mother, about whom she knows almost nothing. And then her father, leaving just a note, disappears also.

--also will be a movie- because I went from a "soon to be movies" list on Amazon....

Choose your own adventure for adults! Exciting! You are a Miserable Excuse for a Hero
sounds hilarious and DEFINITELY unique. Checking that on my list ^__^

Why Do All the Nice Girls End Up Getting Kidnapped and Held for Ransom?

In this book, YOU, the reader, are a thirtysomething part-time actor/full-time waiter suddenly caught up in a kidnapping. Julia, the girl you went out with last night, has been TAKEN HOSTAGE. What will you do? Will you go to the police and ask for help? Will you burst into the hideout, killing everyone in sight, then tell Julia that she shouldn't misinterpret this as some sort of big commitment? Or will you unplug your phone and just get really, really drunk? The choice is yours!

You awake to the sound of the phone ringing.

"Hello?"

You hear a man's voice. It is muffled. "We've got Julia."

"Wait, what do you mean?"

"We have kidnapped your girlfriend. If you ever want to see her again---"

"Whoa, she's not my girlfriend," you say. "I just met her. I mean, I had a good time with her and all, but I wanna take it slow with this one, I think."

"We understand," the voice says. "But she's new to the city, and presently, you're all she has. Give us fifty thousand dollars by tomorrow or we'll blow her head off."

If you want to go and ask your parents if you can borrow fifty thousand dollars, go to page 173.

If you want to have sex with your ex-girlfriend, consider getting back together with her, then think better of it, go to page 183.

BE VERY CAREFUL! You're directing the story and the CHOICES you make can result in MURDER, GRADUATE SCHOOL ENROLLMENT, TORTURE, MARRIAGE, POST-APOCALYPTIC SLAVERY, UNWANTED PREGNANCY, even TEMPING! It's YOUR STORY and YOUR LIFE. All you've got to do is decide which page you want to turn to.

--Anyway, I'm putting the rest in a list without much info, because I need to shower and go to bed O.O Lazy me

Ida B: . . . and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World -Katherine Hannigan

The Shadow Thieves- Anne Ursu (who wrote The Disapparation of James)

The Raw Shark Texts-Steven Hall

In the Lake of the Woods- Tim O'Brien

Winter's Tale- Mark Helprin

Kiss Me, Judas- Will Christopher Baer


Good night! <3

Love That Dog- Book Review

Book 2 of my campaign- a very short children's book told in poems. I may just put the short review that I entered for the Visual Bookshelf program on Facebook here for now.

Love That Dog- Sharon Creech

Told through the poem's enclosed in a boy's school journal, Love That Dog is a story of loss, healing, and artistic awakening. One of the most original children's stories I've ever read and uniquely beautiful among Creech's plethora of gorgeous works. A wonderful book to introduce to young artists not yet mature enough to take on Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.

Let Me In- Book Review

So, I have finally finished the first book of my fifty-two book goal, Let Me In by John Ajvide Lindqvist, also known as Let the Right One In. It was very long, for me, 472 pages in hard cover. It was much more terrifying than I'd imagined as well. Anyway, I'd better make some sort of eloquent review in order to put in Amazon in the end, so here's a late-night rough draft, lame, to be sure.

Let Me In-

While many literary critics quickly associate the voice of John Ajvide Lindqvist with other more well-known writers of the horror genre, Lindqvist should be noted as a young artist noteworthy for his particular distinctness of story-telling and narrative. In an era that has seen the violent vampire myth turned into a romantic topic of teen angst, Lindqvist imagines vampirism in its darkest hours, weaving a tale of murder, sadism, and everyday suffering, in which it is not so much the vampires as the humans who are the monsters.

Lindqvist's take on the necessities for the modern vampire's survival is innovative and disturbing; the vampire-girl Eli lives in the body of a 12-year-old and thus depends on a middle-aged pedophile to support her need for blood. She is too young for work but cannot survive in a modern world without financial assets, and so takes money from her victims. As a vampire or vampire-like creature, she does not kill for pleasure but purely to survive, and the author clearly illustrates for readers that most people-turned-vampire cannot make the choice to kill, and instead commit suicide.

While the story primarily focuses on the extended life of Eli and her new friend Oskar, a viciously bullied 12-year-old boy, it also shows how their situations affect those around them. Vampirism is treated as an epidemic that Eli attempts to contain but which somehow continues to spread throughout the novel, creating on particularly terrifying character both in appearance and mannerism. The town of Blackeberg itself becomes a character, treated as the Transylvania of the Bram Stoker novel.

moving on

Amanda Martin-Copyright 2009

moving on

I was never a smoker, but after you left
I smoked myself through an entire pack of Marlboro Lights

I burned a votive candle with the picture of the Virgin on it
and used its flame to light the first
I used the first to light the second
the nineteenth to light the twentieth

I transformed myself into a constant practitioner of stoicism
I read Nietzsche and believed in nothing
I read Nishida and believed I was nothing

I dyed my hair black and murdered it flat and lifeless with an iron
I plastered white cream on my cheeks to hide their color
I cloaked myself in black as though I intended to attend a funeral

I stopped ordering Lemon Drops and Strawberry daiquiris
I ordered whisky, dry, or a bottle of bitter wine
and hoped each time that the liquor would
turn my insides into a vinegary formaldehyde
or an acid that would rot away my many useless organs

I was never a Feminist, but after you left
I looked online to try to find some place to burn my bras in public
I figured it didn’t matter anymore if my breasts should sag or be of different sizes
Who cared whether or not they looked perky and welcoming?

I searched for someone to join me in my rage, my awakening, my liberation
I was somewhere around forty years too late

So I built myself a funeral pyre and threw my bras on top
I tossed all my lacy panties into the flames
I cut my all my hair off with an oversized knife
I rubbed the paint off of my nails and filed them to stubs
I washed away the color from my eyes and lips

Later, I went to a lesbian meet up without anything on beneath my dress
I flirted with everyone around me, and raved about the Feminine Mystique
I had never read the Feminine Mystique

I traveled to the local sex shop and bought myself a personal massager
I drove to the drug store and bought three packages of double-A batteries
and secretly hoped I would accidentally electrocute myself

I was never a rover, but after you left
I finally got around to updating my passport,
I withdrew all of my savings from the bank

I carried myself across borders, went as north as I could
I went downward until I could go no farther south, then traveled at random

I rode on horses and boats and one camel and taxis and buses
I took carriages and subway trains and light rails and streetcars
I walked and I walked and I walked and I walked
When my feet bled, I wrapped them up, and bought a bike

I filled up my passport with stamps and became an expert on
Disembarkation and Embarkation forms

I ate and drank a thousand things,
I attended weddings and funerals and quinceañeras and graduations and Bar/t Mitzvahs

I visited places where white was the color of death
I wore white there
I spoke the international language of silence
I think I was understood, though I still knew nothing
I hitchhiked and hoped my drivers were sociopaths.

I was never nothing, but after you left, I wasn’t anything
I lost and found and lost and found myself on a hundred different occassions

I erased your touches, melted every kiss away with Purell
I tattooed my arms, which had so often been in your arms
I jammed rings through the nose that you had loved to tease
and through my ears you had nibbled, my tongue…

I bought a cat to keep me company at night, to purr and love me
I named it after you at first, then changed it to something inane

I stayed awake for three months straight, I thought
I tried every fad and tried on every stereotype

I spent hours walking through graveyards, slipping past funerals
I was that strange woman in the background, quickly forgotten

I even went to grief counseling, would you believe it?
I told the man with the beard and a kind face everything, all of your secrets
I knew it didn’t matter anymore, how could it?

I bleached my hair and dyed it brown
I bought myself some new underwear
I removed my many rings and lasered away my tattoos
I packed my passport away in a safe deposit box
I somehow found myself a new job
I started rebuilding my savings
I got some Nicotine patches from the pharmacy
I “pulled myself together.”

And, yes, I even went to see you again
I brought you a dozen roses, white, and I carefully avoided

all the funerals in progress

I said good-bye, but I didn’t mean it
I lied to my counselor
I lie to him still

And I never for one moment intended to move on.

What Do I Want to Do?

It's a confusing thing to consider, but considering it, I am, in a Yoda-esque manner. Well, at least I got the next two years planned, but what else? I'm finding it harder and harder to believe that getting my MA in Cultural Studies will be the end of my education, but wasn't that the point in the first place? There are so many options, and many can be attained after getting the MA, but it seems very likely I must get another MA, an M.Ed, and MFA, or a PhD. Lookit all those letters!

I could get an M.Ed with a TESOL certification to teach ESL, or just an M.Ed. to be a teacher, or just a certification with my MA, or a TESOL certification with my MA to teach abroad. It's confusing! Where do I want to be? This will define my education of the future!

Or should I go for the PhD, even though there are very few programs for Cultural Studies- should I try to shift? Go for Latino Studies or something? Can you do that? Is that even POSSIBLE? And do I want to be a professional academic? I don't even much enjoy writing academic papers, but I would like teaching at a college level, I think. Though if I want to teach at a community college, I just need my MA... I think.

