I remember that when I first started using the Internet to get information about movies way back in early 1999, the site that I became the most enamored with is one that I still look at today: the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).
The only movie that I remember looking at that fateful visit was “10 Things I Hate About You.” Still haven’t seen it despite the teen classic status it has among my generation.
A little while back, I saw a friend of mine counting how many movies she had seen on the IMDb top 250 list (one of the best indicators of the average moviegoer’s favorite flicks). Today, I did the same. Here’s my rundown:
But the list changes all the time, so the number fluctuates.
And it would be higher if it weren’t for all those stinking old movies and foreign movies that only have 2,500 votes.
Just some fun for you all today: some more reviews from before I started blogging. These come from the MovieTickets.com website, and they were my replies to their friendly day after email requests.
People obsessed with the future often remind us that we can tell our kids “I lived in a world where…”. For my parents, they can say they lived in a world where segregation still existed and cable didn’t.
There are plenty of things I can say to my kids. I lived in a world where September 11th was just another date on the calendar. Where you had to dial-up to get Internet. On the movie side of things, where “E.T.” was the highest-grossing movie of all time (not adjusting for inflation). Where Arnold Schwarzenegger was just a Terminator and a Kindergarten Cop. Where the Oscars weren’t held on a Sunday.
But one that I think they won’t be able to believe, unfortunately, is that I lived in a world where you could go to a movie and not be bothered by commercials before the trailers.
I remember this world vividly. It ended on November 15, 2002, when they showed ads for an EZ-Bake oven that made chocolate bugs before “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.” It stunned the audience. Little did we know, this would become a mainstay of trips to the movie theater. And it would only get worse.
Happy Valentine’s Day (or Singles Awareness Day, as it often seems to some).
I remember in 2003, my parents gave me the DVD of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” as a present before we headed up to Baltimore for President’s Day weekend – although we ended up staying three extra days because of the blizzard of the century blowing through. Needless to say, the DVD came in very handy for entertainment.
It’s hard to believe that I’ve been sharing this experience with you all for 200 days, yet here we are. Random Factoid #200.
“Marshall and the Movies” is not, however, the first movie blog I have written. Back in December 2007, I attempted to start an Oscars blog called “Bold Oscar Predictions.” The site would be largely modeled after AwardsDaily and InContention, the two sites I frequent the most. My main goal was to write columns that used the history of the Academy’s choices to predict the nominees and winners.
I set up the site the day after I finished my finals in ninth grade, although I can’t seem to pinpoint my motivation. My first post was to be called “Why Amy Adams Won’t Be Nominated for an Oscar.” I was almost finished when I had to go out the door, never to return again.
I set the site up on a random server, and I made the stupid mistake of not writing down what I called it or where I set it up. For over two years, I have been searching for this blog. It was all in vain until a few weeks ago when I was cleaning out the spam from my Gmail account. I got a notice from “blog.com,” which I was about to delete before I remembered “Bold Oscar Predictions.” After a lengthy reset password process, I finally found the blog. Completely barren, of course, but it was still nice to have finally found it.
(Oh, and Amy Adams, if you ever read this, it’s ABSOLUTELY nothing personal on the post. Your role as Julie Powell is what inspired this blog!)
As I dug through my wallet this week, I discovered something about myself that I did not want to discover.
I am a wasteful person.
I found a free movie ticket to AMC Theaters that was over two months expired. Just think of what I could have seen with that ticket.
Oh, and Random Factoid #2-0-0 coming tomorrow. Get excited.
Oh, and one more thing about my fantasy football team, the Houston Iron Men.
Yahoo Fantasy Football leaves a space where you can “talk smack.” When I put together my team before the official beginning of the season, I put in this quote:
“Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?”
While everyone else trash talked (and while I never checked my team), I classed it up with my Tony Stark quote from “Iron Man.”
When I wrote Random Factoid #141, I hadn’t done this in over half a decade. Now, I have done it twice in less than three months.
I have read the source material of a movie after I saw the movie.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that I read “Up in the Air,” the novel by Walter Kirn. I brought it with me to Argentina and began it there when I found out that I would be interviewing Kevin Renick. I was under the mistaken impression that he wrote the song after reading the book, so I pile-drove through the first half in order to be prepared. After more research, I discovered that he hadn’t read the book, and my pace slowed quite a bit.
Overall, I liked the book. I much prefer Jason Reitman’s take on it though, which is very distinctly different from Kirn’s novel.
(And for those of you who read Random Factoid #195, yes, it was the movie tie-in edition.)
For the past two years, my fantasy football team has been called the Houston Iron Men.
The team name comes not from some sort of sports context. Rather, it comes solely from the movie “Iron Man.”
And it sounds like a cool team name – it works in both contexts.
Oh, and if you were wondering how the team did, it’s best that you don’t ask.
Way back when, I talked about how I usually enjoy reading the source material of a movie before I plop down in the theater seat and watch. Allow me to continue this thread in my mind.
Usually, a new edition of the book is released in tandem with the release of the movie adaptation. The covers usually feature either artwork from the movie or the poster.
More often than not, I will wait until the “movie tie-in” edition is released to buy the book. It makes me feel like I’m reading the movie, not just a book.
The Los Angeles Times, you are simply amazing! Literally, you are taking fanning the flames of my obsession to a whole new level and I love it!
It’s like the stock market, except you put your money on Oscar candidates! It’s so much fun to play the strategy game, especially knowing that you aren’t losing any real money. I’m putting big money on potential underdogs (such as “Inglourious Basterds” in Best Picture and “The Hurt Locker” in Best Screenplay) and significantly less on the locked winners (such as Mo’Nique).
I just downloaded this today, and it is already the most fun app I have on my iPhone. Search “The Envelope” and download the one from the Los Angeles Times. Even if you aren’t as obsessed as I am, it’s still a good time.
Although I may have managed to see all the Best Picture nominees on nomination day, I still haven’t seen all the nominated performances.
I got fairly close this year: 13/20. Or, as it would be called at my school, an F. Maybe next year I can pass…
(NOTE: It wasn’t possible for me to see them all without traveling to New York because “The Last Station” still hasn’t opened here.)
I had an interesting dream last night.
I dreamed I was in the movie “Inglourious Basterds.” Not as an actor, but as a person sitting in Shoshanna Dreyfus’ theater in the climactic moments of the movie. It didn’t go like it happened in the movie, and I think when the rational part of my brain realized that it wasn’t broadcasting the right movie, it woke me up.
Which is a shame, because I would have really liked to have seen how it ended.
I feel like a dinosaur writing this, but I remember whenever there were no such things as “fan pages” on Facebook. More than that, I remember whenever fan pages were only for celebrities and TV shows and the like.
Now, everyone is becoming a fan of vague ideas and statements. I’m sorry, but I refuse to become a fan of “flipping over the pillow to get to the cold side.” I’ll smirk at seeing other people join it, but why would I waste my time joining it?
Anyways, I limit my fan pages. Right now, I’m at a healthy 18 (I have friends with well over 500). Of course, I am a fan of things related to movies – why else would I write about it here? I am a fan of “Up in the Air,” “The Dark Knight,” and Gabourey Sidibe.
Marshall and the Movies 
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