Mars Hill in a nutshell

Well, maybe not a nutshell, but as I've struggled to give context for what the heck I'm doing out here in a Grad School that has nothing (on the surface) to do with theatre, film, European History, or Balkan Folk music (my main worldly interests) I thought I should let Mars Hill speak for itself. Here's some of the core "Who are we at Mars Hill" that I first read on the website when I was searching for a program to merge my hopes and desires in the realms of contemporary culture and realtionship with the God of creation. Here it is in their words. I feel I should also explain breifly that Mars Hill Graduate School has no affiliation with the Mars Hill Church in Seattle that has recently caused such a disruptive stir in the media. I say this not to point fingers and say "We're not them" but simply to clarify that we're not them. I'll leave it there.
Here's a bit about where I am and what I'm doing.

ABOUT MHGS
The mission of Mars Hill Graduate School (MHGS) is to train people to be competent in the study of the Scriptures, the human soul, and the culture. To that end, MHGS seeks to prepare professionals and others who desire to obey Christ's commission to serve in the fields of ministry, counseling, spiritual direction and the arts.

TEXT
Our vision is to train men and women to see Scripture through a perspective that keeps the primacy of story and mystery alive as it authoritatively forms the fundamental parameters of our life and worldview. We believe interpretation or hermeneutics is neither primarily a science, nor a skill, but a living art that molds us into maturity by the Word itself, the convicting work of the Spirit, and in dialogue with the community of faith both past and present.

SOUL
Our vision is to train men and women to live lives worthy of the gospel. We believe this is possible through an ongoing process of humility that reveals our bias, transforms our heart, and enlivens our passion for the Author of Life. The outcome will be a transformation that involves a shift in perspective (faith), purpose (hope), and passion (love) evidenced in how one relates to enemies and friends, body and mind, and the world in which we are situated.

CULTURE
Our vision is to train men and women to engage culture. Every culture attempts to flee God and yet find life in its own gods. Every culture reflects both the glory of creation and the depravity of the fall. We believe a person or community can never receive a hearing, nor offer the gospel, unless it incarnates the gospel through joyful participation in a culture's glory and honest engagement in its darkness. We wish to develop lovers of language, story, drama, film, music, dance, architecture, and art in order to deepen our love of life and the God of all creativity. The result will be a greater desire to know the human heart, the word of God, and the coming and already present Kingdom of God.


(Mars Hill's motto is TEXT, SOUL CULTURE, as is mine. Pretty amazing that I wanted to move to Seattle, and the one school I could ever imagine going to was sitting right here wating for me. God cracks me up.)

Thank You For The Music

An entirely incomplete list of artists/albums introduced and inducted into my life through beloved folk.

My brother Matt:
Harry Chapin- Greatest Stories Live
CSNY- Déjà vu
Cat Stevens- Tea for the Tillerman
The Beatles- Let It Be

Wolfie:
Indigo Girls- Swamp Ophelia
Dar Williams (though I don’t listen to Dar Williams, I can’t really write a list without including Wolfie and the “If I Wrote You” phenomenon of 1998-99)

Kim:
Stevie Wonder: Talking Book
The Shawshank Redemption Soundtrack
all the Emo Boy bands- All of them

Meredith:
Alison Krauss
Nancy Griffith
That one Irish guy band song that we can’t find but are obsessed with

Rick:
Sigur Ros
Handel’s “Israel in Egypt”
Lisa Ekdahl

Scott:
Adam Guettel’s “Floyd Collins” (I should give you credit for more than that, but this is the pinnacle)

Ben:
CSNY- Four Way Street

Jen:
Kate Rusby
June Tabor & Maddy Prior

Katrina:
The Louvin Brothers
Dwight Yoakam
And you were the true genesis of my Johnny Cash thing

I’m forgetting some obvious ones that’ll come to me once I publish this. And there’s folks currently gifting me music (Spiros) and I appreciate that too.

