Will You Take the Newsvine 2008 Movie Challenge?

The idea here is not "who can read the most?" or "who can see the most movies?" so much as motivating more of us to share what we are reading and watching. I LOVE reading reviews by other people and comparing their opinions of a work to my own. Or, better yet, reading about something and deciding to check it out.

So... Who's in?

The reading challenge is here

This is an automated message (just go along with this) reminding you that the Newsvine
reading and movie challenge (link) are starting on Jan. 1 so if you get any good books
or movies from Santa or others come join us. The more the merrier. Or as I said in
high school, "be there or be trapezoid."

These are the movies I've seen in December and January.

Charlie wilson's war
Out of balance (env film)
My best friend
Once
When stand up stood up and Pamela Drew's movie, Round Up Ready Nation

Last nite I watched a documentary on PBS called Oswald's Ghost. This weekend I'll write up mini-reviews on each of the movies I've seen in the last month.

Believe it or not, even I sometimes run out of time and energy to write all I want.

I'm also writing up a full review of Oswald's Ghost. I wasn't alive yet but I imagine these words sparked the inevitable question for those older than me, namely "where were you when…"

I was, though, born the bloody year of 1968, which has been called the Year The Changed Everything

Movie #1 - Oswald's Ghost (about the JFK assassination and how it continues to affect us today)

Movie #2 - Devil's Playground - about a ritual among Amish communities

Movie #3 will be a review of a documentary on tonite or tomorrow nite on PBS called Lobotomy - details here

and Movie #4 will be on a documentary about Fred Phelps which I've been postponing watching because he drives me crazy.

Future movie reviews ( or more likely mini-reviews) will include
Charlie wilson's war
Out of balance (env film)
My best friend
Once
When stand up stood up and Pamela Drew's movie, Round Up Ready Nation

and I STILL need to write up my list of my top 10 books read in 2008. I am SUCH a slacker:)

How's everyone doing with this challenge? I'll be posting a few more reviews in the next
few days.

How's this going? I'm going to try to get organized and post an updated list of my book
and movie reviews/interviews/general consumption in the next week or so. I'm planning on writing up today while at work a list of movies I've seen thus far in 2008 and will post that around Monday.

Is anyone besides me doing this? I'll start a new one Jan. 1 if there is interest.

(let me model what I mean)

51 - CSI - Season Seven> I am going to wait until I get my computer back to make this a separate article so I'll store it here for now and, meanwhile, feel free to disagree with it.

My full list is here

Normally, in my experience, tv series become less interesting in later seasons. Witness, say, MASH or Moonlighting or other shows that jumped the shark. Incidentally one the other articles I've written by hand but not yet typed in is a review of the Jump the Shark Book by the author of the site by that name about when every show jumped the shark. I'll probably post that after the first of the year.

There are exceptions, of course: Buffy and West Wing, for example, hit their stride after the first season.

So I guess I should narrow things and say cop procedural often become less innovative after the first season, partially because they have to start dealing with problems like how are they doing to handle an ensemble cast and there is less attention on, say, excellent plot twists.

So I watched CSI season seven with some hesitation and trepidation, worrying it was going to be boring and predictable.

The dvd has some excellent extras. Oh, I should mention I watch many tv series a season or three behind, watching them via dvds from my local library (a bit shout out to Washington County Free Library). There is a dvd extra about the episode involving Cirque De Solei, for example.
But the best part of the season 7 extras focuses on what truly made season seven stand out, namely the miniature killer. Learning in an extra that the inspiration for this plotline was a woman who wanted to be a cop, back in those awful days when women could not be cops, and would make miniature crime scenes so detailed that they are still studied and used as a teaching tool.
This information added to the fascination season-wide story arc leading to one of the most fascinating villains ever on the series. This all led up to the season finale and the starting episode of season 8. I can't yet say how season 8 is since the library hasn't yet made it available to me. Which is fine since I've been instead catching up on seasons one and two of 30 Rock, which I absolutely love, while also watching Chuck and Dexter via Netflix.
But I digress.

Also of interest for CSI fans is an extra about the Living Legend episode, which is the one where the Who's Roger Daltrey demonstrates his impressive acting chops playing everything from a large older black woman to a Hispanic guy.

All in all, it's a great season and if you liked the series and this season I'd strongly suggest you check out the extras which are on the final dvd of the season's dvd set.

(Later I'll post my review for Bolt, which I saw last night)

Movie #52 - On Saturday I watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It was on AMC with a scrawl of trivia which, in this case, I totally loved. I loved some of the trivia nuggets like that one of the girls in the movie had to pretend (for shame!) to like chocolate. And, for example, Wilder refused to do the movie unless they let him do his first appearance – halfway through the movie – the way he did, where he first appeared handicapped. The idea was that from that point on nobody would know which of his affectations was real. Brilliant dark chocolate, er, comedy.

As I often do these days after I see a movie I go read the reviews to see what "real" movie critics think and I was surprised to see most didn't like it. But my man Roger Ebert loved it and included it in his new book of Four Star Reviews (which I have been gradually paging through). His review of it is here and he is so right.

I look forward to watching it again sometime and listening to the cast commentary. (Yeah I'm a geek but I love the behind the scenes stories)

#53 -

Just as the television series Chucks sends up the spy genre while also telling a fun spy story, Bolt plays with the Bourne Identity genre by way of The Truman Show (the main character, a dog named Bolt, doesn't understand he is part of a tv program)

The writing is hilarious and the dialogue is especially brilliant. Watch for a funny shoutout to Finding Nemo about 30 minutes from the end.

I am not a John Travolta fan (in fact his involvement in a movie usually sends me a message, that message being "run away!") but he does a great job in this one.

More importantly this movie works at both a kid and an adult level.

Lars and the Real Girl is the 54th movie I saw this year and the last I am going to include for my my 2008 Movie Challenge

I'll start up the new challenge in two or three days.

My full review of Lars is here.

I'm thinking of changing the title for the next annual challenge to Will You Take the 2009 Movie and Film Challenge? which prompts
Dumb question: what IS the difference between a movie and a film?

The movie challenge for 2009 is now up.

I'll start the reading challenge later today (I'm at work and its slow at the moment)