Now, where was I?

A Small Step

I hate the holiday season. The commercialism, the narcissism, and the pressure to make changes in our lives, even if they are short-lived. I gave up on making new year’s resolutions a long time ago. If any changes needed to be made, I wasn’t going to have them bound to some random time frame that some random Pope created centuries ago. I wanted changes to be real and lasting, and I realized that deciding to do such things needed to be more purposeful, with lots of thought given to how I would implement those changes.

That is why this post is going to be strange for me. It’s my 100th entry here on Tumblr, and it comes right after the end of the 30 Day Movie Challenge. In writing about my most cherished hobby, I realized that I spend quite a bit of money on movies: Netflix subscription, blu-ray disc purchases, and trips to the theater.

So, I have decided to do something different starting in 2011. I am going to keep track of all the money I spend on movies and will set aside the exact same amount for charitable donations. I will break down these expenditures in a spreadsheet and will create quarterly summaries to keep myself accountable. I don’t have a specific plan for where this money will go at this point because needs arise in very unpredictable ways, but I will find one or two places to donate to on a monthly basis and set aside the rest for those unexpected needs that arise due to tragedies that occur here and around the world.

I first began to really understand why I should give more of my money away at a pretty late age. When Katrina and the tsunami both happened in a short time frame, I felt, for the first time in my life, compelled to an overwhelming extent to give my “belongings” away in a manner that actually felt sacrificial. I was 28 years old, and I feel ashamed that it took me so long to understand this concept. Since then, I’ve tried to be less selfish with my money, with mixed results. But needs have always arisen around the world and I started to get a little bit better at letting go of earthly possessions.

But the biggest problem for me is what I spend on entertainment. Ok, I know that I do try to get a lot more out of movies than the average person and that I teach media literacy to high school students. If you’ve been keeping up with my movie challenge posts, you probably have a sense of what movies mean to me. I don’t see them as mere entertainment most of the time. They have had a profound impact on me on emotional, intellectual, and social levels. My slowly growing knowledge of this creative field meets the needs of my inner life and it allows me to teach teenagers how to be more purposeful and thoughtful about their media consumption. But I just can’t get over the fact that I probably spend a decent amount of money each year on what is ultimately not a necessity of life.

I have a few predictions and hopes for where this resolution will take me:

• If I find myself feeling like I’m unable to keep matching movie expenditures with donations, I will start to spend less on entertainment so that I won’t go broke. This will seem selfish at first but it really will be a good way for me to keep giving myself a wake-up call about how I spend my money.
• I will buy fewer movies and make better use of my Netflix subscription. (Netflix has been like a gift from the heavens in this regard. It’s teaching me to curb my need to own movies to some extent. I’ve been buying fewer movies each year for the past five or six years, and I’m hopeful about how I can grow in this area.)
• I will be more purposeful when choosing movies to see in the theater. (I think I already do this a bit, but I’m hoping I will get better at it.)
• And ultimately, I hope that this will be the beginning of a lifelong habit of being very proactive in finding people and places that need my money way more than I do.

I have been thinking about this a lot over the past few weeks and I am confident that I can stick with it. While this is a fairly small step in the grand scheme of things, on a personal level, it feels pretty big. I need to keep reminding myself that I live in a global community and that even though my chosen profession will keep me comfortably in the lower-middle class in this country for the rest of my life, I am probably in the top few percentage points based on income on planet Earth. That is a sobering thought.

30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 30 - Favorite Ending

I thought that this post would be the grandest of them all since it’s the last one in this challenge and it involves what is arguably the most important or lasting part of a movie. But, since it would involve spoilers if I were to post photos or videos of these endings, I will have to tread carefully as I continue.

As usual, I can’t pick just one. I will try to categorize the movies below to a certain degree, as long as I’m not giving away too much. If you’re really worried about spoilers, just scroll down to the tags and don’t even bother reading the rest of this post.

The Shawshank Redemption
The perfect ending. If movies are supposed to lift our spirits while not shying away from the ugliness of life, then this is the best movie I’ve ever seen.

Citizen Kane
It might be clichéd to include this one, but it really is a powerful and poignant finale to one of the all time great movies.

Some Like It Hot
Arguably the greatest closing line of dialogue in movie history, at least in terms of comedy. I guess the entire ending, in and of itself, isn’t as grand as the previous two, but it captures the essence of the funniest movie I’ve ever seen.