Obviously, this list does’nt include songs that make me think of you guys, but just some of the music that is still with me daily, that I most likely wouldn’t have found without friends. Yet another reason why “It is not good for man to be alone”- Gen 2:18

Please Don't Judge Me, I Just Like Lists

Here's one from my 2005 Day Planner

BOOKS I READ IN 2005

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix- JK Rowling
The Hobbit- JR Tolkein
The Complete Chronicles of Narnia- CS Lewis
The Treasure Principle- Randy Alcorn
Howard's End- EM Forster
A Room With a View- EM Forster
The Prayer of Jabez- Tom Wilkinson
The Professor- Charlotte Bronte
A Death in the Family- James Agee
Sons and Lovers- DH Lawrence
Les Liasons Dangeruses- Laclos
The Mill on the Floss- George Elliot
The Eyre Affair- Jasper Fforde
The Turn of the Screw- Henry James
The Man Who Was Thursday- GK Chesterton
Moll Flanders- Daniel Defoe
The Three Musketeers- Alexandre Dumas
Tess of the D'Urbervilles- Thomas Hardy
Far From the Madding Crowd- Thomas Hardy
Jude, The Obscure- Thomas Hardy
The Mayor of Casterbridge- Thomas Hardy
The Woodlanders- Thomas Hardy
Two on a Tower- Thomas Hardy
The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved- Thomas Hardy
The Return of the Native- Thomas Hardy
The Hand of Ethelberta- Thomas Hardy
The Well-Beloved- Thomas Hardy
The Trumpet Major- Thomas Hardy
Under the Greenwood Tree- Thomas Hardy
A Laodicean- Thomas Hardy
Desperate Remedies- Thomas Hardy
A Pair of Blue Eyes- Thomas Hardy
Everything is Illuminated- Jonathan Safran Foer
Cash: The Autobiography- Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison- Michael Streissguth
Useless Beauty- Robert K. Johnston


Yes, it was the year I discovered Thomas Hardy. Everybody should.

My Obsessive-Compulsive Tendencies Find a New Venue

Anyone who's ever watched a movie, TV show, live theater, or spent anytime with me in any setting knows that I have a little issue with needing to name every actor I recgonize and list everything he/she has ever been in or how I saw them at the La Jolla Playhouse in "The Glass Menagerie" when I was 12. It's a habit I inhereited from my parents always pointing out actors they recognized from being subscribers to The Guthrie Theatre in Minnesota in the '80's. I've always had this issue. In sixth grade, my peers actually barred the words "La Jolla Playhouse" from our conversations.

well, working in theatre, and living New York only exacerbated the problem. Now it wasn't just a matter of shouting out everytime I saw Bonnie Hunt or Henry Thomas in a movie preview, it's needing to give my history of working around Ty Burrell or Bob Saget and what they said and how Niegel knows them too, etc. It's bee wierd having this problem out in Seattle where no one has a context for what I'm talking about. I'm trying to deal with the issue, but also recognize that it's just part of how I engage/interact with what I see and the world I live in.

But something that had never happened occured the other day. My roomate Carrie and I were writing a EVITE and I looked at the Herbal Essences Internet Ad Banner and suddenly recognized the guy dressed as Cupid. It was Todd Buonapone, a regular understudy/performer at Spelling Bee on Broadway. I've logged in many hours watching him perform a variety of the guy characters, and here he was on the webpage as a shampoo ad/contest logo. I told Niegel and his reaction gave voice to my thoughts "Wait! Internet ads aren't real people. they're stock photography!"

it does seem like people on internet pictures are not actors. Secrets out. They are. And now there's a whole new realm for me to give ancestral filmographies and personal biographies of everyone single person I recognize on the InterWeb. I apologize to everyone for the annoyance this will cause, but frankly, I'm a little excited. Let the irrepressible name dropping continue!

