I can name every Best Picture winner back to 1970 by memory on a good day. The most common winners I drop are “The Last Emperor,” “Platoon,” and “The Sting.”
In middle school, a speaker asked my assembly if anyone knew the last five movies to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Of course I was the only one to raise my hand.
I don’t like watching movies on Blu-Ray. I think that the character seem awfully one-dimensional. When they move, I think they look like paper dolls. But then again, maybe I watched the wrong movie on the display at Sam’s Club. If my memory serves me, it was “Hairspray.”
3D glasses hurt my eyes. I think its cool to watch a movie in 3D, but I have to take off the glasses every 20 minutes or so and rub my eyes. Every once in a while, they will even give me a headache.
I sound like an old man with my health problems, I know. But I actually have 20/20 vision according to my doctor, so there’s nothing wrong with my eyes.
Do you feel the same way? Do the 3D glasses bring some unintended side effects of moviewatching? Did they cause a particularly painful experience for you? Or am I just a lone wolf here? COMMENT and let me know!
(NOTE: This post was inspired by a feature I saw on Entertainment Weekly today. It’s only a few short paragraphs long, so take the time to read it. WordPress gives me the powers of Big Brother when it comes to monitoring your activity on this site, so I can see if you clicked it or not. Please do. I even went to the trouble of putting a picture on the factoid…that’s something I haven’t done since #15, if I recall correctly.)
Brace yourself because this is probably the most pathetic factoid yet, potentially ever.
Back when I still watched edited movies, I sat down and watched “The Wedding Planner” with Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey. Like all romantic comedies, it has the cliché of a special phrase that the romantic leads share. Here, McConaughey tells J. Lo that he only eats brown M&Ms because they don’t have extra stuff (because chocolate is already brown.). Of course, when they inevitably come together at the end, this is that special memory that they reference.
What does this have to do with me? My mom leaves a big bowl of M&Ms in our den. When I pass it by, I usually grab only brown M&Ms for the reason that McConaughey gives. Like I said, pathetic.
I really like to get to movies early because I prefer sitting in the middle and towards the top. Usually, I am able to get a reasonable seat. I can, however, think of two horrible moviegoing experiences that were strongly affected by my seat.
I can’t stand watching edited versions of anything. I refuse to watch movies for the first time on TBS, TNT, or any other network that not only edits for content but also for advertising time. In the case of this viewer, I would watch the networks more if there were less commercials. I usually watch movies on planes if I am interested, but I am growing weary of the sloppy editing for content.
I got an independent movie called “Sugar” from the library the other day (I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of it), and I popped it into my DVD player on the flight back from Los Angeles. As soon as I hit play, a message preceding the film stated that it had been edited for content from its original film. As soon as we touched down in Houston, I did some research and found out that the DVD copy had been edited. In fact, it moved from R to PG-13. Outraged, and refusing to watch anything else but the original, I returned the movie unwatched to the library. I plan to wait until I can rent the R-rated version on iTunes in the coming days.
629 of the 2045 songs in my iTunes library are from soundtracks. That’s about 31%, for those who don’t like dealing with fractions. After further analysis of my catalog, I discovered that this number is so high because of the vast number of complete soundtracks I have. Up until a few years ago, I only looked in the soundtracks when browsing for music. But I still love soundtracks; I grab them off the shelf at the library every time I go.
I went through a phase when I was about 8 years old where I bought the junior novelizations of movies because I didn’t want to wait to see the movie to find out what happened. Some specific movies that I remember reading were “Osmosis Jones” and “Cats & Dogs.” Despite this, I was still mad whenever I knew what happened in these movies when I saw them. I got smart quickly and realize why I felt this way. I stopped reading junior novelizations and now I read only the source material of movie adaptations if I am curious about a movie.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s factoid, I toured the home of the Academy Awards, the Kodak Theater, this weekend. As part of the tour, we got to step out onto the stage. As I stood in awe looking at the sea of empty seats, the tour guide asked, “Does anyone want to give an acceptance speech or anything? Believe it or not, there are some people who want to do that.” I have thought quite a bit about my Academy Awards acceptance speech, and as I stood there just a few feet from where the real winners accept their Oscar, I was so tempted. But I didn’t speak up. I stood there, closed my eyes, and imagined. One day. One day.
Yesterday, I had the distinct privilege of touring the Kodak Theater, permanent home of the Academy Awards ceremony. Someone on my tour asked what happened to the Oscar statuette when the recipient dies. The guide told us that the Academy repossesses the statue, but in the case of Heath Ledger, his father was given the Oscar.
But in my mind, the encyclopedia of Academy Awards knowledge, a red flag went up. She was wrong. In Ledger’s case, the statue went into the custody of his baby mama, Michelle Williams. When his daughter, Matilda, turns 18, the Oscar will be given to her.
Did I speak up and inform the tour about the egregious error? Of course not. What kind of person do you think I am, someone willing to humiliate the guide to puff up my ego? Shame on you if your mind answered yes to my first question.
Today, while on a campus tour of UCLA, I was asked who my favorite Disney character. I thought for a while and ultimately came to a decision. It was Hercules. Part of the choice was nostalgia; one of my first memories of going to a movie was to a sneak preview of “Hercules” on my dad’s birthday in 1997. But it was more than just that. Hercules is a strong hero but not without his faults. Some might say, “Why not Aladdin?” That’s where nostalgia became the deciding factor.
One thing to know about me going into this story: when I was young, I was very gullible. Some would say I probably still am.
In the third grade, a younger girl told me that at the Edwards Greenway 24 movie theater by my house, they gave away free movie posters at the concession stand. I was so convinced that I began asking my classmates who would like a poster for “Max Keeble’s Big Move,” the movie I would see on Friday. I ended up promising about 3 people that I would get them one. When I got to the theater, I asked the lady at the concession stand for 4 posters. She gave me a funny look and then proceeded to tell me that they didn’t give away posters at the concession stand. I was so disappointed.
Today’s factoid concerns my obsession in the first grade, “Fantasia 2000.” I saw it right after the dawn of the new millenium at the brand spanking new IMAX screen at the Edwards Marq*E. I had a phobia of IMAX screens thanks to the big booming voice at the Houston Museum of Natural Science which scared the living daylights out of me when it introduced the movie. Somehow, I overcame my fear to see “Fantasia 2000,” and I was absolutely mesmerized. I bought the soundtrack instantly and listened to it every morning on the way to school, most likely driving the two girls I carpooled with off the wall. It was an absolute obsession; any frequent reader knows I don’t use that word lightly.
I absolutely hate Crunch candy yet for some reason I eat a box of Buncha Crunch virtually every time I go to the movie theater. Riddle me that. (Shameless shout-out to a special group.)
I generally don’t like to clap at the end of movies. If a movie is amazing like “The Dark Knight,” then I will be more than happy to clap until my hands fall off. But unfortunately, peer pressure forces me into clapping for many movies that don’t deserve it, such as “Step Brothers” (To defend myself from numerous friends who love that movie, I will only say that I enjoyed it but it doesn’t deserve my applause). My general views on applause are that it is not a universally accepted behavior, and it often leads to awkward passing glances from other moviegoers exiting the theater that seem to say, “Didn’t I hear enough from you laughing your face off during the movie?” They might read differently to other people who don’t laugh so loud or hard.
A random tidbit for the end: I have only applauded once during the middle of a movie aside from uproarious laughter, and that was for Jennifer Hudson’s glorious rendition of “I Am Telling You I Am Not Going” from “Dreamgirls.”
Marshall and the Movies 
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