A to Z Challenge 2023 Theme Reveal: A Month At The Movies

 I have some good news.  I just saved 15% by switching my insurance to Geico.  No, my news is better than that.  The A to Z Challenge is coming to a blog near you and I am very excited.  The event begins in earnest on April 1st, but on March 12th you can participate in the theme reveal at A to Z challenge.com.

 I love the A to Z challenge. I don't think it's any great stretch to say that I am still blogging in no small part due to the A to Z challenge. From 2012 to 2021 I participated nine times in the challenge.  Over that time I have entered 5 of my blogs in the challenge sometimes as many as 3 in the same year. 

I love almost everything about the challenge.  I love reading other people's blogs and commenting on them. I love how so many of the blogs I currently have on my blogroll have participated at one time or another in the challenge.   I love creating a theme and disciplining myself to post 26 times on that theme. I especially love putting things in alphabetical order.  I think I'll put that last sentence in alphabetical order: "alphabetical, especially I in love order. putting things" (Yes, I put the punctuation marks in alphabetical order as well. Who Wouldn't?)

Every year until they make the big announcement  I get a little concerned that maybe they won't be doing the challenge this year.  I'm a weird dude, 49% optimist, 49% pessimist, and 2% milk in a glass half full. But I have been blogging for a long time and I've seen lots of blogs and blogging events be lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry Clementine over the years.  So when I heard the A to Z challenge was coming back and better than ever I was stoked.  

Since I am so jacked that the Challenge is on, I decided to announce my theme a little early this year. My 2023 Theme is A Month at the Movies.  

2692117 © Laura Domenica Cantisani | Dreamstime.com 

 I have been posting a lot lately about films.  I am spending this year revamping my 100 favorite film list.  I am trying to watch 12 new movies to me this year and post about them here.  I have been thinking about a simple movie theme for the challenge for the past few years.  I say a simple theme because in the past, I have participated in the challenge at more than one blog at a time, and last year I had 3 themes in one challenge: home runs, limericks, and wordle starting guesses.  Compared to those 26 movie reviews will be a walk in the park, but not A Walk to Remember, as my A film will be Arsenic and Old Lace.  

The A to Z Theme for 2023 is resiliency.  With each film I choose, I will incorporate how that film demonstrates resiliency in one way or another. 

I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but I am super excited about this year's A to Z challenge.   I'm so excited that I've already thought of my theme for the 2024 challenge.   Since I'm already in full reveal mode, and since my ADHD will probably interfere with remembering it for next year I'll just reveal my 2024 A to Z challenge theme now. The 2024 theme will be Narnian characters and creatures from A to Z.  My working title is Narnia: From Aslan to Zardeenah.  

Before I get too far ahead of myself here are the important dates for this year's challenge.

March 12th - March 18th:             Theme Reveal

April 1st:                                          The Letter A

April3rd -April 8th:                         Letters B-G

April 10th -15th:                               Letters H-M

April 17th -22nd:                              Letters N-S

April 24th-April30th:                       Letters Letters T-Z

May 1st - May 6th:                            A to Z Reflections

May 15th:                                            A to Z Road Trip Begins

 Check out   A to Z challenge.com for more information I may have missed. Click here for more on the Theme Reveal. Click here to see who has signed up so far.

Dave Out Loud loses and finds his Wallet @roldaver

Top 100 Films: A Preparation

 

Five years, or so ago, I decided that I needed to make a listing of my 100 favorite movies. I was working in an office at a time and even had 2 of my coworkers make their own lists.  I worked on it painstakingly for several months and when I completed it, I promptly lost the list.  #ADHDLIFE.  

Sometime during Co-vid, my wife found a small notebook of mine that had 100 favorite movies scratched on it.  It unfortunately did not have the completed list , but it did have the names of over 150 movies and some rankings and notations.  I always intended to revisit the list every 5 years or so, but this feels more like starting over than revisiting.  

