Sick Day
I’m sick on this snowy MLK Day. After playing enough Call Of Duty to make myself believe I could singlehandedly storm the Reichstag and sitting on the warm radiator watching the pristine WHITE snow try and take away from the good reverend’s day (For shame snow, for shame) I laid down on the couch with my laptop. Unsure of what to write here because all I had done today was cough up phlegm and whine about being sick, I rifled (too much Call Of Duty) through my head at ideas I considered writing about in the last couple of days.
My first thought was getting back to my roots. My earliest internet work was being guilted into writing movie reviews for a young, budding website, Sparkitmarket.com. So I thought since I had seen a lot of the Oscar-y movies this winter I could do a little review. I could make some pithy comments about how Sean Penn’s Harvey Milk is just a slightly toned back “I Am Sam.” I could talk about how Benjamin Button was the longest three hours of my life and that includes while serving jury duty when I watched three straight hours of Good Morning America, The Rachel Ray Show, and The View. I could also link to this beauty, which summed up what I said right after coming out of the theatre. I could talk about how insanely hot the slumdog girl is, or how the movie somehow glamorized being a homeless child to the point where I told my friend Greg I wish I was a street urchin. I could talk about Gran Torino and how I saw it with my parents, in a theatre packed full of old Jewish couples who commented (hilariously) on every racial slur out of Eastwood’s mouth. I’d give mini-reviews, my opinion on each movie, and tap into my semester of Cinema 286L and pull out some deep analysis. Maybe like, “Benjamin Button lacked because it didn’t have anything driving it. The other four below are driven by redemption. The three muskateers in Slumdog are each chasing their own demons. Clint Eastwood’s character in Gran Torino attempts to redeem himself for things he had done in the past. The three main characters of The Wrestler are all chasing their former glories. Harvey Milk is driven towards redemption after realizing he wasted the first 40 years of his life. On the other hand Benjamin Button is a choppy mess where the audience bounces between the life of a man who ages backwards and a hospital during Hurricane Katrina in a movie that tries too hard to make itself an epic.” I’d say something like that. That was until I realized no one wants to hear my opinion.
Ranking of the 5 “Oscar Worthy” Movies I saw:
1. Slumdog Millionaire
2. Gran Torino
3. The Wrestler
4. Milk
5. The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
Since my faux-movie review actually took a decent amount of time, I can now save my other thought gems for another snowy day. While I’m on the topic of movies I’ll take this chance to just drop this link. I actually get goosebumps watching this.