Northern Exposure and New York Nostalgia

I'm back to my favorite pastime: ordering mass aounts of free movies and CD's from the public library. Fortunately, unlike NYC, people in Seattle are much less interested in obscure historical dramas. They also don't seem to check out many TV seasons on DVD, so...I'm now watching my way back through NORTHERN EXPOSURE season by season.

I've always said that if I could write myself onto a TV show as myself, it would be Northern Exposure. I would be reviving (or organizing) the community theatre, but like everything in Cicely, Alaska, it would be a bit absurdist, philosophical and sweet. (also like me?) And I would be wooed by Chris-in-the-Morning, or maybe just get to be his substitute Deejay.

But what rewatching the show has actually got me thinking about is Joel's transistion from New York City to the Pacific Northwest. Sound familiar? The show was actually filmed here, not far from Seattle. So am I whining about the things I miss in NY? Joel had a crate of bagels shipped in and made his girlfriend fly in with a pastrami sandwhich from Stage Delicatessan. What do I miss? What would I make Kim bring me?

I miss being able to get a sandwhich on every corner, and one that's not from SUBWAY "eat fresh". I MISS reading on my beloved C train and taking extra long errand routes during work so I had more time to read on the M15 bus. I kind of miss having to always to go the Ethiopian consulate and Vietnamese mission to the UN- I felt very important (both for having to go there and because the Ethiopian receptionist was starting to know me). I miss filling all my shopping needs out of Duane Reade drug stores. I MISS working on Broadway and getting to put tourists onstage.

But mostly (and this is the only one I ever spend time actually thinking about) I miss your apartments and you in them. I miss Garth's messy bedroom, Anne cooking in the kitchen, Seth when he is about to or just got back from being on tour, my sugarbear Katrina with guitar and accordian, Kiko giggling on the sofa, Niegel knitting and bringing treats to our place, Richard forcing me go to Queens, and of course my non-romantic life partner Kim waiting for me to call her as I walk the five minute journey home from the subway, ready to watch malcom in the middle, or letting me subject her to some Joaquin Phoenix movie that not even He ever watched. There's so many more friends, faces and places- RICK!!!!- and I carry you guys around in my heart. Literally...it was an effect of the pneumonia. You're all stuck in my aorta now.

I LOVE YOU






this last one cracks me up: Neigel, Garth and Scott are looking very serious. Oh I miss the dudes.

Random Post, or "The Approaching Grip of Mortality"

Two Words...

my ten year high school reunion is next year...

'nuff said.

Second Term at Mars Hill Graduate School

i haven't talked much about being in seminary/post-modern evangelical graduate/counseling school, ie: Mars Hill. I think it's a little bit like a baby in the womb trying to describe the taste of the sandwhich its mother is eating. There's a lot that I won't really be able to see, taste, or understand until I'm out. But I was reflecting on how completely different my exprieence with the start of my second term is compared to my first. The new downtown campus was delayed all last term, which meant I was spending an hour 1/2 to 2 hours getting to school in suburbia on three different buses, then having to find/beg a ride at the end of every day if I wanted to make it home before 10:00 each night. Not only that, but there was really no space to exist in that building during down time and no way to get food between classes unless I wanted to walk to McDonalds and back (some of you are wondering how a little walk would keep me from McDonalds), but there wasn't enough time between classes to do that.

Second of all, last term was all about navigating a new life in Seattle and what it meant to be back in school after four years.

But the biggest transition was wrapping my head around the Mars Hill everything: looking back at your history, losses you never grieved, stories you hadn't told, the way you've learned to relate to people-in all its disfunction and glory. Needless to say, there was a lot of paradigm shifting and bubble shattering along with a whole lot of new language and vocabulary. Do you know what hermeneutics means? If you've talked to me on the phone lately, you've likely had to ask me cuz I now use the word like I use "like".

