My Desert Island's "Now In Theaters"

I have a problem in that I've never been able to make a list of my favorite movies. Too many times, I have seen a fairly good movie and then become smitten with it. I will look up everything about the movie, force other people to watch it, rewatch it multiple times myself, overindulge in fan commentaries, and then slowly forget about the obsession a few months later (as a new film takes its place).

As the pattern persists, it is obvious how skewed my "favorite films" list becomes. Luckily, I have discovered the formula to what my brain considers not just a great movie, but an absolute definitive favorite. It has to be able to stand the test of time, meaning my infatuation with each film must prove itself to be long-term. Additionally, I have to be able to watch it endlessly without any decrease in enjoyment. And finally, the film must have something special about the content. It can't just be a visually appealing movie, but a film with great pacing, well developed characters, and a unique or brilliantly executed story.


My top three:

Matilda

Matilda is very precious to me, as it's been my number one favorite since I was a child. In fact, I have difficulty ever talking about Matilda because I love it so much and fear that I cannot convey its preciousness to me no matter what I say. I also cannot watch Matilda casually or with most other people, as the very thought of sharing the experience of watching this movie with a person I don't like seems too personal or too intimate. A small fragment of the reason that I love this movie is perhaps the character Matilda herself, who is intelligent and independent enough to take care of herself, and who spends the first part of the movie befriending books because she has no one else. Another great thing about this movie is the encouragement of finding a family rather than enduring your own. Many modern movies seem to focus on families consisting of a bunch of misfits that can barely stand each other, and while it's true some that families can be worth the difficulty of being around each other, representation of non-nuclear happy families is lacking, and Matilda rights the scale a small degree.

Secondhand Lions

Secondhand Lions is another really awesome representation of choosing your non-nuclear family. The film weaves together two storylines- one in the present, following a boy and his two uncles, and the other a fantastical tale about his uncles' pasts. It's both funny and wonderfully charming, teaching the audience about being a good person and fighting for things that you believe in and find worth protecting. The cast is awesome and I really really love the script. I feel like a better person after watching this movie.

Wreck-it Ralph

I made a post a few weeks ago about my indignation over Wreck-It Ralph losing an Academy Award to Brave, and I still feel robbed. It was exceedingly difficult for an animated movie to beat How to Train Your Dragon on my favorites list, but I think Wreck-it Ralph has done it. The character development is flawless, and I adore the fact that this movie isn't necessarily a "hero doesn't know who he is" film, but more of a "character knows who he is, but just doesn't like himself" kind of film. We could use more of those, it's so much more interesting than the typical hero plotline. Ralph, as a technical "bad guy" teaches viewers that you are good enough as you are, and you don't have to change your identity to be happy.

Other honorable mentions that I feel I must at least name include:

 Amélie

 Léon the Professional

How to Train Your Dragon

Inglourious Basterds 

and

Young Frankenstein

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Not Just a Pretty Face

It's the end of the semester. Praise the Lord! We should be proud of ourselves for getting through, at least until we see our grades. If you feel like you never want to see a textbook again, don't skip out on future semesters. No matter what happens, don't you want to be able to say "I earned a degree!" These celebrities get to do just that:

James Franco


He's attended several impressive schools and is known to be very academic. He started in  a bachelor’s degree at UCLA, then received an MFA at Columbia University and a Ph.D. in English at Yale.

Brooke Shields


The actress and model earned a bachelor’s degree in French Literature at Princeton.

Eva Longoria



Not just a desperate housewife, this gorgeous actress received a bachelor's degree in Kinesiology from Texas A&M University-Kingsville.

Jay Leno


This one's not such a big surprise. This talk-show host has a bachelor’s degree in speech therapy from Emerson College.

Lisa Kudrow


She's not nearly as ditzy as her Friends character Phoebe. She studied biology and earned a bachelor's of science.

Will Ferrell

The class-clown did indeed learn in class as well. He received his surpising degree- Bachelor's in Sports Broadcasting- from the University of Southern California.
Tina Fey


A well earned Bachelor's in Drama is what this talented star earned from the University of Virginia.

Though I'm sure you get it, there are plenty more celebs out there go went to school before pursuing their dreams. No matter what you want to be, earning a degree never hurt. I hope to see you next semester!