Or I could go for my MFA and have fun/be utterly disappointed. I have romanticized this option so much! I bet it would be far less enjoyable than I think. Plus, I'd definitely have to take the GRE again, and I can't imagine going through that. So awful. The UW-Bothell might get an MFA program in Creative Writing and Cultural Poetics, which sounds FASCINATING, but probably isn't employable. I want to be a writer, but am I just being a dreamer? I want to think that my writing is good, and my writing teacher said it was very publishable, but putting oneself out there is so worrisome.

How can I most support the people for whom I worry the most outside of my own family? Should I teach ESL classes for free? Could I do that and teach ESL to children? Should I teach English abroad to make more money first? Should I do Teach for America to help underprivileged communities? Should I get a PhD because so few people of my race can and/or do? Should I try to become famous so that someone who is like me is famous? Try to be a role model in that way?

Anyway, I have plans to figure these things out, so I can't stress myself out of sleeping. Will meet with Dr. K at UW OMAD tomorrow to discuss my worries/hopes/insanity and try to find a path. Am planning to attend an info session on getting an M.Ed. Talking with someone about TESOL program and another lady about teaching in Japan and what is required. Am writing and will try to get a book of poetry published through a contest. Will do Nanowrimo again this year.

Eek. Still don't think I'll sleep...

<3

Screwing Around Translating

I'll finish later- just starting for now. Anyway, it's harder because it's in romaji >.< no kanji to distinguish from words spelled the same with different meanings. I bet there's a word for that kind of sad phenomenon. Like read and read O.o except they're just the same word in differences tenses. Tricky.

I'm fixing some of the romaji translations so that it is more modern- whoever did it for the lyrics I pulled learned from the old school.

Kikuchiyo to Moushimasu- Pink Martini

Kikuchiyo to moushimasu
Shiroi unaji ni yurete ita
Naito kurabu no aoi hi yo
Daite odoreba yasashii kata ga
Nazeka kanshiku, nazeka kanashiku
Furueteta... furueteta

I am Kikuchiyo
In that night club
on a blue day,
my white neck swayed.
When does that kind soul who
holds me tight and dances,
become sorrowful? Why?
I was trembling. I was trembling.


Kono mamade itsu made mo
Futari sugoshita Akasaka no
Kiri no, hoteru no, koi no yoru
Moeta anata no itoshi hoho ga
Itsuka sahishiku, itsuka sabishiku
Nureteita....nureteita

It was always this way,
Together in Akasaka's mist
The hotel, the night of romance
Burned your lovely cheeks
Someday you'll become sad, someday you'll become sad
You were soaked, you were soaked


Kikuchiyo to mohshimasu
Minna wasurete hoshii no to
Tatto hito yo de kieta hito
Amaku setsunai utsuriga dake o
Sotto nokoshiite, sotto nokoshiite
Kiri no naka ... kiri no naka

I am Kikuchiyo
The things I want everyone to forget
People gone and people missing
Sweetly painful, just the lingering scent
Softly left behind, softly left behind
Into the fog.. into the fog

Kikochiyo to mohshimasu

I am Kikuchiyo.

So as Not to Forget

I'm looking for a SPECIFIC Colette quote, but these ones were so pretty, I thought I'd publicly jot them down too. Obviously, must read a few of her books in the near future- just after Let the Right One In, which, by the by, has a different title in book form that I cannot quite remember. It is almost the same, though, so I want to say Let ME In... let's check!

I am RIGHT! Party for the once-in-a-century event!

"In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge."
- Colette

"It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place."
- Colette

"It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses."
- Colette

I am indebted to the species of the cat for a particular kind of honorable deceit, for a great control over myself, for characteristic aversion to brutal sounds, and for the need to keep silent for long periods of time. - Colette

*"Then, bidding farewell to The Knick-Knack, I went to collect the few personal belongings which, at that time, I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude."- Colette

This last quote is the one I was searching for ^___^ Nothing but intangibles and the kitty- how romantic!

Details About the Movies

Since there are 81 movies to watch and I'll probably watch more than one a week some weeks (some of these movies are quite short!)- I'm just going to put short reviews here for each of the movies. But first, I'm checking to make sure every movie is at the library, and posting the blibs offered in the item descriptions.

Summaries are provided by the King County Library System. Additional info from Wikipedia:

Again- an exclamation point at the end (following the production co. and year)means that I have seen it.--- btw, I found one that I previously missed- TWENTY down, EIGHTY to go @.@

2000s (ALL at library)

* Finding Nemo directed by Andrew Stanton (Disney, 2004)!
The fretful Marlin and his young son Nemo become separated from each other in the Great Barrier Reef. Nemo, a clown fish, is unexpectedly taken from his home and thrust into a fish tank in a dentist's office overlooking Sydney Harbor. Buoyed by the companionship of a friendly fish named Dory, Malin embarks on a dangerous trek and finds himself the unlikely hero
NOTES: Ah, Finding Nemo. One of my favorite films- so much humor, so much drama, so much random crap. And by "crap" I mean "treasurous non-sequitors". Ellen Degeneres makes my heart sing, so how could I not love this film? Heck, I enjoyed Mr. Wrong because of her!

* City of God directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund (Independent, 2001)
The world's most notorious slum, Rio de Janeiro's City of God, where combat photographers and police rarely go. The true story of a young man who grew up on these streets and whose ambition as a photographer is our window in and his only way out.

* Talk to Her directed by Pedro Almodóvar (Sony Pictures Classics, 2002)!
In a private clinic Barco and Benigno strike up a friendship while caring for comatose women.
NOTE: After reading the summary, I actually HAVE seen this and HATED it. Ugh! Ick! I get icky goosebumps on reflection. It is very interesting but icky. Am shivering up in disgust at what one of the characters does.

* The Lord of the Rings film trilogy directed by Peter Jackson (New Line Cinema, 2001-2003)!
In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-Earth still it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell, by chance, into the hands of the Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins. On his eleventy-first birthday, Bilbo disappeared, bequeathing to his young cousin, Frodo, the Ruling Ring, and a perilous quest: to journey across Middle-Earth, deep into the shadow of the Dark Lord and destroy the Ring by casting it into the Cracks of Doom.
NOTES: I could never get into the books, but the movies, for the most part, were quite entertaining. The last one dragged insanely at the end, but they were all pretty enjoyable. I liked the action of the second film a great deal and the plot development of the initial picture. The last one was certainly my least favorite- not enough action or story, and way too much end!

* Kandahar directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Independent, 2001)
Nafas, an Afghan-born Canadian journalist, returns to her homeland in a desperate attempt to reach her sister, who, overcome with grief after being injured by a landmine and her despair over the Taliban's oppression of women, has vowed that she will commit suicide at the time of the next solar eclipse, only three days away.

1990s (ALL at library)

* Ulysses' Gaze directed by Theo Angelopoulos (Roissy Films, 1995)
Traces the journey of a Greek-American director across the Balkans in search of several lost reels of film shot by the Manakia Brothers, who were pioneers of cinema in that part of the world.

* Chungking Express directed by Wong Kar Wai (Miramax Films, 1994)
The story of lives and loves of the people who come into a fast food place.

* Drunken Master II directed by Lau Kar-Leung (Miramax Films, 1994)
A sinister profiteer is illegally exporting Chinese treasures overseas, and it's up to Wong Fei-Hung (Chan) to put a stop to it.

* Pulp Fiction directed by Quentin Tarantino (Miramax Films, 1994)!
Clever, dark film that tells 4 separate stories that are gradually brought together. Involved are two low-rent hit men, their boss and his sexy wife, a prizefighter and a pair of desperate robbers.
NOTES: I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this film. It was my first Tarantino, and has been followed by many more. Not really that violent, though it certainly earns the R-rating. Interesting twist of stories, and HUGELY unexpected plot directions.

* Farewell My Concubine directed by Chen Kaige (Miramax Films, 1993)!
Story that spans more than 50 years in the lives of two men at the Peking Opera, friends since childhood, and the woman who comes between them. Also an absorbing drama of the period in Chinese history from the warlord era through the Cultural Revolution.
NOTES: I have this movie and have read the book. It is extremely sad, though the movie has a MUCH different ending from the book. There really are a lot of films that cover similar stories- artists during the Cultural Revolution and how they were screwed over even before and after. Don't expect anything happy to happen- these sort of films just can't be written that way. To Live is pretty much the same movie with different characters (theme-wise I mean and both star Gong Li.

* Schindler's List directed by Steven Spielberg (Universal Pictures, 1993)!
The story of Oskar Schindler, a member of the Nazi party, womanizer, and war profiteer, who saved the lives of more than 1100 Jews during World War II.
NOTES: Technically, I missed the last ten minutes, but I saw enough to know what happened. I will assume the war ended in those last ten minutes and everyone was grateful to Oskar. Obviously, one of the saddest films ever and I cried the whole time. Some beautiful imagery and metaphors.