So the metaphor (I love 'em and need 'em) I've found to describe my first term at Mars Hill Graduate School is this:

It's like being at the ball crawl at Chuck E. Cheese's. You're totally stoked to be at Chuck E. Cheese and all that it represents: party, birthday, growing up but letting out your crazy side, etc. But you're in the ball crawl, and while you know it's supposed to be great, every move you make causes you to sink further into the pit and every time you laugh, you lose more of your balance untill you're wishing someone would come pull you out but you can't call for help because you think you're supposed to be able to handle the ball crawl.

So second term, at the new, beautiful, adaptive-reuse former luggage factory- east-villagesque Campus building in donwtown seattle, I finally feel like I'm out of the ball crawl and free to roam the arcade games and use my tokens for whatever prize I'm willing to try to win enough tickets for.

Shakespeare on Film

Yesterday, a fellow student (Cabe) ruminated on the fact he felt that Kenneth Brannaugh’s “Much Ado About Nothing” was possibly the best Shakespeare film adaptation. I expected to have a quick response about what my favorite adaptation was (cuz I knew it weren’t that one) and was shocked to find myself without a film to stand behind. So of course, I fell asleep last night going over the list mentally, and have to confess that I still don’t have a clear winner. But here’s a list of some I’ve seen and how I feel about them. It’s funny to realize that I’ve spent much more time ranking Jane Austen film adaptations than Shakespeare’s. And here I thought I was all 16th century. Not so much, I guess.

The Olivier Films:

HENRY V: A lot like Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty”. Very Fairy tale coloring book, not much reality.

RICHARD III: Olivier is AWESOME, creepy, funny, and I’ll admit it, sexy. Very important characteristics for Ricky 3.

HAMLET: BORING! And a really flighty, lame Ophelia.

The Kenneth Brannaugh Films:

HENRY V: the least melodramatic, though still pushing it a bit. But it’s my favorite of his: lots of dirt, injuries and downplaying of some of the play’s non sequitur comedic characters. Great to see young Christian Bale as well.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING: Great teamwork between Emma & Kenneth, but the movie suffers from bad casting and scenery chewing. The concept is lovely, but the strokes are too broad for film.

HAMLET: Too long and too much marble. Brannaugh feels too old for the role, but I actually like knowing the sexual history of Ophelia and Hamlet- helps her part make more sense.

LOVE'S LABOURS LOST- adorable concept, horrible casting and even more dreadful musical numbers. If you’re gonna go there, you better do movie-musical like nobody’s business.

Franco Zeffirelli Films:

ROMEO & JULIET: I can’t help loving this version. It came at the right time for me, and despite often being annoyed by Olivia Hussey’s whiny voice, it’s a lovely adaptation of the play.

HAMLET: This was my favorite movie from 5th to 9th grade. Can’t quite say why. Great production design and an excellent cast, but Zeffirelli’s “mix-it-up” approach to screenplays leaves something wanting once you really know and love the play.

Some others:

TITUS: Julie Taymor’s film is terrifyingly beautiful and infinitely disturbing. One of the scariest films I’ve ever seen, so I guess that’s worth some props. Don’t think I can ever see it again, though.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM: A mixed cast of great and dull that makes it not worth a revisit, but some beautiful work by Kevin Kline and Sam Rockwell.

RICHARD III: Fun time in Fascist-ville and a very creative adaptation, but the language gets lost in the concept and I like a younger Richard III (no offense Sir Ian)

MERCHANT OF VENICE: Someone tell Pacino he can’t do Shakespeare anymore. Period.

HAMLET: As much as I like movies where Ethan Hawke and Sam Shepard play father & son, I can’t get past having to endure Julia Stiles’ presence onscreen. Though I’d like to revisit this one in light of Bill Murray as Polonius.

"O", 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU, etc: I will not honor any “Shakespeare in high school” adaptations with my comments, except that, again, I’ve been damaged by Julie Stiles’ presence onscreen.

The FAVE:

Baz Luhrman’s ROMEO & JULIET:

I guess this one wins because I love anything Baz does and (no its not a “Shakespeare in high school”) it’s probably the best representation on film of what Shakespeare’s original audience experienced onstage. Though it’s hard for me to watch the film now because of it’s significance to me as a 16 yr old (it’s kinda like trying to read your middle school diary without wincing) there is a special corner of my heart for this one forever.

