Very Funny: Monty Python

Christmas Movies

I haven’t seen any movies recently. It’s really a shame. I just haven’t had the time with basketball and homework that teachers decided to load up on before Christmas break. But I plan on watching plenty on my 5 days off from basketball and the rest of the break. My mom will want to watch the old classics that have become a “tradition” in our house. Which brings up the topic of holiday movies.

Good holiday movies are becoming more rare as years pass. They are becoming clichéd with ideas being repeated. I have not seen a holiday movie in the last two or three years that has been decent. The most recent movie that I enjoyed a lot was Elf. Will Ferrell was great in this movie. This idea was original and very creative. Any time somebody is raised by elves and thinks that he is in elf even though he is 6 foot 6, turns out to be interesting. This was a funny movie, but had its sincere moments too. If you have not seen this film, I would highly recommend it during the holiday season that everybody in the family will enjoy.

When I talk about classic Christmas movies, I am talking about two in particular: It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story. These are the two best Christmas films ever made and I do not think that there will be any more like them. I have grown up in an era of bad movies and even worse morals, but I realize how good of a film It’s a Wonderful Life is. Even though it is black and white (that was the beginning of my protest before the first time my parents showed this to me), it still is a, I hate to say it, wonderful film. Jimmy Stewart plays a man who never does a thing for himself and ends up breaking down, but a guardian angle, Clarence, comes down and shows him how the world could have been different without him. This opens up his eyes and he comes to realize that he loves his life. (That might have been the worst explanation of any movie, ever, so just watch it and you will realize that it really is a good movie.)

A Christmas Story is my personal favorite. It is funny and interesting and is an overall good movie. Ralphy really wants a BB gun (its more than just a plain old BB gun though) for Christmas but everybody tells him, “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.” This movie is the trials that he and his family face leading up to Christmas, and the struggles he goes through in order to get this gun. Once again, you will have to take my word that this is a horrible explanation and, once again, have to take my word that the movie is actually good. 

The "Holiday Season"

The “holiday season” is about 3 weeks too long. The first time I saw a Christmas commercial advertising a sale on TV was before Halloween. BEFORE HALLOWEEN!!!!!! That is just wrong. I thought that Christmas was supposed to be a holiday where good values and the birth of Christ were to be celebrated. Not some money making machine. Everything is always about money. We have to suck every cent out of Christmas that we can. We can’t let an old traditional holiday go unscarred.

For me, the “holiday season” should start on Thanksgiving and end a day or two after Christmas. It shouldn’t start before Halloween and end after New Years. That is just ridiculous. Companies are sucking every penny that they can out of this, and ruining a perfectly good holiday. The other thing about extending the time Christmas is acceptable is that radio stations and stores feel the need to play Christmas music. I can only stand so much of Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. I heard reports of Christmas music being played before Thanksgiving, thankfully I wasn’t there, but I’m sure it was torture for the people who were present. My thanks for Thanksgiving- not being a victim of premature Christmas music playing. I think that a human only has a certain capacity to withstand Christmas music, and if stores and radio stations are playing it too long, than by the time Christmas actually arrives, people will be so sick of Christmas music that there will be no joy. I know that, as of December 17, I am already tired of these rudimentary jingles. But I see people still withstanding, I guess some people have a higher threshold with the power to endure Christmas music.

One thing that got on my nerves this “holiday season” was the atheist sign controversy. I’m not 100% informed on this because I do not live in Washington and I was not involved in anyway with this story. But I have my opinions too. I believe that there should have been no controversy at all. None. I do not understand the viewpoint of the people who were opposed to this sign. These people are hypocritical saying that the sign should be taken down. But I don’t see the atheist group complaining about the Christmas tree (they can call it a “Holiday” tree all they want but we all know that it is meant to be a “Christmas” tree) and nativity scene. It just bothers me that the majority religious group can do whatever they want, but the minority religious group has to be quiet and abide by the rules. I know that this is not a well constructed argument right now, but I will come back to this subject in a more thoughtful manor in a later post.

Basketball Season

Basketball is finally in full swing. Every level and every age is playing and games are beginning. I could say that I am excited for it all, but that would only be halfway true. I am excited to play basketball yes, but the two and a half hour practices followed by half an hour of film is a little much. I liked the old days when I played for just an AAU team and we had one, maybe two, practices a week and tournaments on the weekends and that was it. All you did was show up and play games. But I know that all the work for the school team pay off in the end. The end result of the high school season is about 127 times better than any 8th grade AAU team.

While I am on the topic of basketball, I need to address the activity of basketball viewing. Watching basketball on TV is something I do fairly often, sometimes because it is halfway interesting and sometimes because it is the only thing on. But whenever I watch basketball on TV, I always watch college games. This is for two reasons: 1- college basketball is pure. The players are not getting paid millions of dollars to play; they are playing for the love of the game. 2- NBA basketball is not really basketball, it just a bunch of guys who seem like they don’t even care about the game and are just playing for the money. Isn’t sad that everything comes down to money.

