Category: meta, baby

I would never have guessed in a million years that I would ever see Holly Hunter and Austin Pendleton a-smooching in a film. I am still somewhat stunned. I also laughed my head off.
I want to write a full review of Home for the Holidays, and I am sure I will at least write a six-minute review. But I am still floored about that scene and had to share. Also, it was very weird that Charles Durning’s character had the same name as my grandfather, because whenever Anne Bancroft started yelling at him to do something, it sounded exactly like my grandmother. If you are in my immediate family (which you are not, unless my youngest brother is visiting … hi!), this alone makes the movie worthwhile.
I watched Home for the Holidays in preparation for an essay I wrote for Cinematical about entertaining dysfunctional families in film. If you are reading this entry shortly after I posted it, you can look in the right-hand column and see a link to the entry, so I didn’t really have to post one in the previous sentence.

Continue reading Holly Hunter made out with Austin Pendleton

We started working on Holidailies 2005 this week. For those of you who haven’t heard of this, it’s a collaborative project that I’ve been running every year since 2000, back in the days when I had an online journal and not a film blog. (This is a film blog isn’t it? Well, it was. Obviously I need to write more about film, as soon as possible.)
Holidailies started as an informal group of online journallers who pledged to update their sites every day in December. If you want a laugh, you can still see the Nibelung ring of Holidailies 2001 participants. I wonder how many of those sites are still active?
In the past couple of years, Holidailies has become spiffy and feature-rich and amazing, thanks almost entirely to The Beau, the database and code wrangler. About 120 people posted regularly to the Holidailies portal last year, plus another 50 or so who participated informally. We had a readers’ panel picking Best of Holidailies entries every day, too.
This year Holidailies will be even better. The site now has its own domain, we redecorated it with a new color scheme (I was tired of red and green), and The Beau is working on some more cool features. The new design and features haven’t gone live yet, but keep checking the site because it is going to look fabulous.

Continue reading Holidailies and other site news

I really hate reading weblog/journal entries that begin with “Sorry I haven’t been posting much lately, but the cat lost all its hair/ the guitar died/ the kids spilled pudding in the laptop/ I lost all my pants/ zombies!” Or whatever.
I also don’t get much of a thrill out of entries that exist just to tell me that the author won’t be around, like “Don’t expect me to post anything for the next month because it’s blueberry-picking season/ I’m reading the collected works of J.K Rowling in French/ all my furniture needs refinishing/ zombies!”
Having said that …
My job is kicking my ass around the block. We advanced from Busy Software Pre-Release Mode to Incredibly Swamped Imminent Release Mode. Theoretically I shouldn’t even be sitting here at home typing this right now, I should be in the office converting XML to HTML or testing software or deciphering edits from software developers or arguing why we shouldn’t change terminology this close to a release.
I can think of a half-dozen things I’d like to write about, plus I would love to review Batman Begins and Hustle & Flow and whatever the hell else I’ve seen in the past couple of weeks. I hope I’ll be able to make time to post about a few upcoming events in Austin, as soon as I can remember where I put that information …
For the next two or three weeks, my job will suck out all my brain power and when I get home I will sit on the sofa like, well, a zombie. And I don’t mean Rob Zombie, either. (Hey, when’s his movie going to play in Austin?) Also, I’m doing some volunteer work that’s cranking into high gear. And maybe I’ll refinish all the furniture, just for fun and relaxation.
Don’t expect regular and substantial postings before August 15. Now that I’ve said that, of course, I’ll get a wild hair to write about my theories on the so-called box office slump, or write another list of gaps in the DVD market, or explain why I like the ending of the movie Alice Adams more than the book. Perhaps I’ll even write about zombies.

I was starting to look through Austin movie theater Web sites so I could pull together this week’s Movies This Week and I wondered: why I am going to this much trouble? It takes me hours to write a Movies This Week entry, because I have to check all the Alamo Drafthouse schedules and the Paramount schedule and the Austin Film Society calendar, and then I check Austin360 and the Austin Chronicle movie sections to see if I am missing any special screenings. I usually end up venturing over to IMDb to find out what some of these movies are about, and sometimes I use Google to find out more about this or that film. If I have time, I start the entry on Thursday lunch or Thursday night, work on it during Friday lunch, and post it Friday after work.
It has been just about one year since Omar ran out of time to write his Movies This Week entries and I asked him if I could take them over. It’s been fun, but I’m starting to realize that I might not want to invest as much time in these weekly entries as I do now.
I don’t mind doing this and it does mean that I walk around with the week’s schedule of Austin films in my head, which can be useful in conversations (okay, or dull) and which is a good reminder for me that I should put such-and-such film on my calendar or buy tickets now.
Here’s what I want to know: Are you reading all of Movies This Week? Do you read just the part “above the fold” that is posted on the index page, and don’t click through to the actual listings? Do you read about the new movies but skip the part about Austin special events (which I realize would be interesting only if you live in Austin)? Do you actually use the listing to find out about movies you might want to see?
I’m not getting rid of Movies This Week but I am seriously considering cutting it down in scope. I might list and discuss only new movies, or I might list only the most notable special screenings in Austin. (As it is, I don’t list DVD screenings or movies I don’t like, and it still goes on forever. You could watch a free movie or DVD screening every night in this town if you wanted.) I mean, that’s what Omar did when he wrote Movies This Week, but his entries were a lot funnier and I felt compelled to make up for the lack of humor with more information about Austin screenings.
I don’t want to write all this stuff, for which I am not paid, if no one is using it as a resource. After all, on Fridays you can pick up an Austin Chronicle or go to their Web site, click on Calendar and Special Screenings, and view an even better (if less snarky) list.
So please, if you read this site regularly, post a comment to let me know if/how you’re reading Movies This Week. I’d really appreciate it. Also, let me know if you live in/near Austin. I’m certainly not going to cry or fuss if you tell me you don’t read the damn thing or you think it sucks; I want to know so I can make a good decision.
Meanwhile, I am going back to the Alamo site to marvel at the number of good films that one local theater chain can show in one week. Thanks for helping me decide what to do about the Movies This Week thing.

