Back to the 90's and Back to Steve Soderbergh's 2014

Before I forcefully cram more of my 90's movie memories down your throats I want to draw your attention to another blog that's been generating a bit of buzz in the world wide film web.

As a number of you must have seen (if not read meticulously) Steven Soderbergh shared a list of everything he watched and read in 2014.

http://extension765.com/sdr/22-seen-read-2014


Comb through it if you must (hopefully we'll hear from you again in 2-3 days...), I personally skimmed and never made it past April.  The reaction I've seen has largely been one of interest, some people are deep in analysis, asking why he watched particular films twice, others argue that it's really not that much compared to what they themselves consume (those that broke down the numbers make a good point, I probably watch the same number of films as Soderbergh does in a year, but then again, I don't also have an award winning writing/directing career on the side...)

What I found most interesting was the simple way in which he recorded everything, putting his TV series in caps, books in italics.  It's a concise, elegant way of coding things.

Let me backtrack a second... One of my new year's resolutions (and I haven't done this resolution thing in a while now) was to reestablish my list of "movies that I watched over the year", something that was inspired by my friend Alex Carter many years ago, but a habit I fell out of with the advent of GetGlue (whose every goodness was completely undone by the shift to TV Tag).  These lists were particularly useful when coming up with my top movies of the year, or just being able to look back and seeing what I watched.  The common practice during 30 Films in January is to use letterboxd.com, a great site... that still doesn't have a mobile app.  Hence my desire to re-start that list on Evernote (one of my favourite mobile apps, I don't know how anyone can live without it).

Seeing Soderbergh's list has sparked my imagination and amibition of record something similar for myself in 2015!  Perhaps even slightly more ambitious because in my original list I am listing my films by number (so I know offhand at any point in the year how many films I've watched) as well as giving a coding for films that are new releases (easy reference come Top 10 of 2015 time) and films I've seen for the first time.

I think the result is going to be muddled and obviously generate a lot less interest.  However I may post some of it on this blog from time to time for those who are curious what consumes my time so much that I never talk to them anymore.

And now... Back to the 90's - Can't Hardly Wait

My mom always likes to point out what a stupid movie Can't Hardly Wait is every time I tell her I'm watching it.  So it's an annual conversation pretty much.

Can't Hardly Wait is definitely a movie that has the potential to kill brain cells, but it's also amazingly awesome.  Preston, Amanda, Kenny, et al from Huntington High were class of 1998 just like me.  I saw this movie at Sherway Gardens back when Sherway Gardens still had a theatre. It was June 1998, pretty much when I was getting ready to say farewell to Lakeshore C.I. so I'll always remember them fondly as fellow graduates.

Other reasons I like Can't Hardly Wait:  I love large ensemble casts, I love the exploration and integration of high school cliques, and I love how the cast was a who's who of failed teen TV dramas of the late 90's/early 00's (I think half the cast of Popular must have roles/cameos in this movie, and let's not forget Jason Segel)

The cliques in Can't Hardly Wait are interesting to me in that it was a modernization of say, The Breakfast Club, that and it wasn't simplified down to one individual to represent a group.There were multiple cliques that were kind of like offbeat weirdos and that was something I could very much relate to.  It was a time when everyone was striving to be different, at Lakeshore we had the alt rockers hanging out at the front of the school, us half academic/half artsy types hidden in the Art Hall, the cool kids at their table by the vending machines in the cafeteria, and lord knows where the computer geeks, avant-gardes (who were all Polish from what I remember), etc got to.  We interacted between cliques, which is a realistic representation of high school.  Plus let's face it, who wouldn't love Preston Myers? And Kenny Fisher!!!

 Back to the 90's - Cruel Intentions

TIFF really got into the good stuff in the back end of  this series.  Cruel Intentions is one of my all time favs, based on the tale of Dangerous Liaisons (which is also one of my all time favs!) It was the first time Sarah Michelle Gellar did a villainous role since her part in Swan's Crossing (which I reminisced about in a previous blog post), I really wish she'd done more roles like that, she's much more suited to it than trying to righteous.

It goes without saying alongside the soundtrack (Placebo! The Verve!) I was in love with Ryan Phillippe, but let's not for Joshua Jackson's Blaine Tuttle, I have an appreciation for a cute cunning gay man - so long as he's on my side.

Cruel Intentions lived on in the early 00's when we were auditioning actors for our film projects in University.  Half the girls who came out performed monologues by Kathryn Merteuil from the film, to the point even I had them memorized for years.

Back to the 90's - Empire Records

Of the entire series programmed by TIFF, I was most excited about Empire Records.  Yes, it's one of my favs right up there with Can't Hardly Wait and Cruel Intentions, but unlike the other two, I never had an opportunity to see Empire Records on the big screen.  I'd seen the trailers in theatres, but though I waited patiently for it to screen at Sherway, it never did!  I couldn't determine from an internet search whether Empire Records never had a release in Canada or just not a wide release, either way, after 19 years I was finally getting my chance to see it in a theatre!

Dec 19, 2014 was Rex Manning day! Seeing the whole gang on screen (in the original cut not that crappy re-mix they tried to con us with the in the late 00's) was nothing short of magical.  The idea of working in a record store with all my friends was the dream in 1995, hell, it still is...

Without conscious effort, Empire Records permeated my life, even to this day!  At the time of the film's release, I had just about every single piece of clothing Liv Tyler and Renee Zellweger wore.  Lines from the movie made it into my every day utterances, even now you'll occasionally hear me exclaim "What's with today, today?" and of course there's AJ's response when asked by Warren why he glued the scattering of quarters on the floor... (I'll give you a hint: scroll up to the title of this blog!)