* Léolo directed by Jean-Claude Lauzon (Independent, 1992)
Léolo Lozone, a twelve-year old dreamer, uses his imagination to escape the realities around him through writing.

* Unforgiven directed by Clint Eastwood (Warner Bros., 1992)!
Two retired, down-on-their luck outlaws pick up their guns one last time to collect a bounty offered by the vengeful prostitutes of the remote Wyoming town of Big Whiskey.
NOTES: I really don't like westerns and this one made me sad. The only character I liked died terribly. Which is common in this kind of film :( Didn't actually see ALL of it, but 80% including the beginning and the end, so I'm counting it! Couldn't handle watching it again!

* Goodfellas directed by Martin Scorsese (Warner Bros., 1990)
Details the rise and fall of Henry Hill, a Brooklyn kid who grows up idolizing the "wise guys" from his neighborhood. He begins hanging around the mobsters and doing odd jobs until he gains the notice of local chieftain Paulie Cicero. In his teens, Hill distinguishes himself as a "stand-up guy" by choosing jail time over ratting on his accomplices. From that moment on, he is a part of the family. Along with his partner Tommy, he rises through the ranks to become Paulie's lieutenant. Soon he finds himself the target of both the feds and the mobsters.

* Miller's Crossing directed by Joel Coen (20th Century Fox, 1990)
During prohibition two gangland bosses struggle for control over a city, with one of the boss's lieutenants caught in the middle.



1980s (No Nayagan v.v)

* The Decalogue directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski (Independent, 1989)
Secretly ten movies O.o one and two:Segments 1 and 2 of ten films loosely based on the Ten Commandments. Dekalog 1: A story of the trust and affection between a father and his son (53 min.). Dekalog 2: A lonely elderly hospital consultant is asked by a patient's wife to predict her husband's chances of survival as she is pregnant by another man (57).

* Nayagan directed by Mani Ratnam (Sujatha Films, 1987)
From Wiki:Nayagan is based on The Godfather and real-life Bombay underworld don - Varada or Varadarajan Mudaliar, and sympathetically depicts the struggle of South Indians living in Bombay (now Mumbai). Nayagan has been called "The Godfather" of Tamil cinema. NOT AVAILABLE AT LIBRARY- SIGH!

* Wings of Desire directed by Wim Wenders (MGM, 1987)
Based on poems by Rainer Maria Rilke.

* The Fly directed by David Cronenberg (20th Century Fox, 1986)
Experimental scientist Andre Delambre attempts to transfer matter through space, using himself as the test subject. But things go horrifically wrong when a common housefly buzzes into the machine, resulting in two grotesque man-fly hybrids. Now, with the head of a fly and a wing in place of one of his arms, Andre desperately hopes that he, his wife Helene and his brother Francois can capture the other mutant - the human-headed, one-armed fly - in hopes of reversing the experiment.

* The Singing Detective directed by Jon Amiel (BBC TV, 1986)
The hallucinations of a mystery writer stricken with a crippling skin disorder interweave memories of his past with a plot casting him in the role of a suave sleuth who croons with a big band.

* Brazil directed by Terry Gilliam (Universal Pictures, 1985)
A daydreaming bureaucrat becomes involved with an underground superhero and a beautiful mysterious woman and becomes the tragic victim of his own romantic illusions.

* The Purple Rose of Cairo directed by Woody Allen (Orion Pictures, 1985)
Cecilia is a poor waitress at a New Jersey diner who goes to the movies to escape the realities of life. Her favorite is "The purple rose of Cairo", whose leading man, Tom Baxter, decides to leave the screen to be with Cecilia.

* Blade Runner directed by Ridley Scott (Warner Bros., 1982)!
Los Angeles, 2019: Rick Deckard of the LAPD's Blade Runner unit prowls the steel & microchip jungle of the 21st century. His job is to track down and eliminate assumed humanoids known as 'replicants.' Replicants were declared illegal after a bloody mutiny on an Off-World Colony, and are to be terminated upon detection. He wants to get out of the force, but is drawn back in when 6 "skin jobs," the slang for replicants, hijack a ship back to Earth. The city that Deckard must search for his prey is a huge, sprawling, bleak vision of the future.
NOTES: While the premise and sci fi goodies make me giggle, I did not enjoy this film overall. It was a little hard to follow (I did not get a lot of what it tells me in the summary), and the suspense didn't have long enough to build up, though there was enough time for endless droning! Sorry...

* E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial directed by Steven Spielberg (Universal Studios, 1982)!
A story of an alien stranded on Earth and his relationship with a young boy.
NOTES: This movie is so funny when you see it as an adult! It used to be very scary, but now I can appreciate the crazy screaming children and candy-eating alien. It also kinda makes me think of how people actually might react to a UFO landing in a ruraler area.

* Berlin Alexanderplatz directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder (TeleCulture, 1980)
Story of Franz Biberkof, a former transportation worker. When we first see Franz, he has just been released from prison where he has served four years for an irrational act of violence. He returns to his Berlin neighborhood resolved to go straight but forces in his environment, the influences of his cronies, the grinding poverty, the decay of society overwhelm him and he begins his duel with fate.

* Mon oncle d'Amérique directed by Alain Resnais (New World Pictures, 1980)
Jean, René, Janine: two men and a woman from different generations and different backgrounds, whose paths meet at a crisis point in mid-life, faced with disappointment and frustration, all three muse about a legendary "uncle in America", a guardian angel who gives them their hearts' desires and tells them exactly what they want to hear.
WATCHED: 9/24/09
NOTES: Dude, the description for this film is way off- the two men don't even meet! And by "muse about a legendary 'uncle,'" the summarizer means that each character at some point mentions an uncle in the US- just mentions, mind you. The uncle never appears and isn't a main plot point. The film was more comparing animal behavior to human behavior and theorizing that, because humans cannot act upon their animal urges of rage, they instead attack themselves inwardly (and by "they" I mean "we"- am not a god, so far as I know...), resulting in health problems, emotional breakdowns, and suicide/attempted suicide. Fascinating film but it SCREAMS to be redone. I would love to see some editing.

* Raging Bull directed by Martin Scorsese (United Artists, 1980)
From Wiki- though it is at the library:
...a middleweight boxer whose sadomasochistic rage, sexual jealousy, and animalistic appetite exceeded the boundaries of the prizefight ring, and destroyed his relationship with his wife and family.



1970s (ALL at the library!)

* Star Wars directed by George Lucas (20th Century Fox, 1977)!
Princess Leia is captured and held hostage by the evil Imperial forces in their effort to take over the galactic Empire. Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and two robots (R2-D2 and C-3PO) work together to rescue the princess and restore justice in the Empire.
NOTES: Well... Star Wars. I've only seen the fist one a few times, but it's a great start? I prefer Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but this one was also quite sci fi-ly enjoyable ^_^? Nothing you can say about the classics, eh? Because Star Wars is more classic than Sherlock Jr????

* Taxi Driver directed by Martin Scorsese (Columbia Pictures, 1976)
A New York cab driver becomes obsessed with a young prostitute and wages a one-person war to clean up the world.

* Barry Lyndon directed by Stanley Kubrick (Warner Bros., 1975)
The rise and fall of a young 18th century Irishman bent on achieving fame and fortune, mainly by marriage.

* Chinatown directed by Roman Polanski (Paramount Pictures, 1974)
Los Angeles private eye Jake Gittes is approached by a mysterious woman who wishes to have her husband investigated. As the case unfolds, though, he discovers it to be much more complex and dangerous than he had expected, involving politics, powerful men, and terrible family secrets.

* Day for Night directed by François Truffaut (Independent, 1973)
A motion picture director encounters problems while filming a love story in this satire on movie-making.

* The Godfather and The Godfather Part II directed by Francis Ford Coppola (Paramount Pictures, 1972, 1974)!
Godfather-Focuses on the Corleone family's rise and near fall from power, and the passage of rites from father to son.
Part II- Two stories are told in this sequel to The godfather: the roots and rise of a young Don Vito and the ascension of Michael as the new Don.
NOTES: Haven't actually seen the second part, but I'll do that too. The first one was, well, The Godfather. Pretty exciting stuff! What else can be said? Go to the matresses?

* Aguirre, the Wrath of God directed by Werner Herzog (Independent, 1972)
A band of Spanish conquistadors, led by Pizarro, go up the Amazon in search of gold. As the soldiers battle starvation, Indians, the forces of nature, and each other, Don Lope de Aguirre (the self-styled "Wrath of God") is consumed by visions of conquering all of South America and leads a revolt, but Aguirre's megalomania turns the expedition into a death trip.

* The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie directed by Luis Buñuel (Independent, 1972)
An upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both actual and imagined.

* A Touch of Zen directed by King Hu (Independent, 1971)
Ku, an artist and aspiring teacher in a small village, becomes involved with a woman on the run from a local politician. Takes place in the Ming dynasty, China.


1960s (ALL available at library!)