Wyeth and Scully side by side

So clearly, I have a lot of reading for class, so what better use of my time than to upload art by Andrew Wyeth and Sean Scully for comparative purposes? But I think you can see my time was well spent. It's only a matter of time before I get Edward Hopper and Sarah Courtney Tudor up here too. I just wish I could format these iimages better...

Exploring my aesthetic

A few things I like that are Old, Cold or Both:

16th century composers
Abandoned buildings
Ancient history
Antarctica
Antique books
Birch trees
Blizzards (the weather)
Blizzards (the dairy treat)
British people
Classic Rock
Egypt
George Winston’s “December” album
Ghost towns
Green Tea ice cream
Icelandic musicians
Kenilworth Castle
Norweigian Ice Hotels
Pacific Northwest Native American Art
Railroads
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’s Christmas special
Rust
Siberia
Snow
Starbucks chai crème frappucinos
The Romanovs
The United Kingdom

And just for kicks, the thing that embodies neither:
Las Vegas

Sean Scully cont...

All right, so here's the deal. I figured it out. Sean Scully is my contemporary Andrew Wyeth. Here's Wyeth's "Alvaro & Christina" ca. 1940 and Scully's "Deptford Blue Door" 1999

So I'm starting to understand my aesthetic a bit better: I like stuff that looks/is Cold and Old.

My New Favorite Artist/SoulMate

So, I was tagging along on a bookstore trip with the roomates and wandered into the art section and looked up and, like Galahad and the vision of the Grail, saw a book with a painting on it's cover which I recognised as the painting I would most like to have painted if I had any visual art skill whatsoever. The artist is Sean Scully. Now, by saying "new" favorite artist, you lose the sense of the fact that his work is me, I am his paintings. there is nothing "new" about my loving his work- it's like I've always known but just had never seen it. Yes, I do love to be hyperbolic, but anyone who knew me during my wheatfield obsession of 1999 or my "aesthetic of the barn door" period of 2001, should be able to instatnly recognize me in this guy's work. It's all windows, doors, peeling paint, blocks of mostly neutral but occasionally bold colors, heavy, wood-grain-like brush strokes and even actual photography of doors, windows, portals, peeling paint and old stone walls, etc. I mean, he's practically typed "Kj" in bold letters across every piece!

I finally managed to upload some images. And here's a quote from an article on Scully- says it all for me.

"I think what Scully does is restore poetry to geometrical abstraction. He makes it unexpectedly romantic, in the good old-fashioned sense of Romanticism. "Romanticism," Baudelaire wrote in The Salon of 1846, "is precisely situated neither in choice of subjects nor in exact truth, but in a mode of feeling." More particularly, Romanticism means "intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration towards the infinite." "Romanticism is a child of the North," Baudelaire adds, "and the North is all for color.""

-Donald Kuspit, 'Sacred Sadness' artnet.com

Pretend it's last October...here's a Re-post

BIRTHDAY MOVIES

So I'm 27 now. Some of you may know that I had certain fixed ideas about events that would occur at 26- not like people who have year by year goals or anything, but 26 had been sticking in my head since about the age of eight as a fairly significant year- and I now realize that I'd never spent time thinking about 27. I've thought about 42, 61, maybe even 33, but never 27, so I'm now in No Man's Land (pronounced Nomunslund) and that's interesting. I'm now older than my sister-in-law when she gave birth to my neice Abby. (Subtext being that I'm older than people older than me who've had babies were when they had babies)

But aside from thinking about that whole adulthood-child-bearing-where's-my-chubby-hubby- kind of stuff, my birthday brought me back to thinking of my birthday movies of the past few years.