 And now a disappointing denouement...no, no, I'm not purposely trashing Romy and Michele's High School Reunion.  The truth is for whatever reason, I've never seen it.  It screened at Lightbox on Boxing Day, when I was, of course, busy shopping and I have not been able to find a copy for download since.

So there you have it, the end to our happy trip through the 90's.  This felt like but a taste, hopefully TIFF will program Back to the 90's Part 2 sometime this year...?

Back to the 90's - Back to 2014...

Happy New Year!

I trust I'm not the only person to have had a busy holiday season. I told myself "it's ok to fall behind on your blogs, no one has time to read them anyway"... Now here we are, weeks behind on the 90's movies series (which ended on Boxing Day) with thoughts more focused on Top 10's and 30 Films!

That's right, what's a January without 30 Films in 31 Days?  9 Years Strong (and badly promoted this year by yours truly), we are over a week into a January tradition!

Also on the list of to-do's every January (even though I've shamefully done this in February some years) is to provide one's Top 10 films of the previous year. While I read critic and website lists unabashedly, I try to stay away from friends' lists until I've finalized my own, this year few friends have posted their lists (yet?), but out of those who have, I've peeked at Mr. Nadarajah's list on chichdarling.com.  Jerry's a good friend and local film writer for whom I have a great respect.  He also declared early on in the year that Ida was one of the best films he'd seen, but I see from your list it was actually more like one of the 20 best films you've seen this year! ;)

I've been jotting down notes for my own top 10, hopefully to be posted before the month of January expires.  In the meantime let's touch on those Back to the 90's Films from the latter part of the 2014 program...

Back to the 90's Reality Bites

(some portions written in November 2014)

90's recap or not, I like to talk about Reality Bites a lot, so forgive me if you've heard some of this before.

Though it was made in 1993, I didn't see Reality Bites until a few years later when my uncle introduced it to me. I didn't think much of it the first time, but it really grew on me during subsequent viewings until it became one of my favourite 90's films.

I didn't really get the characters when I was 15... Lelaina, Troy, Vicky, and Sammy.  From everything I'd been taught up to that point, they were college graduates, and that meant they should've had everything handed to them on a platter.  Yes, this is what was instilled into me as an asian child growing up in the 80's/90's:  study hard and get into university, it is your ultimate goal and will solve all of life's problems and guarantee you happiness.

So you see why Reality Bites resonated more and more over time.  School didn't give us the answers, school didn't even get me a job, I finished university more lost than ever. Troy's friends implore him to go back and get his BFA in an early scene, I can't help but snicker whenever this part comes up.  I've got that piece of paper hanging on my wall, it represents memories of creative freedom, of a time when everyone bent over backwards to do everything different because that's what was expected, but it's never earned me a buck or solved any of my problems.

I miss film school all the time. And sometimes I even miss the slacker attitudes that defined young adults for a time.  Sure it gave those I grew up with a bit of a bad rap, but the possibilities somehow seemed greater then, greater than what youth of today have even (unless that's just the age talking...?)

Anyway, to me Reality Bites is the quintessential Gen X film, I'm surprised Amazon doesn't package it up with Douglas Coupland's book and promote it under the "customers who bought Reality Bites also bought this" section.

The only attitude I'm kinda glad has changed is the lessening of the appeal of Troy Dyer-types, that is, young women have been swayed by nerd culture (even if it does mean the glorification of the hipster) and other forces, and have moved away from the brooding artist types as the "dream male".  I mooned over my share of such guys growing up, and while some of them are still good friends (and much less brooding!), I have to say that many of them did not treat women well. Not in their self-absorption and moody outbursts. Girls of the 90's:  Troy Dyer is a jerk and we should've never put up with that.

Back to the 90's Romeo + Juliet

A visual feast of the 90's, and by that I mean Baz Luhrmann's visuals too.  Seriously though, was Leo DiCaprio ever more beautiful than he was in Romeo + Juliet?  I was 14 years old and Leonardo DiCaprio was 18 when I first decided I was in love with him, however when I went to see him in this movie, it was actually with my high school boyfriend on our first movie date.

As I say, Luhrmann's stunning visuals are pretty much guaranteed to delight, but as far as stories go, this has never been my idea of Will Shakespeare's finest.  Actually, I'm not even a fan of the bard truth be told, and this movie did little to change my opinions. It's one of those films where I like everything about it - Leo, the cinematography, the wicked soundtrack - except the story. I'm also not entirely sure what makes it so "90's" as to qualify this list other than our youthful worship of Leo and Claire.

For whatever reason, I had actually watched Romeo + Juliet just prior to the Back to the 90's series getting started, so I didn't see this film in and around the time it screened.  That week I chose another 90's film instead, another (loose) adaptation of Shakespeare's, The Taming of the Shrew this time, that I thought should've been included in this series but wasn't:  She's All That.

Ok, I get She's All That perpetuates the ridiculous Hollywood practice of throwing glasses and baggy clothes onto a pretty girl and branding her as an "ugly ducking", but the story underneath that was modernized and made much more relevant to 90's culture than Romeo + Juliet was, whose only real modern reference was the use of media to transmit news of events in Verona (what did Will Shakespeare use again? Voice of God? A minstrel?...kidding...) Laney Boggs may have had bizarre interests in interpretive theatre but you could relate to her character and what she went through as a teenager.