Story and You

(image via wookmark.com) I am going to give up on writing out my hopes for this blog, because I always fail to live up to my expectations for myself. I will simply write when I can and hopefully that turns out to be more frequent than not, but if the first two weeks of this semester are any indication, I think the summer holidays are going to be the best bet for a more rigorous posting schedule. We shall see. As far as December goes, it was not a banner month for me. I had several exams and they all went well, but right as I was prepared to give myself a much-needed break and spend my free time writing and watching lots of movies, I got very sick. I initially woke up sick on Christmas Day, and proceeded to miss most of my shifts at the movie theater for the remainder of the week. Rather than spend that free time enjoying the holidays, I had to stay in bed and sleep—and when I was not asleep, I was too miserable to do anything fun or productive with my time. Then when I w...

(image via DoctorMacro) Yet another busy month has come and gone. Same old story for my lack of posting: lots of schoolwork and too many shifts at the theater. I've been busy enough that even my movie watching has suffered, with a number of days going by without watching any film at all--though my count still rounds out to slightly over 1 per day. This was my first Noirvember, and I was really excited to dig into a bunch of noir classics, but between time constraints and a lack of access to some of the films I would have liked to watch, a lot of my film choices fall under the neo-noir or more generic "crime" umbrella--still, among the handful of "real" noirs I got to, I did discover some new all-time favorites, so I would say my first foray into this event was a success. I also re-watched a number of films, most of them for my film class, but also Lover Come Back for the blogathon earlier this month and my annual viewing of V for Vendetta. I'm glad to s...

(image via Vice.com)  As I mentioned in my last post, October has been a busy month. Lots of shifts at work, lots of classes and schoolwork . . . It's all been pretty overwhelming, and I'm definitely looking ahead to December when I'll have a break. From the school part, at least--the number of shifts is definitely not going to improve in the wake of Star Wars: The Last Jedi coming out! Despite the busyness, I did watch a good number of films this month--38, the exact same number as in September, actually--and a lot of them were quite good. I didn't watch as much horror as I would have liked, but I did manage to finish off Val Lewton's horror filmography, and I watched two of the big horror releases of 2017, all of which I enjoyed and got me suitably in the mood for the holiday. I also re-watched some great movies in my film class, Pan's Labyrinth and Blue Velvet , both of which--while not exactly horror--felt appropriate to the season. All in all, a good mo...

(image via Flixster) I started my first semester of university this month, which brought me back to that all-too-familiar juggling of work, school, and free time (AKA watching movies). I did cut back on the movie watching quite a bit, especially compared to last month, but I still averaged about a movie a day in the end. I really should have watched less, honestly, but daily movie-watching is a hard habit to break! I began the month by finishing off my SUTS recordings--I still had movies from Leslie Caron, Slim Pickens, Marion Davies, George Sanders, and Elizabeth Taylor to see--and then transitioned into some very random viewing selections, and then finally got on track with my viewing theme for the whole latter half of the month, the lovely Jennifer Jones (interspersed with some viewings from my film class-- Rashomon is not one I would have otherwise chosen to re-watch in the middle of my Jones marathon!). Where before this month I had never seen her in a single film, I have now...

It was Summer Under the Stars month on TCM, and over the course of my self-imposed challenge to watch at least one film from every star being honored--and watching quite a few more than that for my favorites--I managed to watch more films than I've ever watched in a single month before. The grand total is pretty ridiculous, but then, I'm going to be very busy over the next few months between work and university, so I can't begrudge myself this epic movie binge during my last month of freedom. I'm also proud to say that this is the first month ever that I didn't watch a single film from the 2010s--in fact, I didn't watch a single film released past 1977! See details and a breakdown of my epic month of classic Hollywood below the cut.

July was another crazy month, but for the first time all year, it was a good kind of crazy! I got my new job at the movie theater, and so far it's going great; I think I've finally found a place that makes me happy, after a number of pretty disappointing positions. And with all of the free time I've had (this job has less hours than my old one), I've watched a lot of movies, most of them really good. I re-watched a number of films, got through half of my planned Audrey Hepburn marathon--part 2 coming soon--watched through a number of Powell and Pressburger movies--which were a real treat--and discovered a couple of completely unexpected new favorites, which is always exciting! See a breakdown of my viewing and my new favorites after the cut.

This month has truly been an emotional roller coaster. I had my high school graduation ceremony,; my apartment building had a fire, luckily with no damage to any suites but still a pretty harrowing experience; and, most importantly of all, I finally quit the truly terrible job I've been working since January. I was planning to stay until the end of the summer, but I finally had enough and I've now officially completed my final shift there. I'll be on the lookout for another job very soon, but in the meantime I'm taking a little vacation, which means lots of time to relax, and more importantly, watch and write about movies. I'm pretty exited! Despite all the busyness, I managed to see a lot of movies, including more catch-ups from 2016, a few Gable stragglers, and lots of TCM's Noir Alley series. It was a rough month in real life, but overall a pretty great one for movies--see a breakdown of what I watched and some highlights after the cut.

May is another month that's gone by in a flash. It helped that it was Clark Gable month on TCM, something I've been looking forward to for a few months now; with all of the films I watched, I've now nearly completed Clark's 1930s filmography! I've noticed lately that Clark Gable isn't talked about that much nowadays, and I'm not totally sure why--perhaps his ever-charming, suave screen presence doesn't resonate as much with contemporary classic movie fans, who prefer the more complex, tortured performers of classic Hollywood? Whatever the reasoning may be, this binge of his early films has cemented him as one of my favorite performers of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and I plan to watch as many films from him as I can in the future. Beyond Clark, I also managed to squeeze in viewings of some 70s horror films, more catch-ups from 2016, and a couple of re-watches, including You've Got Mail with my mom for Mother's Day. Overall, a really great m...

April has been a crazy month. On the one hand, it felt like it went by so quickly, but on the other, when I look at the films I watched at the beginning of the month, they seem like they're from a lifetime ago. I guess over-exhaustion does that to a person. On the plus side, it has been an amazing month for movies; I saw so many fantastic films and discovered so many new favorites. A particularly great discovery from April was not a specific film, but rather a newfound love for a whole decade: the 1950s has consistently been my least favorite among the decades of golden age Hollywood, but this month I delved into some of the best films it has to offer and now I'm hooked. After the cut is the list of films I watched, as well as a selection of my favorite viewings.