I’ve been updating my list of twenty gaps on DVD to note which ones will be released soon. If you subscribe to my RSS feed (on Bloglines or elsewhere), you probably have noticed whenever I update the page. But if you’re not into the whole RSS thing, I have posted the link in the right-hand sidebar along with the date I last updated the list.
Check out the list, because you would not believe the number of times I’ve updated it recently with all kinds of goodies scheduled for DVD release: Unfaithfully Yours, Matilda, five Astaire-Rogers films, and most recently Ninotchka. And keep an eye on the sidebar, because you never know what someone might decide to release next. (Holiday? A Foreign Affair? A girl can dream.)

This is just a quickie to fulfill the Holidailies daily quota. Don’t want to fall under the horizontal line of Holidailies doom and gloom!
Tonight I made macaroni and cheese for dinner—out of the Kraft box, even—to go with the leftover chili as a kind of Build-Your-Own-Chili-Mac. Mmmmm. But I hope The Beau never learns what the expiration date on the box was, or he won’t eat a bite of the leftovers!!!
I have to make a to-do list of stuff I should be doing before this weekend, so I won’t forget:

• Research and write the Movies This Week entry, STAT!
• Remember to buy garbage bags later. You can never have enough!
• Get my final Christmas present shopping done for The Younger Niece, The Sister-in-Law, and the-child-of-a friend-who-is-throwing-a-Christmas-party-this-weekend that-Sweetiepantsbeausiebutt-and-I-are-attending.
• Figure out what to wear to the dinner party tomorrow night, which is a holiday party for my boyfriend Mr. Awesome’s office.
• Pick a new Netflix movie. I may bring Bad Santa home for my dad to watch. That movie totally rocks my world, but it’s not so much for everyone!

Have I hit 50 words yet? I don’t want to get in trouble with … er … me. Ha! Hopefully I can “write ahead” this weekend. Or is that cheating? Ooops!
*perspicaciousness (n.)—Acute discernment; shrewdness.
This entry is dedicated to The Usual Suspects, a group that has amply demonstrated their passion for various writing styles employed above. Enjoy.

Holidailies is now open for registration. Please read the About page before registering because some things are a little different this year.
We have a short registration period and it will close next week so go register right-damn-now. Last year the portal had so many registrants that I closed it early. I don’t think I will close it early this year, and if I do you can still sign up for Holidailies at Home, but I just wanted to give you all fair warning. Do not procrastinate.
Between the time when the form went live on the Web last night and the time when I checked my email this morning, we had 43 people sign up. Wow.
The portal will open for posting on Dec. 7. It’s a great place to visit if you are looking for good stuff to read. And new stuff appears regularly! Sometimes I think the whole project is just a big present for me, because so many of my favorite online journallers and bloggers participate and post good stuff all month long. (My all-time favorite was Roe of metrocake, now at ultramegawow, who used to post gorgeous pictures of holiday decorations in NYC every day. I still miss that.)
Email me if you run into problems with registering, but so far it all seems to be running smoothly.
I am thinking of adding a tagline for Holidailies this year. It’s no longer “Updating daily in December” because I ran late. But how about “Updating daily from Hanukkah to Epiphany”? My boyfriend thinks it’s a bit lame but then he didn’t like my Army of Darkness joke either.

FYI: I am running behind on setting up the Holidailies stuff this year. I will still do Holidailies this year, but I’m out of town and won’t be back until late Monday, which means nothing will get done before Tuesday night. So “updating in the month of December” may mean Dec. 6 (hey, it’s St. Nicholas’ Day) through Jan. 6 (hey, it’s Epiphany). Please be patient. I promise you I will update this site to let y’all know as soon as you can sign up for Holidailies.
Now I will go recover from too much turkey and forced social interaction. See y’all next week.

It’s the time of year where I start thinking about Holidailies again. Holidailies is a project I started in 2000, in which I decided I would update my Web site every day in December. A few other people decided it would be fun to do the same thing, and the project grew from there. Last year, I had a portal for Holidailies and more than 100 people participated. You can currently see last year’s portal here.
Even though I don’t have a very personal Web page anymore, and tend to write about movies more than anything, I still like the idea of Holidailies. (Besides, posting movie reviews counts for the daily entry.)
I’m currently brainstorming ideas for this year’s portal and other aspects of the project. If you participated in previous years, or if you read entries from the portal, or if you’re just an opinionated person, I’d like to hear your ideas for improving Holidailies.

Continue reading Holidailies brainstorming