This year on Friday Oct 20 (night before my birthday) I went to see Sofia Coppola's MARIE ANTOINETTE with my sister in law Rebecca. This reminded me not only of when I visited her in Seattle when I was seventeen and she was still living with girlfriends from college, and we went to see to GOOD WILL HUNTING becuase I actually remembered Matt Damon from Courage Under Fire and was curious about what kind of movie he would write that would get Robin Williams in it and Gus Van Sant to direct. Rebecca and I loved it so much (and Matt Damon) that we found another theater that night that was showing The Rainmaker just to see more Matt Damon. RAINMAKER of course left no impression on either us, critics or anyone who saw it, but it was a memorable night with she whom I knew to be my future sister-in-law. But this also reminded me of when I was fifteen and my brother Matt was working at a camp all summer, Rebecca spent purposefull time with me, her boyfriend's little sister, and introduced me to A ROOM WITH A VIEW and the preciousness of watching Simon Callow run around a sylvan pond naked like a giggling toddler.

So this past Monday night, since I couldn't get the movie out of my head, I went back to see MARIE ANTOINETTE again with my new friend Lucy Spiro from Mars Hill who is an angel and who also bought my ticket as a birthday gift. So in three days I saw MARIE ANTOINETTE twice, and I'm pretty sure that makes me the only one. but I'm totally haunted by the film, the story, the history and just a whole hecka lot of things that connect to it. Again, Kirsten Dunst proves her worth against my late '90's dislike for her. Ever since THE CAT'S MEOW I've pretty much liked everything she's done, and I am also glad that Sofia Coppola is so young cuz hopefully she'll keep making movies every two years that totally bring out the girl in me and the lonely thinker in me.

So last year in October, my birthday movie was EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED which i first saw with Kim and James Zatalokin early in October on the day of the St Marks yard sale where I totally bought a 1919 ballroom group photo from Molly Ringwald which is hanging on the wall behind me right now next to the 1917 military hospital group photo that Kim gave me for that birthday to continue my collection of turn of the century black and whte large group photos. Any one else want to add to it?

So I LOVED EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED and went back to see it by myself a week later after ushering with Garth on a matinee at New York Theatre Workshop. And I've found myself listening to that soundtrack a lot this past week (soundtrack given to me for my birthday as well last year).

So that was '05. i think '04 birthday movie was I HEART HUCKABEES which i had very high hopes towards becoming obsessed over, but never actually did. i like the movie and would like to revisit it, but it didn't kindle anything execpt an appreciation for some comic genius work by Naomi Watts- and it was nice to see Mark Wahlberg again. [2007 correction: I'm now officially obsessed with Huckabees and it's coming in the mail from amazon any day now. i guess second time's the charm} i Think Rick and Kim and the gang went to see it with me as a birthday thing. then again, Or it might have been for Rick's birthday, but that's only a week later.

so the most significant (and circle completeing) is birthday movie '03 - Sofia Copola's LOST IN TRANSLATION which was my first movie in New York City and which i saw three times in the theatre and which inginited my Japan passion, coinciding with my mom living and working in Japan for three months and sending me all Japanese-themed christmas presents. LOST IN TRANSLATION also made Rick and I sort of obsessed with Otafuku on St marks and their octopus balls or whatever it is they make there. i got yakisoba a lot this spring.

so Sofia Coppola has been there in Octobers where I've needed her, and hopefully she will be in the future as well. regardless, I look forward to birthday movie '07 which I'll watch with my Scottish/Korean/Tlingit comedian/minister/filmaker husband and our twin children Frodo and Baggins. Oh golly. when did I become a 27 year old?

My "Top 3" of 2006

(Yes, I'm essentially cutting and pasting recent posts from my ol' Friendster blog, but this is really important stuff, (as I'm sure is apparent. Who doesn't love reading lists?)

