Yeah. That's right.

I watched Van Gogh: Painted with Words last week. And you know what? I enjoyed it. I was watching it and was all not interested for about the first three minutes and then that documentary voice kicked in and the dramatization was suitably engaging and I was bloody FASCINATED. I was very depressed when the train ride was over but I still had 40 minutes left to watch. But the next day another commute awaited me! I've never learned so much about Van Gogh while commuting. Thank god for ipods.

And I threatened someone with a 50 question Quiz on Van Gogh: Painted with Words, and frankly, this is the kind of threat I keep.

Best news ever!

Carrie Fisher's one woman play Wishful Drinking is coming to Toronto!

The audiobook of the book based on said play is one of the funniest things I've heard in my life. I could not be more excited for this!

Arbitrary Appreciation: Multiple Fields of Gravity on the Millennium Falcon

In Star Wars: A New Hope when our heroes are escaping the Death Star Luke and Han gun down some attacking Tie Fighters we're treated to several shots that show the Millennium Falcon has at least two directions of gravity working simultaneously.

It can be quite difficult to understand the gravity of the situation

I have high hopes that other parts of the ship have other directions of gravity. Can you imagine how epic a game of hide and seek would be?

Harry Potter and the Cycle of Anticipation

Sometimes I just stop and think about how happy I am that I got to grow up with Harry Potter.

There's just something about an entire generation of people spending 10 years wanting nothing more than the next book that makes it more awesome. I loved those agonizing waits between books, the inevitable countdowns to release dates, the sleepless nights leading up to the midnight book launch and then the marathon reading sessions that followed. The Harry Potter cycle of anticipation was second to none and parallel only to Star Wars. Years containing both a new Harry Potter book and a new Star Wars movie felt like the universe was giving me everything I could ever ask for.

Past!Me was clearly leading quite the investigation here...

Totally just found an epic "how do feelings work?!" chart I made when I was younger. 

Kay. So when I was 13 I watched Episode 2 significantly more times than was necessary and I absolutely could not make sense of Padme falling in love with Anakin. It just didn't make sense. There was no logic to it at all. Being me, I set out to solve this using, wait for it, a two page chart documenting Anakin Skywalker's emotions and personality traits across episode 1, episode 2, and the original trilogy.

Stay with me here, cause this made, and to a certain extent, still makes a lot of sense to me. Here I could cross-reference his developing personality with Padme's, as well as mathematically add up desirable traits against the undesirable ones. Here, surely, was the logical answer to her falling in love.

I remember the look on my mom's face when I told her what I was doing, proudly showing her the list I was composing as I complained that I still hadn't made sense of it. 

She told me this: "Feelings don't have to make sense."

I was confused, insisting that I could figure this out. The answer was out there somewhere, perfectly sound and logical, just waiting for me to find it.

But no. "Feelings don't have to make sense," she said again, "And a lot of time they don't."

To this day I have to stop my train of thought to remind myself that feelings don't have to make sense. I still expect them to though. My first reaction to feelings being a rather logical analysis of the factors at play, solving for the emotion by examining the factors that affect it. Once I've identified the emotion and then the factors, it's easy enough to change the factors to change the emotion. Right?

I can't get a handle on feelings that people around me don't have control over. I know they don't have to make sense, but that doesn't make it any easier to understand. 

Jar Jar is about to enter another dimension of annoying...

The Star Wars films are going to be theatrically released in 3D. Unfortunately, it looks like they're releasing them in story order, which means we have to sit through all three prequels before we get to see Luke destroy the Death Star. According to this, Episode One will drop sometime in 2012. I dread to think how long we'll be waiting to see a certain metal bikini in 3D.

Completely unsurprisingly, I'm so totally excited for this. Any reason that gets Star Wars back in the theatres so that crowds of people who love them can experience them together is absolutely fine by me.

Arbitrary Appreciation: Movie Posters that use the "tilt head down and make eye contact" pose

Ray Park as Darth Maul demonstrating the "tilt head down and make eye contact" pose.

This poster was the first poster I owned that used the "tilt head down and make eye contact" pose in order to make someone look epic. This shortcut to epicness is used in countless posters, some deserving, some really really not.

There are more. Lots more. 

Warning: Trying to recreate this pose without a marketing team, reasonably high budget, brand name or certain level of fame is a surefire way to look very silly.

Adventures in Filmographies

I love movies. And I love the process of discovering new movies (and TV shows and books and radio plays and audiobooks and…)

Star Trek 2009 blew my mind and made me want MOAR. Which was totally fine, because there's more Star Trek around than I could ever want. So off I went, watching the Original Series and enjoying the hell out of the awesome life lessons offered (Rule #1: Don't wear red shirts). But at the same time, I was also going through the actors filmography, adventuring into their past in film and TV series appearances, some of which were far more entertaining than others. The unquestioned winner of the Star Trek phase was Incubus: a movie filmed entirely in Esperanto starring William Shatner from the 1960's. 

By including an actor's past work in the excitement of "Yay new movie I love!" I'm introducing a highly random element. Sherlock Holmes (which has the original stories as well as literally hundreds of adaptations to pick through) also started the Robert Downey Jr filmography phase, which led to me discovering one of my favourite movies (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) and sitting through some of the most bizarre films I've seen (Rented Lips, Hugo Pool.)  I'm pretty confident no actor or actress will be able compete with the sheer bulk of WTF that ye olde Robert Downey Jr films can provide. 

And the tangents that come from these adventures in filmography are unexpected and delightful. I ended up spending a couple weeks appreciating a bunch of "Patrick Dempsey films made before 1997", which I can truthfully say is a line of interest I could not have predicted. It's also cool to see what films keep popping up. Seven separate quests led me to Bent, a film which has somehow become the Kevin Bacon of my movie world.

The best part of questing through past works is, without doubt, finding something AMAZING that otherwise I would never have come in contact with. Cabin Pressure, a BBC radio sitcom that I listened to because Benedict Cumberbatch was in it, is now one of my all time favourite sitcoms. Of course, the danger of such  method is that there are fantastically awful movies and TV shows waiting to be unearthed. But dodging or suffering through movies that define "why was this made?" just add to the experience and to the joy of finding something awesome.

Arbitrary Appreciation: Carrie Fisher with a shotgun

I watched Sorority Row last night. Why you ask?

The trailer promised Carrie Fisher with a shotgun. And I can't say no to Carrie Fisher with a shotgun. 

Exhibit A: Carrie Fisher with a shotgun

SPOILER WARNING: It was awesome.

Not the movie. The movie was bad and I could actually feel my brain cells dying as I watched it. But Carrie Fisher with a  shotgun? Hell. Yes. 

Laserdisc collection one step closer to being complete

My Terminator 2 laserdisc arrived today! Easily the best $1.03 I've spent on ebay. Past!Me is terribly happy that I now own most of my favourite movies on laserdisc.

Movies I own on laserdisc:

Star Wars
The Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
The Lion King
Goldeneye
Terminator 2
Priscilla: Queen of the Desert
Batman Forever

I'm very pleased with this.