Morning, everyone. Hope you’ve all recovered from New Year’s Eve by now. I’m getting there, with some help from the kind folks at The Coffee Garden down the street. Anyway, as promised, here is a quick look back at all the books I read and movies I watched during the year just ended. If you care, that is. Personally, I’m always curious to see where my tastes, interests, and whims have led during the past twelve. Sometimes there are interesting patterns to be found, moments when I was obviously obsessing on particular ideas and didn’t realize it; other times, it’s all an exercise in randomness, and that’s frequently interesting, too. At least it is for me. If it is for you as well, read on…
For the convenience of my three loyal readers, I’ve decided to split this topic across two entries this year. First up: movies!
Movies Seen in a Theater in 2006
- The Producers (2005 musical version)
- Walk the Line
- Underworld: Evolution
- Brokeback Mountain
- The World’s Fastest Indian
- Night Watch
- V for Vendetta
- Lucky Number Slevin
- Mission: Impossible III
- The Notorious Bettie Page
- X-Men: The Last Stand
- A Prairie Home Companion
- Superman Returns
- The Lake House
- Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest
- John Tucker Must Die
- Miami Vice
- Hollywoodland
- The Departed
- Marie Antoinette
- Casino Royale
Immediate impression: wow, I didn’t do very many reviews this year, did I? I guess the number increases a bit when you consider that I did three separate entries on Superman Returns, but still, pretty sparse activity in the old review category. Hopefully I’ll be able to change that in ’07. As I mentioned the other day, I really do enjoy writing them, and it frequently seems like my best writing emerges when I’m harping on someone else’s creativity. (Just kidding, friends…)
A quick comparison with the 2005 list reveals that my theater-going was way down in ’06; I saw only 21 movies with the mouth-breathing public this year, down from 31 the previous year. This wasn’t a deliberate choice, by the way; it’s just how things worked out. While I gripe a great deal about the behavior of other movie-goers, I really do enjoy the theatrical experience, and I doubt I’ll ever be content to just stay at home, especially when it comes to the big specatcle-type movies. I don’t care how large televisions ultimately become, they’re just never going to match the vision-filling immersive experience of watching a projected image on a 60 foot-wide screen, and sitting on the couch with two or three other people can’t match the (admittedly rare) communal experience you get with an auditorium filled with people who are all laughing, crying, or jumping in tune with the movie. But that’s just me, I suppose; I know a lot of people who can no longer justify the ever-higher ticket prices or put up with the coarse, oafish behavior you inevitably have to endure these days.
Favorite movies this year: Walk the Line, The World’s Fastest Indian (probably my number one for ’06, a delightful little movie about a thoroughly charming character, and it was all filmed right here in Utah), The Notorious Bettie Page, Hollywoodland, Casino Royale
Biggest disappointments: X-Men: The Last Stand (or, how to take all the terrific groundwork laid in the first two films and piss it all away because you think you need to wrap things up and have a trilogy, rather than an on-going series), Superman Returns, Marie Antoinette
I know I saw ’em but I’ll be damned if I remember anything about ’em: Underworld: Evolution, John Tucker Must Die, Night Watch
Moving right along, I may love going out to see movies, but I also watch a lot of them at home, so:
Movies Watched on DVD in 2006
- The Kid Stays in the Picture
- The Outsiders: The Complete Novel Edition
- Hostage
- Alien Apocalypse
- In Her Shoes
- MirrorMask
- The Village
- The Birds
- Thief
- Bootmen
- Capote
- Ocean’s 11 (1960 version)
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
- Gojira (original Japanese version of Godzilla)
- Dracula (1931 version)
- The Great Waldo Pepper
- Cars
- Ron White: They Call Me Tater Salad
- Ron White: You Can’t Fix Stupid
- Streets of Fire
- Elizabethtown
The numbers are down on this list as well, only 20 titles instead of the 23 I watched in 2005. This seemed really weird to me, at first, because I seem to recall the DVD player humming constantly throughout ’06. Then I realized that I’ve been watching a lot of TV shows and other small-screen content on DVD lately, and I neglected to record those titles in my notes (yes, I do keep actual notes on this stuff). I’ll be more careful about that in ’07.
Favorite DVD viewing this year: The Kid Stays in the Picture, The Outsiders: The Complete Novel Edition, Capote, Gojira, The Great Waldo Pepper, Cars
Biggest surprise (as in, “surprising how much I liked it because the others haven’t done much for me”): Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Biggest disappointments: The Birds, Elizabethtown
Weirdest movie I’ve seen in any format in a long, long time: MirrorMask
I’ll be back shortly with my 2006 booklist…