College basketball is basketball at its finest. It is played hard and fair and teams actually try and play defense. Most of the players that you see are not going to the NBA, college players play for the game. They play hard and with emotion. This is what causes some of the best teams to get beat, the underdog just wants it more. One of the greatest television events (even though it is also just a money maker) is March Madness. I love watching this because it is a cumulative result of a year of basketball that comes down to two teams that have out lasted the rest. They may not be the best two teams in the nation, but they, once again, just wanted it more.

NBA basketball on the other hand, is just a wrong. The players are playing for the wrong reasons and they are wrong in the way they play as well. Almost every player is playing for the money, not for the game. I think that they are overpaid, and if you paid them what they actually deserve, almost nothing, then about 95% of them would leave the game. NBA players should not be making millions to play a game, a game that is corrupt and impure, and going down the wrong path.

The Shining Trailer: Recut

This is a spoof on The Shinig that uses all original footage from the movie. I thought it was great because if you haven't seen the movie, this trailer is very believeable. If you read my last post, you can watch the orignal Shining trailer which I think is much better. But that is just because I have seen the movie and I don't think that the original trailer could have been done any other way because it fits the movie so perfectly.

Sometimes I Crave A Good Movie

Sometimes I crave a good movie. Its one of those things that every now and then I just want to sit down and watch a movie that when I walk away, I’m pleased. I’m pleased because it made me laugh, or it made me sad, or it made me sit on the edge of my seat with my heart racing. But most of all it has to make me think. Not think about how much of a waste of time it was or how it could have been completely different, which would have made it better. I want to think about the people in the movie. I say people because I want to feel that the characters are real humans, not some fabricated segment of somebody’s mind. I want to think about the decisions that these people made, I want to think about how they could have affected the outcome. Movies that leave me with different emotions and thoughts are good movies. I know then that I did not waste my time.

Sometimes I crave a good movie. I might be sitting in Spanish class thinking about nothing in particular and then the thought about wasting my time runs across my mind. I think about all the ways that I could possible be wasting my time: watching TV, reading, cleaning my room, the rest of the day at school, watching a movie…

When the thought of watching a movie wanders through, I pause, and think about some of the movies that I have just thought “why am I watching this?” But I also think about the movies that have not been a waste of my time. I think about Little Miss Sunshine, about Donny Darko, about Memento, about Son of Rambow, and about many more. I think about ways that I could possible sneak out of Spanish and get into some comfortable clothes and sit in my basement and watch these movies the rest of the day. If only.

Sometimes I crave a good movie. But sometimes all I have is 45 minutes. So sometimes I settle with the Nothing But Trailers show. This show is non-stop movie trailers and I love it almost as much as I love movies. I love it because I see new movies that aren’t out yet, and I also get to see trailers of movies that are classics and movies I have already seen. This was where I saw the original trailer for The Shining. It creeped me out so much, I couldn’t not watch the movie. I can say that I was pleased because The Shining made me think.

Sports Movies

Sports and movies. Those are the two topics that I said I would try to be consistent on writing about on my blog. These are two topics that I know a little about and that I am fairly interested in. So why not combine the two, and write about sports movies? Good idea, right?

Sports movies may be one of the hardest genres of movies to make. It is difficult to make them realistic, intriguing, and not cheesy. Most sports movies are feel good movies with the underdog winning in the end. There are a few good movies like that (Hoosiers most notability), but most are just follow the generic template of setting up the underdog story then showing them win. A lot of these feel good sports movies come from Disney. So when I sit down to watch a sports movie and I see the Disney castle come to the screen, I already have a biased view before the movie even starts.

Even with some of the most average or worst movies having the sports theme, some of the best movies ever produced revolve around sports. Sometimes these movies are feel good, they just have a different way of getting to that point, and some of the time these movies do not end with the “good guy” or main character coming out on top. These movies are especially moving because we are so used to seeing the underdog win, that when he doesn’t, it is unexpected and, I feel, appreciated more.

The two sports movies that stick out in my mind where the main character (or team) doesn’t win are Friday Night Lights and Raging Bull. Friday Night Lights is a good football movie that is fairly realistic for southern high school football. They main team gets to the championship but they fail to score a final touchdown and their season ends. I thought that this was a good movie and I was pleased when I walked away.

Raging Bull is one of the best overall films ever made. It is a tragic story of Jake LaMatta, the middle weight champion boxer of the 1940’s and 50’s. The movie is the struggles he faces in his life and in the end he basically loses everything. The end is dark because you had seen this champion on the top of his game with a great life in the beginning of the movie, but you see him as a bum with nothing, not even his champion belt, in the end.

So I have been talking about some of the best sports movies, but I have not mentioned all of them. So here are my favorite movies by sport:
Football- Remember the Titans
Basketball- Hoosiers
Baseball- Tie between Bull Durham and Field of Dreams
Golf- Caddyshack
Boxing- Raging Bull