My Top 3 Films of 2006


This is a little challenging this year. What constitutes Top 3 status? The quality of the film? The Story? My actual filmgoing experience? How long the movie stayed with me after seeing it? Well, my Top three of last year kind of cover all that territory when you put them together:
for 2005 it was:

Walk The Line
Everything Is Illuminated
Batman Begins


So with the above vague criteria, if i have to narrow it down to three, arghh, this is hard. The top one is pretty obvious, way out ahead of the others. But there are three that hit me in different ways, none of which had super memorable film experiences, but all of which resonate in a particularly relevant way to me. Darn it. I think I'm gonna make a top Four of 2006, and the final three will be listed side by side alphatbetically, because I can't place them in any significant order. Here we go
2006 Top Four:

Marie Antoinette
Friends With Money / Little Miss Sunshine / The Prestige

all i gotta say, is that Sofia Coppola better come out with a shimmering, bejewelled punk rock two disc special edition of Marie Antoinette, because the Lost In Translation DVD is pretty darn boring. i mean good features, but no presentation. I'm wating eagerly...

The List 2006

The Most Ridiculous List(s) ever Kept or Posted by a Sane Person:

Okay, Let me explain. It started back when I had no money in the winter of 2004, and could no longer buy the ridiculously priced books I was reading from the Christian bookstore chain. So I turned to the New York Public Library, and re-entered the world of fiction which I had been on vacation from for quite some time. I started with Harry Potter. (Take that Overpriced Christian Publishing!!) No longer able to look at my bookshelf and admire the bookbindings of those I'd read, I started keeping a list of books I read from the library. I did this through all of 2005 (maybe I'll post that list and really bore you). Once I got rolling with the whole online-library-book-request thing, I thought "Hey, why aren't I getting free movies out of this?" So I started checking them out too. After the first three weeks, or first fifty DVDs I checked out, I can't remember which came first, I began to wish I had a list of the movies I'd seen. Hence, with the new year, I started listing those as well. So the fruit of that sad, strange, year-long endeavor, is this even stranger list mix of quaint romantic comedies and disturbing Scottish independant noiresque films. Have I said enought about this, or should the LIST just speak for itself? Oh, and I also listed Big Screen movies I went to too. tu-tu. Bishop Desmond Tutu...

2006 Movies I Saw On The Big Screen
1. Walk The Line
2. Walk The Line
3. V For Vendetta
4. American Dreamz (2econd Stage Screening)
5. Friends With Money
6. The Notorious Bettie Page
7. Sherrybaby (Sundance At BAM)
8. X-Men 3 The Last Stand
9. A Prairie Home Companion (Last Movie In NYC)
10. Superman Returns
11. Nacho Libre
12. Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
13. Cars (Grandma Hazelton’s Birthday)
14. Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
15. Lady In The Water
16. Monster House
17. The Devil Wears Prada
18. An Inconvenient Truth
19. Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby
20. Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
21. Scoop
22. Little Miss Sunshine
23. Marie Antoinette
24. Marie Antoinette
25. Marie Antoinette
26. The Queen
27. Happy Feet (Worst Film Ever Made)
28. The Prestige
29. The Fountain
30. The Prestige


2006 Movies At Home: First Viewings And Revisits

(List does not, for the most part, include movies I own and/or watch super regularly like Moonstruck, Gosford Park, Galaxy Quest, Harry Potter 3 or of course Lord of the Rings)