* Once Upon a Time in the West directed by Sergio Leone (Paramount, 1968)
A story of a vicious villain coldly wiping out an entire family and leaving another man to be falsely accused of the slaughter.

* Bonnie and Clyde directed by Arthur Penn (Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, 1967)
Adrift in the Depression-era Southwest, young Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker turn to the adventurous life of crime and soon become tough, psychotic bank robbers.

* Mouchette directed by Robert Bresson (UGC, 1967)
One of the most searing portraits of human desperation ever put on film, Mouchette is about a teenage girl who must deal with tragic events and a broken family.

* Closely Watched Trains directed by Jiří Menzel (Ústřední půjčovna filmů, 1966)
Comedy-drama about a young trainmaster employed in a tiny station during World War II. He becomes involved in a plot to blow up a German ammunition train, but when the plan backfires, he is forced to commit the ultimate act of courage.

* The Good, the Bad and the Ugly directed by Sergio Leone (United Artists, 1966)
Three men seek a hidden cache of $200,00 and with greed as their sole motivation, they let nothing--not even warring factions in a civil war stand in their way.

* Persona directed by Ingmar Bergman (United Artists, 1966)
A famous actress is stricken with psychosomatic dumbness and is placed under a nurse's care in an isolated house, where the two gradually assume each other's personalities.

* Bande à part directed by Jean-Luc Godard (Independent, 1964)
Two bumbling burglars plan a robbery with a young woman they just met. Problems begin immediately when they both fall for the girl and the plan goes haywire. The jewel-heist plot is merely a jumping off point for Godard's fast-paced mix of fantasy and spoof of Hollywood crime films.

* Dr. Strangelove directed by Stanley Kubrick (Columbia Pictures, 1964)!
A satire in which the President and his military advisors struggle ineptly to avert a holocaust after a psychotic Air Force general launches a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.
WATCHED: 9/19/2009
NOTES: While I will admit I preferred the similarly-themed, similarly-acted (Peter Sellers in multiple roles again) The Mouse that Roared to Dr. Strangelove, I did enjoy this film quite a lot as well. This film certainly had wittier one-liners and better imagery (Stanley Kubrick, for goodness sake!), though wasn't amusing all the way through as The Mouse that Roared. "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room." General "Buck" Turgidson: Sir, you can't let him [the Russian ambassador] in here. He'll see everything. He'll see the big board!

* A Hard Day's Night directed by Richard Lester (United Artists, 1964)
A spoof of "Beatlemania" portraying a frantic 36 hours in the lives of the rock group.

* Charade directed by Stanley Donen (Universal Pictures, 1963)
Comedy-mystery set in Paris about a young widow who, with the help of a handsome stranger, is trying to find the fortune her dead husband secreted away. At the same time, she's being pursued by a trio of thugs seeking for the same fortune.

* 8½ directed by Federico Fellini (Independent, 1963)
Fellini's autobiographical film about a famous film director who loses his inspiration in the midst of making a film.

* Lawrence of Arabia directed by David Lean (Columbia Pictures, 1962)
T.E. Lawrence helped unify the Arab tribes against the Turks during World War I, but he also set in motion a chain of events that even he would be powerless to stop, events that would shape Arab-Western relations for generations to come.

* The Manchurian Candidate directed by John Frankenheimer (United Artists, 1962)!
A U.S. Army platoon, captured in the Korean conflict, is whisked to Manchuria for three nightmarish days of experimental drug-and-hypnosis-induced conditioning that transforms the men into human time bombs.
NOTES: What a trippy film! I felt like I was drunk the whole time. Terrifying and political, this movie is honestly unique from any other. I did not expect the ending, though I was sure I had no idea where the plot was moving the entire time. Creepy transitions between past and present, as well. Can't BELIEVE they did a remake.

* Yojimbo directed by Akira Kurosawa (Toho Company Ltd., 1961)
In the year 1860, a wandering samurai-for-hire turns the war between two clans fighting for control of a small town to his own advantage. It is a satire on greed, violence, paranoia and human weakness.

* Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchcock (Paramount Pictures, 1960)!
Horror melodrama in which a woman disappears after spending the night in an isolated motel which adjoins an eerie Victorian mansion, inhabited by a disturbed young man and his mother.
NOTES: What can I saw about this film? Despite some cheezy old-fashioned effects, the film is, well, effective. Terrifying and suspenseful, with a great twist, even if you already know it!


1950s (ALL at the library- Huzzah!)

* The 400 Blows directed by François Truffaut (Cocinor, 1959)
Sensitively recreating the trials of Truffaut's own childhood, portraying aloof parents, oppressive teachers, petty crime, and a friendship that would last a lifetime.

* Some Like It Hot directed by Billy Wilder (United Artists, 1959)!
Two unemployed musicians accidentally witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, after which they flee to Miami disguised as female musicians.
NOTES: One of my favorite films, this comedy is SO ahead of it's time! With hints of a homosexual relationship manifesting and two male leads in drag, what's NOT to love? As a bonus, you have an amazing cast, including the gorgeous Ms. Monroe, and great music! A good time, to be sure.

* Pyaasa directed by Guru Dutt (Independent, 1957)
Director Guru Dutt also stars as Vijay, a poet so unsuccessful that his brothers sell his poems as scrap paper.

* Sweet Smell of Success directed by Alexander Mackendrick (United Artists, 1957)
Drama about ruthless New York columnist J.J. Hunsecker and a smarmy press agent who'll do anything to curry his favor.

* Invasion of the Body Snatchers directed by Don Siegel (Allied Artists Pictures Corporation, 1956)
A doctor returns from vacation to find several people in town with odd delusions that persons they know well are no longer who they appear to be. He comes to the realization that people are being replaced by plant invaders from space and he must warn the rest of the world.

* The Searchers directed by John Ford (Warner Bros., 1956)
A Civil War veteran spends five years on the trail of a Comanche raiding party that kidnapped his dead brother's daughters. Breathtaking scenery gives a picture of frontier families separated by miles of emptiness.

* The Apu Trilogy directed by Satyajit Ray (Edward Harrison, 1955, 1956, 1959)
- Pather Panchali:
A poor Bengali family survives in a village but wider horizons tempt the father. The protection of family members' reputations, the relationship of the family group to an elderly 'aunt', and first confrontations with death contribute to the early development of the boy Apu. His father's dreams prevail over the objections of his mother so that at the end of the film the family moves to the big city of Benares.
-Aparajito: 1920, Harihar with wife Sarbajaya and 10 year old son Apu has moved to the holy city of Banaras. Harihar earns a meager living by reciting religious scriptures. Tragedy strikes when Harihar fall ill with fever and collapses at the riverbank and dies soon after. The mother Sarbajaya decides to relocate to her uncle's village where Apu resumes his education at the local school. Apu, now sixteen wins a scholarship and departs for Calcutta, leaving his mother alone. It breaks Sarbajaya's heart, but she relents. Engulfed in city life-studying during the day and working in a printing press at night, Apu grows distant from his mother. His visits get shorter as the time passes. This emotional distance unnoticed by the growing Apu, hurts Sarbajaya deeply. On a night sparkling with dancing fireflies, Sarbajaya dies. Apu comes back to an empty house. He grieves for his mother, but soon finds strength to leave the village for the last time, to carry on with his new life in the city...
-World of Apu: Third film in the "Apu trilogy" this tells of Apu's life as a struggling writer. He becomes a bridegroom at a wedding where he was to have been a guest, in order to save face for the bride when the intended groom goes insane before the wedding. A brief idyllic marriage follows, ending when his wife dies in childbirth. Apu spends years aimlessly wandering to try to come to terms with his life and finally comes to reclaim the son he rejected at his birth.

* Smiles of a Summer Night directed by Ingmar Bergman (Independent, 1955)
Eight characters become four couples while vacationing at a country estate.

* On the Waterfront directed by Elia Kazan (Columbia Pictures, 1954)
Ex-fighter Terry Malloy, who could have been a contender, works as a longshoreman amid corruption on the New Jersey docks.

* Tokyo Story directed by Yasujiro Ozu (Shochiku, 1953)
When an aging couple journeys to visit with their adult children and family they find they are an intrusion on the younger generation's life style.

* Ugetsu directed by Kenji Mizoguchi (Daiei, 1953)
In sixteenth century Japan a village potter and his brother-in-law set out for the city to seek their fortunes in the spoils of war. Their neglected wives suffer the bitter consequences of their husbands' ambition as one is murdered by soldiers and the other is raped and becomes a prostitute.

* Ikiru directed by Akira Kurosawa (Toho, 1952)
Discovering that he is in the terminal stages of cancer, a clerk spends his last months in search of the meaning to life. After his pursuit of pleasure has failed, he finds self-realization in bringing about the building of a children's playground in the slums and dies quiety fulfilled.