Requiem For A Dream
This movie’s ending is like the final scene of the great episodes of Seinfeld where three or four story arcs all crash into each other, except it’s horribly painful and tragic. I almost want to say that it’s beautiful.

Blade Runner
Timeless, tragic, and left so much to the imagination. I miss endings like this one where you just knew that a lot more was going to happen but you weren’t sitting there waiting for the inevitable sequel.

The Usual Suspects
The less said about this one, the better. But I need to say that I saw this on a whim with a friend during my freshman year in college. When the movie ended, everyone in that little theater in Harvard Square (no, I didn’t go to college there) sat still for at least a minute with their jaws on the floor.

Memento/Insomnia/Batman Begins/The Prestige/The Dark Knight/Inception
I swear, no other director has ended his/her movies in such a thrilling manner as Christopher Nolan has. Every time I leave the theater after seeing his work, I’m either completely exhausted or thrilled.

30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 29 - Favorite Opening Credit Sequence

I’m changing up the order of the final two posts. A friend/co-worker who is also participating in this challenge suggested this and I think it makes so much sense to finish by talking about my favorite movie ending. So, here are my favorite opening credit sequences (I couldn’t pick just one):

Spiderman 2
Summarizes the first movie in an efficient and exciting way, and incorporates the comic book look and feel with the design motif of spiderwebs. All of this is done with Danny Elfman’s brilliant score behind it. (The video is not in the original aspect ratio. It has been cropped into the 4:3 ratio. It’s the only one I could find.)
Youtube direct link

Sleepy Hollow
I love opening credit sequences that take a long time, as long as they use that time to add to the story and tone of the movie. In this sequence, Ichabod Crane travels from NYC to Sleepy Hollow, and he begins his journey by riding into a painted backdrop inspired by the work of the Hudson River School artists. The credits appear out of virtual mist and, again, Danny Elfman’s music sets the tone. Notice the cue when Elfman’s name appears on screen. Tim Burton points this out in the commentary track. And I need to add that I think Colleen Atwood is the best costume designer working in movies today. (This video is vertically stretched. Terrible, I know.)
Youtube direct link (embedding isn’t allowed for this one)

Memento
My favorite movie features one of the most creative opening credit sequences I’ve seen. It’s simple, elegant, and sets the tone for the rest of the movie. I think Christopher Nolan mentioned that they didn’t simply shoot the scene normally and then reverse it later on, but that they actually fed the film stock into the camera backwards. I don’t exactly know how this stuff works, but whatever they did worked out very well. And, as sick as this might sound, I love seeing all the brain matter and skull fragments fly back into Joe Pantoliano’s face in reverse. (The resolution of this video was stretched vertically. I tried to change the vertical size of the embedded object but it just shrank the whole video while keeping the incorrect scale. Why do people not understand that the original aspect ratio of a movie is such an important thing?)
Dailymotion direct link

This last video isn’t technically of opening credits, but it is my all-time favorite opening scene, from Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil.
Youtube direct link

I need to add two more videos. Two of my favorite opening credit sequences from television are from Dexter and Carnivale. They are so good that I couldn’t leave them out, even if they have no place in a movie challenge.
Dexter direct link on Youtube
Carnivale direct link on Youtube

30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 28 - Favorite Movie Soundtrack

I listened to movie soundtracks more than any other type of music during my teenage years. I think it all started when I first saw Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in 1991. Michael Kamen (may he rest in peace) wrote a rousing score for that movie and it opened my mind to an aspect of filmmaking that I had not yet considered to be important.

But the score that really struck me was the one that Patrick Doyle composed for Kenneth Branagh’s brilliant rendition of Shakespeare’s Henry V. It was a bit more traditionally classical in nature than the work of guys like Kamen, Randy Edelman, Trevor Rabin, and James Horner (who were all working a lot in the early 1990s). There were more distinct motifs at play throughout the score. And the brass instruments, particularly the trumpets, were given more interesting things to do.

It also helped that the movie was fantastic. Take a look at the clip below. After the bloody battle of Agincourt, Harry (Henry) carries a fallen soldier across the battlefield as his men sing “Non nobis domine.” It is a beautiful scene, and one of my favorite moments of movie music transitioning from diagetic to extra-diagetic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1GDRx-F1C0 (in case the embedding doesn’t show up for you)

(Source: imdb.com)