1. To Die For
2. Boogie Nights
3. The Big Lebowski
4. The Opposite Of Sex
5. The Theory Of Flight
6. King Arthur (On Vacation In Scotland)
7. Sahara (“ “)
8. Kingdom Of Heaven (“ “)
9. Calendar Girls (“ “)
10. Vanity Fair
11. Faerie Tale Theatre Complete Series
12. The Velvet Goldmine
13. Elizabeth
14. Johnny Cash: The Man, His World, And His Music
15. The Ballad Of Jack & Rose
16. Crash
17. Run Lola Run
18. 28 Days Later
19. Young Adam
20. Human Nature
21. Code 46
22. Monster’s Ball
23. Pollock
24. Beyond The Sea
25. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
26. The Notebook
27. Elizabethtown
28. The Family Stone
29. It’s All About Love
30. Gladiator
31. Walk The Line
32. The Fly
33. Batman Begins
34. Pride & Prejudice ‘05
35. Smoke
36. The Manchurian Candidate ‘62
37. Shakespeare In Love
38. Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy ‘05
39. X-Men
40. X-Men 2
41. Bram Stoker’s Dracula
42. Tristan & Isolde
43. The New World
44. BBC The Office Series One
45. Jarhead
46. BBC The Office Series Two
47. Persuasion
48. The Interpreter
49. Oscar & Lucinda
50. Stay
51. The Squid And The Whale
52. Just Like Heaven
53. Equilibrium
54. Alexander
55. Last Of The Mohicans
56. Harry Potter & The Goblet Of Fire (Last Movie In NYC)
57. She’s The Man (On Airplane To Arizona)
58. Wedding Crashers
59. Superman
60. Electric Horseman
61. Starman
62. Continental Divide
63. Local Hero
64. 12 Monkeys
65. MASH
66. Serenity
67. Mrs. Henderson Presents
68. The Poseidon Adventure
69. Broken Trail
70. Brokeback Mountain
71. Winter Passing
72. Match Point
73. In Her Shoes
74. Beautiful Girls
75. You’ve Got Mail
76. A History Of Violence
77. Eight Men Out
78. Breaking Away
79. Pee Wee’s Big Adventure
80. Bed Of Roses
81. Mission To Mars
82. The Flamingo Kid
83. Hanging Up
84. Ever After
85. Diner
86. Star Trek First Contact
87. Sweet Home Alabama
88. Straight Talk
89. Casanova
90. Everything Is Illuminated
91. Ned Kelly
92. Almost Famous
93. The Frisco Kid
94. A Nun’s Story
95. The Whole Nine Yards
96. The Legend Of 1900
97. Angel And The Bad Man
98. Back To The Future 3
99. The Incredibles
100. Rain Man
101. Toy Story 1
102. Toy Story 2
103. Heavenly Creatures
104. The Burbs
105. War Games
106. Muriel’s Wedding
107. Lost In America
108. The Mosquito Coast
109. Broken Flowers
110. Coffee & Cigarettes
111. Lost In Translation
112. 24-Hour Party People
113. Out Of Sight
114. Unforgiven
115. The Life Aquatic
116. The Secret Garden
117. Sid And Nancy
118. Everyone Says I Love You
119. Snatch
120. Being John Malkovich
121. Home Movie
122. Firefly The Complete Series
123. Office Space
124. Ocean’s Eleven
125. Dead Man Walking
126. Shadowlands
127. A Bugs Life
128. Happy Gilmore
129. Lost Season 2
130. Remains Of The Day
131. The Name Of The Rose
132. Stand By Me
133. Smoke Signals
134. Amadeus
135. My Own Private Idaho
136. Real Women Have Curves
137. Shopgirl
138. Happenstance
139. Amelie
140. Tristram Shandy; A Cock And Bull Story
141. Rushmore
142. Three Musketeers ‘95
143. The Jungle Book ‘95
144. X-Men 3
145. Million Dollar Baby
146. Regency House Party Complete Series
147. The Island
148. Gremlins
149. Arrested Development Season 2
150. The Emperor’s New Groove
151. Nightmare Before Christmas
152. Monster’s Inc
153. A Christmas Story
154. The Thin Man
155. Win A Date With Tad Hamilton
156. Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel And Laurence


2006 Movies Viewed in Theatre and at Home
Walk the Line
X Men 3

Crossing over

Yes, I'm going public. Oy. My ongoing battle of resistance againt the blog phenomenon keeps failing. So here I am. Leaving Friendster-land and going all-blogger and stuff. So a lot of these are gonna be re-posts. Don't judge me! What force is compelling me to do this? Why am I still typing this? Kj, go to sleep! It's 2:27am. You know you''ll never start waking up before noon if you don't apply yourself. Cease and desist. Goodnight.