* Singin' in the Rain directed by Stanley Donen (MGM, 1952)!
Musical parody of Hollywood's frantic transition to the "talkies" during the late twenties.
NOTES: Oh, what's not to like? Great music, fun story line, and love! It's pretty hard not to get pulled in with such well-known songs as the eponymous "Singin' in the Rain" and" Good Mornin'"! Just a fun film- a bit fluffy, but it is a musical, so I forgive it ^__^

* Umberto D. directed by Vittorio De Sica (Dear Film, 1952)
Realistic study of an elderly man living alone on a meager pension determined to retain his dignity to the end and to hold on to his dog, the only thing he loves, and loves him.

* A Streetcar Named Desire directed by Elia Kazan (Warner Bros., 1951)
After being exiled from her hometown of Auriol, Mississippi for seducing a seventeen-year-old boy at the school where she taught English, Blanche DuBois arrives unexpectedly at the New Orleans home of her pregnant sister Stella Kowalski and her Stella's husband Stanley. Stanley, both repulsed by and attracted to Blanche, discovers that she has mortgaged property left to both sisters and spent all the money. He sets about discovering everything else he can about her past, and tension between Blanche and Stanley is further intensified when Blanche begins dating one of Stanley's poker buddies.

* In a Lonely Place directed by Nicholas Ray (Columbia Pictures, 1950)
A hotheaded Hollywood screenwriter, questioned for murder, is drawn to his neighbor when she confirms his alibi. His volatile nature eventually threatens to destroy their one last chance for real love.


1940s (ALL at the library- huzzah!)

* Kind Hearts and Coronets directed by Robert Hamer (General Film Distributors, 1949)
Black comedy about a castoff member of a titled family who decides to eliminate all his relatives.

* White Heat directed by Raoul Walsh (Warner Bros., 1949)
In his last role as a heartless gangster, James Cagney embarks on the prison break of a lifetime in this chilling tale that features one of the most riveting finales in movie history.

* Out of the Past directed by Jacques Tourneur (RKO Radio Pictures, 1947)
Former private detective Jeff Baily is trying to lead a quiet life, but his past comes back to haunt him and he finds himself framed for murder.

* It's a Wonderful Life directed by Frank Capra (RKO Radio Pictures, 1946)
George Bailey, a desperate and suicidal man, is visited by a guardian angel who shows him how important he has been to those around him in his life.

* Notorious directed by Alfred Hitchcock (RKO Radio Pictures, 1946)
A beautiful woman with a tainted past is enlisted by American agent Devlin to spy on a ring of Nazis in post-war Rio. Her espionage work becomes life-threatening after she marries the most debonair of the Nazi ring, Alex. Only Devlin can rescue her, but to do so he must face his role in her desperate situation and acknowledge that he's loved her all along.

* Children of Paradise directed by Marcel Carné (Independent, 1945)
Drama about the theater and the individuals that made the stage their life. Includes the love story of four men for one woman.

* Detour directed by Edgar G. Ulmer (Producers Releasing Corporation, 1945)
Hitchhiking nightclub performer runs into trouble with a mysterious death and a blackmailing woman.

* Double Indemnity directed by Billy Wilder (Paramount Pictures, 1944)
Walter Neff is a smooth talking insurance salesman who meets the very attractive Phyllis Dietrichson when he calls to renew her husband's automobile policy. The couple are immediately drawn to each other and have an affair. They scheme together to murder Phyllis' husband for life insurance money with a double indemnity clause. Unfortunately, all does not go as planned. Barton Keyes is the wily insurance investigator who must sort things out.

* Meet Me in St. Louis directed by Vincente Minnelli (MGM, 1944)
Story of a family at the 1903 World's Fair.

* Casablanca directed by Michael Curtiz (Warner Brothers, 1942)!
In World War II Morocco, seething with European refugees desperate for passage to neutral Lisbon, only a world-weary and bitter nightclub owner can help his former lover and her Resistance-hero husband escape from the Nazis.
NOTES: Well, I saw it a long time ago and I didn't really understand it. I know the big lines and the basic premise, the ending, I suppose, but not much else. I didn't know where Morocco was at the time- I thought they were in South America for some reason ^^* I was probably ten, so no judging!

* Citizen Kane directed by Orson Welles (RKO Radio Pictures, 1941)
The life and character of newspaper tycoon Charled Foster Kane are reconstructed by a newspaper reporter interviewing Kane's friends and associates as he tries to decipher the meaning of Kane's dying word.

* The Lady Eve directed by Preston Sturges (Independent, 1941)
Comedy about a young woman, a calculating card shark who fleeces passengers on ocean liners. She meets an ingenuous young millionaire and decides he'll be her next victim.

* His Girl Friday directed by Howard Hawks (Columbia Pictures, 1940)
An unscrupulous newspaper editor uses every dirty trick in the book to keep his ace reporter/ex-wife from retiring and remarrying in this twist on The Front Page.
WATCHED: 9/20/09
NOTES: Kind of hard to follow with all that rapid-fire dialogue, but an amusing tale nonetheless with an underlying message that people rarely change. Of course, Cary Grant was cute as pie, but I'd much rather see him in Father Goose or That Touch of Mink.

* Pinocchio directed by Bill Roberts (Walt Disney, 1940)!
Woodcarver Geppetto has pets Figaro the cat and Cleo the fish. He has just made a little wooden puppet called Pinocchio. Wishing upon a star before he goes to bed, Geppetto wishes that Pinocchio would become a real boy. As Geppetto sleeps, the Blue Fairy arrives and partially grants his wish. Pinocchio can come to life, but he must prove himself worthy before becoming a real boy. He will require some guidance, and Jiminy Cricket agrees to act as his conscience. After some unfortunate incidents, Pinocchio finds himself in trouble. The Blue Fairy appears. Pinocchio lies to her and his nose grows. He is forgiven, but warned not to lie again.
NOTES: Well, I saw it as a kid, but I didn't like it. It's kinda scary! And it didn't keep me from lying- not one bit!

* The Shop Around the Corner directed by Ernst Lubitsch (MGM, 1940)
The setting is pre-World War II Budapest. Bickering co-workers in a gift shop don't realize they're lonelyhearts penpals.


1930s (No The Crime of Monsieur Lange v.v)

* Ninotchka directed by Ernst Lubitsch (MGM, 1939)!
Garbo plays a dour, severe Soviet official who comes to Paris on business involving the sale of some czarist jewels. But soon business turns to pleasure as she discovers the special magic of Paris and finds herself succumbing to the charms of a suave Frenchman named Leon D'Algout (Melvyn Douglas). The plot bubbles merrily as Ninotchka chooses between romance and duty--and must even confront a rival for Leon's affection in the exiled Grand Duchess Swana (Ina Claire).
Notes: What fun and funny film! Greta Garbo is sooo sexy and I love how the lady playing the Grand Dutchess speaks an English with no accent. Full of cute quips and a sweet romance. "A Russian! I love Russians! Comrade, I've been fascinated by your five-year plan for the last fifteen years." ^_____^ "The last mass trials were a great success. There are going to be fewer but better Russians." "Hello! Comrade Kasabian? No, I am sorry. He hasn't been with us for six months. He was called back to Russia and was investigated. You can get further details from his widow."

* Olympia, Parts 1 and 2 directed by Leni Riefenstahl (Independent, 1938)
A sports/documentary coverage of the 1936 Olympics, held in Berlin. Made at the specific request of Adolph Hitler this documentary was directed by the Third Reich film director Leni Riefenstahl.

* The Awful Truth directed by Leo McCarey (Columbia, 1937)
A separated couple sabotages each other's love affairs while waiting for their divorce decree to become final.

* Camille directed by George Cukor (MGM, 1936)
Life in 1847 Paris is as spirited as champagne and as unforgiving as the gray morning after. In gambling dens and lavish soirees, men of means exert their wills and women turned courtesans exult in pleasure. One such woman is Marguerite Gautier (Greta Garbo), the Camille of this sumptuous romance tale based on the enduring Alexandre Dumas story.

* The Crime of Monsieur Lange directed by Jean Renoir (Independent, 1936)
UNAVAILABLE AT THE LIBRARY!!! SOB! From Wiki:
Imbued with the spirit of the left-wing political movement, Popular Front, which would have a major political victory that year, the film chronicles the story of M. Lange (René Lefèvre), a mild-mannered clerk at a publishing company who dreams of writing Western stories. He gets his chance when Batala (Jules Berry), the salacious head of the company, fakes his own death and the abandoned workers decide to form a cooperative.

* Dodsworth directed by William Wyler (United Artists, 1936)
A middle-aged American retires and he and his wife go to Europe where they find a new set of values and relationships.

* Swing Time directed by George Stevens (RKO, 1936)
Fred Astaire plays a gambler intent on raising $25,000 in New York in order to marry his fiance back home. Romantic complications occur when he meets dancing teacher, Ginger Rogers. Memorable songs include "The Way you look tonight" which won an Academy Award.


* Bride of Frankenstein directed by James Whale (Universal Pictures, 1935)
Baron Frankenstein is blackmailed by Dr. Praetorious into reviving his monster and building a mate for it.

