Kids, Always Wear Protection

Great, my fellow blogger Cinema Romantico (or you can call him Nick if you've worked with him, slept on his floor, vomited in his bathroom, featured him in your wedding, and had his father as a high school teacher) just gave me the Blogger equivalent of herpes. I've been "tagged" to answer some questions. Also, I haven't updated in over a year, and this is a good excuse for me to post some new content without having to come up with something original.

It should be noted, however, that I really do intend to finish out my horror movie round-up. One of these years, anyway. Plus, I may redesign the page. And organize. And change the content format. And appoint myself emperor of my street. And enslave all those who oppose me. But I will totally provide free nachos, so my legacy will probably be pretty good.

Anyway, the questions:

1. What was your first movie-going experience?
I have a very brief memory snippet from when I was three, sitting in the River Hills theater in Des Moines, Iowa, cowering in fear while Luke Skywalker fought the Rancor in Return of the Jedi. I can also remember seeing Jaws 3-D, psychologically unaffected. Both were in theaters at the same time, and I don't know which one happened first.

2. How many DVDs do you own?
I once had over 900, but after some spring cleaning I now have somewhere in the 400-range, along with around 50 Blu-rays. And I still have a little over 100 Laserdiscs in a box somewhere in my basement.

3. What is your guilty pleasure movie?
Tie. I've recently discovered that I actually like a Michael Bay movie. The Island is quite enjoyable, and Bay manages to control himself for half of the movie. And the much-maligned second half of the movie is still pretty good as long as you know the right chapters to skip over.

My second is Message in a Bottle. It's the usual Nicholas Sparks crap, but it has really good performances by Robin Wright Penn and Paul Newman. And the typical Sparks ending (building a character up and then killing them in a melodramatic way) goes way past audience manipulation and kinda heads towards sadism. I mean sweet Jesus, the ending can't stop twisting the knife. I was working at the theater when this movie was playing, and the audience would walk out of the auditorium mad at the movie. They acted like the movie had gone out of its way to hurt them. And it totally does, which is why I like it. It's like a horror movie where the audience is the victim.

4. You have compiled a list of your top 100 movies. Which movies didn’t make the cut?
2001: A Space Odyssey. I think maybe I have some kind of ocular condition, similar to color-blindness, that keeps me from seeing whatever the Hell it is about this movie that everyone else sees. It's a jumbled, poorly-scripted, poorly-acted and terribly paced piece of pretentious crap posing as intelligent science fiction. Then again, I did just go on record as saying I enjoyed The Island, so I have to concede that my sense of cinematic taste might be broken.

5. Which movie(s) do you compulsively watch over and over again?
Primer, because I'm still piecing it together. And Brick, for the sheer joy of the dialogue (see also: Lucky Number Slevin).

6. Classic(s) you’re embarrassed to admit you haven’t seen yet?
I haven't seen most classics, so my answer is "all of them."

7. What movie posters hang on your wall?
At the moment, none. But once I get to IKEA and buy some new frames, I plan to put up Dark City. I'll put others up, but I haven't decided which ones yet. Dark City just happens to have a really good looking poster, so I know it will go up. Some other titles up for consideration (and this is based on how good looking the poster is, not necessarily my undying love for these movies) are Contact, Strange Days, Panic Room, and The Fifth Element. And even though I really, really hated the movie, I'm tempted to put up my Matrix: Reloaded teaser poster because it is a giant close up of Monica Bellucci.