For the past few weeks, I have been laying out a groundwork for determining my top 100.  This process will include watching many of them again to see if they still resonate with me,  sorting movies into different groups, and ranking them by group while continuing to develop a philosophy for establishing the final ranking.

An important decision I'll have to navigate  is how exactly  I'll be  evaluating the movies.  Am I basing their  rank on their current importance, their historical importance, or simply  the quality of the film, or some hybrid form? I know this isn't going to be a  best film list, but I do  tend to base a film's quality with how much I enjoy watching it. 

Fortunately, I already have the top 15 worked out and can easily carve out the top 25 without much difficulty.  The tricky part, I expect, will be ranking from 26 to100 and  thus deciding what films don't make the cut. 

I decided  that it might help out thing considerably to pick what I think the 100th movie will be early in the process.  This way I can have a yard stick of sorts as if to to say "okay, I like this film better than 100 so it must be in the top 100." or "This film is not as good as 100, so it must not be in the top 100." Of course this is just a starting point and the film I pick as the place holder, may end up being ranked significantly higher or lower.

I think at this time that the film I would rate as 100th would be the 1996 film, The Spitfire Grill. The Spitfire grill did not make my top 100 movie list, the last time around.  The more I think about it, the more I think it should have.

Spitfire was release by Castle Rock and has a very Castle Rock feel to it.  In some ways it is an odd film, and does not always go where I want it to.  There are even certain parts of the movie, I don't like to watch on repeat viewing. These may be among the reasons why Spitfire did not make the cut on my original list.

Here are some reasons I have thought about revising my assessment.

The Cast: Marcia Gay Harden and Will Patton while secondary to the plot, anchor an excellent cast. Ellyn Burstyn does an excellent job as the irascible owner of the grill, and every time I watch this film, I am surprised that Allison Elliott did not become a Hollywood legend because she is a force to be reckoned with here.

The Cinematography: This like A River Runs Through It, Brave Heart, and Secret of Roan Inish, is a spectacle for the eyes.  The Atlantic North East is majestically shown in this film.

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The Story:  The plot in many ways is predictable but that does not diminish how rewarding it is to watch. Like I said earlier, the movie does not always do what I want it to do; but, what it does, it does skillfully and memorably. While the movie doesn't have the redemption arc I want for it, it portrays redemption in a broader more wholistic way.

In short, it is  a flawed film with a high rewatchability level.  It will be interesting to see where it lands on the eventual list.

I expect the process of making a new list to take me at least a year.  I hope to use this blog as a way of talking about some of these films and then eventually presenting the list here in one way or another,

Love,

Dave

What Jim Edmonds Greatest Career Catches has to do with my ADD

My ADD gets in the way of my everyday life but it often leaves a pleasant wake in it's path.  Today, right now in fact,I was getting ready to leave the house on what will be a very busy day. I couldn't find my phone and when I found it it was totally uncharged so I needed to charge it.  I noticed it had earbuds in it that were not working on my phone last night when I was trying to listen to Moby Dick before I went to bed.  So, instead of plugging in the phone and continuing to get ready to leave.  I took the earbuds plus the phone to the computer to check if the earbuds worked on the computer, which they did.

I thought the best way to check it, would be to go to YouTube .  Instead of going to the video I was going to look up, I got distracted by a Jim Edmonds video and began watching the video of his 8 amazing catches.  I liked it so much, I decided to post it here. I also googled Jim Edmonds HOF and found this good article about his qualifications to be voted in by the veteran's committee.  I was right about to go back in my archives and see  if I voted for him on my mock ballot when he was eligible, when my wife walked by and asked if I found my phone and then reminded me it still needed to be charged.  I'm going to go back now to my busy day, which I just made a little busier for myself. Thanks ADD!.

When I post this in a few days, the today referenced at the top of this (6/24/2022) will actually be in the past.  How long in the past? Only my ADD can say for sure.  For now: enjoy this video of great Edmonds catches that my ADD left in it's wake.