* It's a Gift directed by Norman Z. McLeod (Independent, 1934)
From Wiki, though the film IS available at the library on a set:
Considered by many to be Fields' best and funniest film, it concerns the trials and tribulations of a grocery store owner as he battles a shrewish wife, an incompetent assistant, and assorted annoying children, customers, and salesmen.

* Baby Face directed by Alfred E. Green (Warner Bros., 1933)
Baby-faced Barbara Stanwyck sleeps her way up the corporate ladder in a New York bank, not caring who gets hurt.

* King Kong directed by Merian C. Cooper (RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., 1933)
Carl Denham is a filmmaker and entrepreneur who leads an expedition to Skull Island. The island is a place where time has stood still. The natives pay homage to the one whom they revere as "Kong", and who is, indeed, king of the island. Denham, together with his beautiful starlet, Ann Darrow, and the crew of the ship, investigate the strange ritual being performed on the island by its native population. Ann finds herself captured by the natives and is to become the bride of the mysterious "Kong." The ship's first mate, Jack Driscoll, who is in love with Ann, manages to rescue her from the clutches of "Kong". Denham then arranges to capture the creature, whom he calls "King Kong" and takes him back to New York.

* City Lights directed by Charlie Chaplin (United Artists, 1931)
A tramp wins the love of a blind flower girl and attempts to obtain money from a millionaire to help her regain her sight.


1920s (ALL are at the library- huzzah!)

* Man with a Movie Camera directed by Dziga Vertov (VUFKU, 1929)
A dawn-to-dusk view of the Soviet Union which offers a montage of urban Russian life, showing the people of the city at work and at play, and the machines that endlessly whirl to keep the metropolis alive.

* The Crowd directed by King Vidor (MGM, 1928)
Drama presenting the plight of workaday men and women in urban America.

* The Last Command directed by Josef von Sternberg (Paramount Pictures, 1928)
A Czarist general, displaced from his Russian homeland, finds himself in a Hollywood boarding house awaiting the degrading call to work as a movie extra.

* Metropolis directed by Fritz Lang (Universum Film A.G., 1927)
The story of a 21st century city run by a "super trustee" and his collaborators who live in a paradise-like garden. Workers are totally enslaved by machines and condemned to live underground. In the midst of this misery, a young woman, Maria, arises and attempts to inspire the workers to throw off their oppressors.

* Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans directed by F. W. Murnau (Fox Film Corporation, 1927)
The story of a young farmer who comes near murdering his wife, only to love her more in the end.
WATCHED:9/24/09
NOTES: Another film that really could've used some better editing- this film drags in the middle while the beginning and end are extremely intense. Not that this much damages the film, to be honest, because it is so well-filmed and acted that you put up with it. A lot actually happens though the plot summary does tell most of it- there's also the fact that the farmer has an AFFAIR, which is the reason for the "attempted" murder. Anyway, this movie was extremely romantic and, apart from the farmer having some severe anger-management issues, almost perfect. This is a silent film, mind you, with almost an entire hour playing straight in the middle without any caption- but you forget it is silent, which is some of the magic.

* Sherlock, Jr. directed by Buster Keaton (Metro Pictures Corporation, 1924)!
Dramatizes the uproarious exploits of a meek theater projectionist turned amateur sleuth.
Notes: What's not to love about Buster Keaton? He gets the girl some wildflowers, the other guy gets her a dozen roses, he gets the girl a chocolate bar, the other guy gets her a box. And he's accused of stealing a watch, to boot! Don't worry- this is Buster Keaton, and everything's gold in the end ^____^ fun slapstick along the way.

To Heck With New Years' Resolutions!

I'm doing mine now! Ha! Try and stop me- you!

Anyway, last year a bunch of people did the whole "read 52 books in a year" resolution, and I didn't for reasons unknown. I guess I figured I'd do it anyway? Anyway, I'm going to try to do it and count from now on, starting Monday! Which means, I probably should try to finish Water for Elephants by then, and my cultural studies book. Might be impossible? Psh-ah! Am capable of many things ^___^

So, I'll try to add a counter to my main blog page, and do one entry a week regarding the book/s I read. Also, will attempt to write reviews for Amazon.com on each book, to practice college-esque writing in a non-graded atmo. like atmosphere, but without the sphere because I'm cool like that ^^*

Will also attempt to watch Time's 100 Best Movies, though I suspect some of them may be hard to find at the library. Hrm... here is the list, copied from Wikipedia, because Time's version was hard to copy and paste (!= I've seen it- huzzah!):

2000s

* Finding Nemo directed by Andrew Stanton (Disney, 2004)!
* City of God directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund (Independent, 2001)
* Talk to Her directed by Pedro Almodóvar (Sony Pictures Classics, 2002)(EDIT!)
* The Lord of the Rings film trilogy directed by Peter Jackson (New Line Cinema, 2001-2003)!
* Kandahar directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Independent, 2001)

1990s

* Ulysses' Gaze directed by Theo Angelopoulos (Roissy Films, 1995)
* Chungking Express directed by Wong Kar Wai (Miramax Films, 1994)
* Drunken Master II directed by Lau Kar-Leung (Miramax Films, 1994)
* Pulp Fiction directed by Quentin Tarantino (Miramax Films, 1994)!
* Farewell My Concubine directed by Chen Kaige (Miramax Films, 1993)!
* Schindler's List directed by Steven Spielberg (Universal Pictures, 1993)!
* Léolo directed by Jean-Claude Lauzon (Independent, 1992)
* Unforgiven directed by Clint Eastwood (Warner Bros., 1992)!
* Goodfellas directed by Martin Scorsese (Warner Bros., 1990)
* Miller's Crossing directed by Joel Coen (20th Century Fox, 1990)

1980s

* The Decalogue directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski (Independent, 1989)
* Nayagan directed by Mani Ratnam (Sujatha Films, 1987)
* Wings of Desire directed by Wim Wenders (MGM, 1987)
* The Fly directed by David Cronenberg (20th Century Fox, 1986)
* The Singing Detective directed by Jon Amiel (BBC TV, 1986)
* Brazil directed by Terry Gilliam (Universal Pictures, 1985)
* The Purple Rose of Cairo directed by Woody Allen (Orion Pictures, 1985)
* Blade Runner directed by Ridley Scott (Warner Bros., 1982)!
* E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial directed by Steven Spielberg (Universal Studios, 1982)!
* Berlin Alexanderplatz directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder (TeleCulture, 1980)
* Mon oncle d'Amérique directed by Alain Resnais (New World Pictures, 1980)
* Raging Bull directed by Martin Scorsese (United Artists, 1980)

1970s

* Star Wars directed by George Lucas (20th Century Fox, 1977)!
* Taxi Driver directed by Martin Scorsese (Columbia Pictures, 1976)
* Barry Lyndon directed by Stanley Kubrick (Warner Bros., 1975)
* Chinatown directed by Roman Polanski (Paramount Pictures, 1974)
* Day for Night directed by François Truffaut (Independent, 1973)
* The Godfather and The Godfather Part II directed by Francis Ford Coppola (Paramount Pictures, 1972, 1974)!
* Aguirre, the Wrath of God directed by Werner Herzog (Independent, 1972)
* The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie directed by Luis Buñuel (Independent, 1972)
* A Touch of Zen directed by King Hu (Independent, 1971)

1960s

* Once Upon a Time in the West directed by Sergio Leone (Paramount, 1968)
* Bonnie and Clyde directed by Arthur Penn (Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, 1967)
* Mouchette directed by Robert Bresson (UGC, 1967)
* Closely Watched Trains directed by Jiří Menzel (Ústřední půjčovna filmů, 1966)
* The Good, the Bad and the Ugly directed by Sergio Leone (United Artists, 1966)
* Persona directed by Ingmar Bergman (United Artists, 1966)
* Bande à part directed by Jean-Luc Godard (Independent, 1964)
* Dr. Strangelove directed by Stanley Kubrick (Columbia Pictures, 1964)
* A Hard Day's Night directed by Richard Lester (United Artists, 1964)
* Charade directed by Stanley Donen (Universal Pictures, 1963)
* 8½ directed by Federico Fellini (Independent, 1963)
* Lawrence of Arabia directed by David Lean (Columbia Pictures, 1962)
* The Manchurian Candidate directed by John Frankenheimer (United Artists, 1962)!
* Yojimbo directed by Akira Kurosawa (Toho Company Ltd., 1961)
* Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchcock (Paramount Pictures, 1960)!

1950s

* The 400 Blows directed by François Truffaut (Cocinor, 1959)
* Some Like It Hot directed by Billy Wilder (United Artists, 1959)!
* Pyaasa directed by Guru Dutt (Independent, 1957)
* Sweet Smell of Success directed by Alexander Mackendrick (United Artists, 1957)
* Invasion of the Body Snatchers directed by Don Siegel (Allied Artists Pictures Corporation, 1956)
* The Searchers directed by John Ford (Warner Bros., 1956)
* The Apu Trilogy directed by Satyajit Ray (Edward Harrison, 1955, 1956, 1959)
* Smiles of a Summer Night directed by Ingmar Bergman (Independent, 1955)
* On the Waterfront directed by Elia Kazan (Columbia Pictures, 1954)
* Tokyo Story directed by Yasujiro Ozu (Shochiku, 1953)
* Ugetsu directed by Kenji Mizoguchi (Daiei, 1953)
* Ikiru directed by Akira Kurosawa (Toho, 1952)
* Singin' in the Rain directed by Stanley Donen (MGM, 1952)!
* Umberto D. directed by Vittorio De Sica (Dear Film, 1952)
* A Streetcar Named Desire directed by Elia Kazan (Warner Bros., 1951)
* In a Lonely Place directed by Nicholas Ray (Columbia Pictures, 1950)

1940s

* Kind Hearts and Coronets directed by Robert Hamer (General Film Distributors, 1949)
* White Heat directed by Raoul Walsh (Warner Bros., 1949)
* Out of the Past directed by Jacques Tourneur (RKO Radio Pictures, 1947)
* It's a Wonderful Life directed by Frank Capra (RKO Radio Pictures, 1946)
* Notorious directed by Alfred Hitchcock (RKO Radio Pictures, 1946)
* Children of Paradise directed by Marcel Carné (Independent, 1945)
* Detour directed by Edgar G. Ulmer (Producers Releasing Corporation, 1945)
* Double Indemnity directed by Billy Wilder (Paramount Pictures, 1944)
* Meet Me in St. Louis directed by Vincente Minnelli (MGM, 1944)
* Casablanca directed by Michael Curtiz (Warner Brothers, 1942)!
* Citizen Kane directed by Orson Welles (RKO Radio Pictures, 1941)
* The Lady Eve directed by Preston Sturges (Independent, 1941)
* His Girl Friday directed by Howard Hawks (Columbia Pictures, 1940)
* Pinocchio directed by Bill Roberts (Walt Disney, 1940)!
* The Shop Around the Corner directed by Ernst Lubitsch (MGM, 1940)

1930s

* Ninotchka directed by Ernst Lubitsch (MGM, 1939)!
* Olympia, Parts 1 and 2 directed by Leni Riefenstahl (Independent, 1938)
* The Awful Truth directed by Leo McCarey (Columbia, 1937)
* Camille directed by George Cukor (MGM, 1936)
* The Crime of Monsieur Lange directed by Jean Renoir (Independent, 1936)
* Dodsworth directed by William Wyler (United Artists, 1936)
* Swing Time directed by George Stevens (RKO, 1936)
* Bride of Frankenstein directed by James Whale (Universal Pictures, 1935)
* It's a Gift directed by Norman Z. McLeod (Independent, 1934)
* Baby Face directed by Alfred E. Green (Warner Bros., 1933)
* King Kong directed by Merian C. Cooper (RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., 1933)
* City Lights directed by Charlie Chaplin (United Artists, 1931)

1920s

* Man with a Movie Camera directed by Dziga Vertov (VUFKU, 1929)
* The Crowd directed by King Vidor (MGM, 1928)
* The Last Command directed by Josef von Sternberg (Paramount Pictures, 1928)
* Metropolis directed by Fritz Lang (Universum Film A.G., 1927)
* Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans directed by F. W. Murnau (Fox Film Corporation, 1927)
* Sherlock, Jr. directed by Buster Keaton (Metro Pictures Corporation, 1924)!

So... 18? Let me recount... 19 listings watched- huzzah, what a great start- and what enthusiasm for a lame start! Am 19% done! Will try to put a counter for this too. If only Seven Samurai had made the list- I'm watching that tomorrow....

<3

EDIT: It's actually TWENTY, because I forgot I'd seen Talk to Her. But really, one of the film's is TEN films, another is THREE, and so on. The secretly take up more spaces on the list- gr!

Nominated Books

Summaries below- copied and pasted from Amazon.com.



Little Women- Louisa May Alcott



Louisa May Alcott wrote many books, but "Little Women" retains a special place in the heart of American literature. Her warmly realistic stories, sense of comedy and tragedy, and insights into human nature make the romance, humor and sweet stories of "Little Women" come alive.

The four March girls -- practical Meg, rambunctious Jo, sweet Beth and childish artist Amy -- live in genteel poverty with their mother Marmee; their father is away in the Civil War. Despite having little money, the girls keep their spirits up with writing, gardening, homemade plays, and the occasional romp with wealthier pals. Their pal, "poor little rich boy" Laurie, joins in and becomes their adoptive brother, as the girls deal with Meg's first romance, Beth's life-threatening illness, and fears for their father's safety.

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The Bluest Eye- Toni Morrison



Originally published in 1970, The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel. In an afterword written more than two decades later, the author expressed her dissatisfaction with the book's language and structure: "It required a sophistication unavailable to me." Perhaps we can chalk up this verdict to modesty, or to the Nobel laureate's impossibly high standards of quality control. In any case, her debut is nothing if not sophisticated, in terms of both narrative ingenuity and rhetorical sweep. It also shows the young author drawing a bead on the subjects that would dominate much of her career: racial hatred, historical memory, and the dazzling or degrading power of language itself.

Set in Lorain, Ohio, in 1941, The Bluest Eye is something of an ensemble piece. The point of view is passed like a baton from one character to the next, with Morrison's own voice functioning as a kind of gold standard throughout. The focus, though, is on an 11-year-old black girl named Pecola Breedlove, whose entire family has been given a cosmetic cross to bear:

You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.... And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it.

There are far uglier things in the world than, well, ugliness, and poor Pecola is subjected to most of them. She's spat upon, ridiculed, and ultimately raped and impregnated by her own father. No wonder she yearns to be the very opposite of what she is--yearns, in other words, to be a white child, possessed of the blondest hair and the bluest eye.

This vein of self-hatred is exactly what keeps Morrison's novel from devolving into a cut-and-dried scenario of victimization. She may in fact pin too much of the blame on the beauty myth: "Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion." Yet the destructive power of these ideas is essentially colorblind, which gives The Bluest Eye the sort of universal reach that Morrison's imitators can only dream of. And that, combined with the novel's modulated pathos and musical, fine-grained language, makes for not merely a sophisticated debut but a permanent one.

------------------------------------------------------

Persuasion- Jane Austen




In her final novel, as in her earlier ones, Jane Austen uses a love story to explore and gently satirize social pretensions and emotional confusion. Persuasion follows the romance of Anne Elliot and naval officer Frederick Wentworth. They were happily engaged until Anne’s friend, Lady Russell, persuaded her that Frederick was “unworthy.” Now, eight years later, Frederick returns, a wealthy captain in the navy, while Anne’s family teeters on the edge of bankruptcy. They still love each other, but their past mistakes threaten to keep them apart.

Austen may seem to paint on a small canvas, but her characters contain the full range of human passion and moral complexity, and the author’s generous spirit renders them all with understanding, compassion, and humor.

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The Key to Rebecca- Ken Follett



Set in North Africa, summer 1942, during Rommel's campaign against the British. This is the story of Alex Wolff, master spy, who treks across the Sahara and covertly enters the plot-ridden streets of wartime Cairo. And of Major Vandam, the British officer who is on Wolff's trail, sworn to destroy him. Wolff's mission is to steal British military plans and send them to Rommel, using a code whose key is buried in the pages of Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca. As Rommel's troops come closer to victory, Vandam edges closer to Wolff and the crucial key. There are incredible chase scenes: a motorcycle hurtling through blacked-out Cairo; the flash of a knife, a gush of hot blood, and the fleeting shadow of an escaping assassin; a harrowing race against death and a speeding train. Follett builds tension and suspense to a screaming pitch as he follows the adversaries across the internal desert to a confrontation as startling as it is explosive.

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The Bee Keeper's Apprentice: Or the Segregation of the Queen/A Novel of Suspense Featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes- Laurie R. King



Sherlock Holmes takes on a young, female apprentice in this delightful and well-wrought addition to the master detective's casework. In the early years of WW I, 15-year-old American Mary Russell encounters Holmes, retired in Sussex Downs where Conan Doyle left him raising bees. Mary, an orphan rebelling against her guardian aunt's strictures, impresses the sleuth with her intelligence and acumen. Holmes initiates her into the mysteries of detection, allowing her to participate in a few cases when she comes home from her studies at Oxford. The collaboration is ignited by the kidnapping in Wales of Jessica Simpson, daughter of an American senator. The sleuthing duo find signs of the hand of a master criminal, and after Russell rescues the child, attempts are made on their lives (and on Watson's), with evidence piling up that the master criminal is out to get Holmes and all he holds dear. King ( A Grave Talent ) has created a fitting partner for the Great Detective: a quirky, intelligent woman who can hold her own with a man renowned for his contempt for other people's thought processes.

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Morality for Beautiful Girls (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Book 3)- Alexander McCall Smith



Summary, in this instance, from Wikipedia:

Mma Ramotswe is engaged to "the excellent" Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, owner of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, but faces a slowdown of business at the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency that threatens its existence.

Forced to make difficult choices, Mma Ramotswe moves the business into the office of her fiancé's garage and makes her assistant, Mma Grace Makutsi, its assistant manager. At just this time, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni has been showing signs of lethargy and neglecting his business.
Case

An important government man approaches Mma Ramotswe to investigate his sister-in-law, whom he suspects of attempting to poison his brother.

Subplots

The beauty contest: Mma Makutsi interviews beauty competition competitors to determine their good character.

The mysterious orphan: Mma Silvia Potokwane, matron of the local orphanage, deals with a strange new child who, it is rumored, has been raised by lions.

-------------------------------------

Where the Heart Is- Billie Letts




A funny thing happens to Novalee Nation on her way to Bakersfield, California. Her ne'er-do-well boyfriend, Willie Jack Pickens, abandons her in an Oklahoma Wal-Mart and takes off on his own, leaving her with just 10 dollars and the clothes on her back. Not that hard luck is anything new to Novalee, who is "seventeen, seven months pregnant, thirty-seven pounds overweight--and superstitious about sevens.... For most people, sevens were lucky. But not for her," Billie Letts writes. "She'd had a bad history with them, starting with her seventh birthday, the day Momma Nell ran away with a baseball umpire named Fred..."

Still, finding herself alone and penniless in Sequoyah, Oklahoma is enough to make even someone as inured to ill fortune as Novalee want to give up and die. Fortunately, the Wal-Mart parking lot is the Sequoyah equivalent of a town square, and within hours Novalee has met three people who will change her life: Sister Thelma Husband, a kindly eccentric; Benny Goodluck, a young Native American boy; and Moses Whitecotton, an elderly African American photographer. For the next two months, Novalee surreptitiously makes her home in the Wal-Mart, sleeping there at night, exploring the town by day. When she goes into labor and delivers her baby there, however, Novalee learns that sometimes it's not so bad to depend on the kindness of strangers--especially if one of them happens to be Sam Walton, the superchain's founder.




I hope that these help! Any other book is also up for nomination! And yes, this is my blog O.O It seemed easiest...

Just a Short Update

Many things happened today. I am hoping that C will detail the happenings of this adventurous day in her own blog, so I can just link you there and not have to recap it all. Shortly spoken, I shall explain that poor C broke her foot at work, so she, baby, and I ("Molly and Me and Baby Makes Three???) went willy-nilly about towns to various health clinics and offices (and by this I mean two doctor-like places and one U-Haul). But she can probably sum the day up better and in a more young adult coming-of-age novel fashion.

Also, kudos for me for finishing the Friday crossword (Seattle Times, not NYT v.v and I had two blanks- but close enough! I'm rounding up.) Speaking of math- Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box would not take 2/3 as an answer to one of the puzzle questions- you had to put in 4/6! What kind of math is that? Eh? Eh? Dang, my memory's sharp. Pooh on game-makers for not finding the smallest common denominator.

Or whatever it's called.

...

Saw Valkyrie with Tom Cruise today (not with him physically... he was in the movie... see what happens when you use ambiguity in writing?). Was FANTASTIC. I was impressed- it felt like half it's length because it was so good. Kenneth Brannaugh was randomly in it (I don't remember him in the marketing campaign- would've seen it sooner just for his beautiful... face). I kept having to remind myself that Hitler wasn't going to die >.< It was THAT good. Artistic with great acting and so much suspense. I am not eloquent tonight.

Been reading new manga series (and by "new," I mean "new to me") from the library. The titles include: Bleach (on vol 9), Naruto (on vol... 6-ish), and Prince of Tennis (vol 3). Just today began One Piece, which is pretty darned amazing. The art reminds me of Mitsuru Adachi- who I LOOOOVE! And it's about PIRATES! I am big into pirates right now- writing a short story with piracy (probably very inaccurate but I'll accurate-ify it later). The characters are CHARMING (I'm also really big into child protagonists right now- like insanely so. It may be an aftereffect of watching all the Avatars so quickly).

Am psyched for Let the Right One In to come in at the library- about a little vampire girl who falls in love with a little boy. But it might all be in his head! The art is AMAZING (click the link above- on the title to see the beauty of it all) and the children are so beautiful. I think it will be great, once I finally see it (which will take for-evuh). The book came in at the library this afternoon right after I was there- grrrr. But I'll get it next week and read it even though I should read bookclub books (Water for Elephants, Killing Time). Am negligent.

Anyway, manga return in topic- Prince of Tennis= 12-year-old-ish boy tennis star, Naruto= 12-year-old-ish ninja-in-training (he's so cute and cocky! I love him! He shouts to a roomful of other ninjas that he's going to be the best! Soo cuuute!), Bleach= SEVENTEEN-y-o whatchamahoozit that kills whatchamahazzits.... hallows! that's what they're called! And he's a soul reaper! Memory= epic.

I'm sure there was more I wanted to talk about, but I need to get to sleep/work on my short story though I should try to sleep. Too much energy. Stupid me, drinking caffeine so late.

Love to you all (not even my mom is reading lately T.T am failure). <3

It was a Busy Day!

Ugh, busy busy busy day. 忙しかった！急いだ！Phew. It looks a lot more intense in Japanese... oh, that wasn't very culturally sensitive. Probably adding explanation points at the end of anything makes it seem more exciting. Like this!!!

This morning, Maynard, the great and all-powerfully beautiful kitty, went to the VET. He's had a lump on his neck/shoulder for a few weeks, and she said I ought to bring him in. But, apparently, it is not an abscess, but a tumor. T.T She said that it is most likely benign, but he has to go in for surgery next week. They'll take a sample of the bump, and also cut his nails and wash his teeth while he's under (anesthesia is EXPENSIVE, so she's doing us a favor....?). I am very worried about the baby- he is so sweet and young! Will try not to stress about it. Yeek.

Then, I came home and the people at Northlake Preschool had sent me an e-mail. So, I am going to an interview tomorrow afternoon (3:30), which means I had to find another sitter for the bebe. Which was insane- because my dad has crazy surgery/doctor appointment stuff (it is that confusing and unpleasant), and C works (poor C in her crappy job v.v), so I went for the people not related to me by blood (or law... crap, I messed that logic up. C= step= law= not so much blood... but whatever), and the bebe is going to her other grandpapa's (who is also a legal thing. divorce confuses all the word logistics). Thank Goodness.

The preschool is pretty nifty. They speak to the children in many languages. In addition to English, they learn some Japanese and... wait for it... Danish--- who speaks Danish? What country is that spoken in? Thinking... Holland= Dutch, Norway= Norwegian, Denmark= Danish? Apparently, this is correct. Huzzah. And don't you go getting all judgmental, do YOU know where they speak Sanskrit and Pali? Or what the official language/s of Brunei is? Studied ASIAN studies not European studies/other random place studies. I just don't know much about Europe- only studied it a tiny bit in college and none in high school O.O

Also, at this school (back on track now!), they have music classes, gymnastics, science, etc. Anyway, it sounds pretty neat- the sort of place you'd want a kiddie at. And maybe my Japanese will be a plus. Just hope it'll work with school schedule next quarter (oh jeez, I am way ahead of myself here, aren't I?). Just keep telling myself it is good practice going to these interviews. Hoping to hear from the UW in the next few weeks- really really want that internship (archive-ness- good for future career-ness).

Oh, and... I also scheduled a meeting with someone at the OMAD (Office of Multicultural Affairs and Diversity) for figuring out *the future*- but appt. is a few weeks away and squirelly early O.o. And replied to some e-mails regarding teaching English in Japan- big questions with research behind them- boo yah. And defended my honor against false understandings of Ref. 71 (YES= keep the domestic partner benefits, NO= make them go away and leave the elderly and same-sex couples screwed... that was a one-sided analysis....). Trying to figure out how to help with the YES for Ref. 71 campaign in WA as well (a mess of things far away). Also talked with a kid about TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language... that's not what it stands for, is it?). And called the insurance about why the hey-ho they still haven't paid a bill from December. And scheduled for my sister's cat to go get groomed and am taking her in to boot. And changed Maynard's vet appointment. And other calls and e-mails, I'm sure @.@

Phew.

Then went to Target to look for Professor Layton, but it was sold out O.O again! They just got in a new shipment this morning! How can this be! So, I went to the mall to get mom some on-sale nylons and return the less-than-saley nylons. Then got PL at GameSpot with a gift card (from trading in a big price game for little back T.T). Oh, and picked up prints at Kits Cameras. Then stopped at B&N on way home to pick up a card for mom's b-day tonight (and a coffee). Came home and wrapped the present/wrote the card, fed the kitty, dressed myself up and skedaddled.

Picked up baby got halfway to UW and realized we had no diaper bag :( so I had to come back. Ugh.

Coffee-ing and shopping with mom/M. Dinner at ... Pair! which had small portions that you buy lots of for regular price altogether? I don't know. Too tired to think after all that typing. Things happened and things were said and food was eaten the end.

See you later. I must to sleep get.

<3