Like spotting a shooting star

When the people on screen are not professional actors, you typically have a terrible movie. Yet sometimes, it happens that the movie you're watching is made even better. With cameo appearances by surprising people, an average movie can become more entertaining and even a fan favorite. When I'm watching a movie, one of my favorite things to do is look for weird background happenings or other such bonus material, and cameo appearances are particularly awesome. Here's some of my favorites:

On the NBC comedy Community, the oddball character Abed absolutely loves the show Cougartown. He made a reference in an episode that over his summer break from community college, he was even able to visit the set. What's awesome is that in an actual episode of Cougartown, Danny Pudi (who plays Abed) can be seen in the background- and he's not just an extra, but playing Abed- tilting his head in different directions in a very Abed-like fashion and eventually jumping up from his seat and running away.

In the movie Dodgeball, Lance Armstrong shows up to force along the plot and yell at Vince Vaughn for giving up. He poses as a huge dodgeball fan and reminds Vince Vaughn that even with brain, lung, and testicular cancer, he was able to win the Tour de France five times in a row. Say what you will about Armstrong's recent doping scandal, but that is no easy feat, especially against the other 20-some cyclists that faced blood doping accusations.

Toy Story 3 is a special movie for viewers of my generation, who grew up with Andy and his talking toys. When some of the toys make it to little girl Bonnie's house, a particular cuddly companion can be seen among the welcoming committee: Totoro, from Studio Ghibli's masterpiece My Neighbor Totoro.

Spotting Alfred Hitchcock in the background of his films is a popular game among audiences. Though many other directors have made cameos in their films, Hitchcock's appearances are famous for their consistency and brevity. He never speaks, just silently appears and then he is gone.

Like Hitchcock, Stan Lee sightings have become just as much a part of a movie-viewing experience as the movie itself. So far, the Marvel creator has made an appearance in each of the Marvel films.

Based on a True Story

     For many of us, seeing the words "Based on a true story" appear before a scary movie, freaks us out and makes the movie scarier. Seeing those words after a drama might change our reactions to the movie. After all, if it's a sad story, we can't make ourselves feel any better by saying "it's just a movie," because it's based on something that happened to real people. When seeing those words describe an inspirational movie, we might walk away from it a little happy or excited. "Can you believe that?" we might say or "[insert character's name her] is my new hero!" 

     No matter what emotion these words incite in us, knowing a movie we see or story we hear has some truth in it, makes us see it differently. While I don't know exactly why that is, I'm sharing this list of movies and fairy tales that are based on true events:

Movies:

• Cool Runnings (1993) — Based on the true story of the First Jamacian bobsled team trying to make it to the winter Olympics.
• Braveheart (1995) — Based on the story of William Wallace of Scotland.
• Anastasia (1997) — Loosely based on the story of the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia. 
• Patch Adams (1998)— Story of the "medical doctor, clown, performer, social activist" Patch Adams. 
• Boys Don't Cry (1999) — Story of hate crime victim Brandon Teena.
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) — The murder of several people in Wisconsin.
• 21 (2008) — Inspired by the story of the MIT Blackjack Team.

Fairy Tales:

Hansel and Gretel:

Katharina Schraderin was born around 1618 in Harz Mountains of Germany and was famous for the delicious gingerbread cookies that she sold, which caught the attention of Hans Metzler a baker. He courted her for her secret recipes and when she found out, she fled Nuremberg and went back to her

birthplace Wernigerode. She left all her belongings behind except for her baking tools. She resided in the Spessart forests and eventually became well known for making cakes.

Hans became so enraged by her fame that he denounced her as a witch and he hoped that he would get her secret recipes when her things were confiscated. She soon became known as Bakkerhexe (the bakery witch). They wanted her to confess as being a witch, but all through her torture she proclaimed her innocence and they eventually let her go.

She left and returned back to her secret home in the Spessart forest, but Hans and Grete followed her home where they broke in, murdered her and shoved her into the oven to burn her. They were arrested but later set free. Hans died, a little crazy, in 1660 still having not found her recipes. 

In the 1900's the brothers Grimm were collecting fairy tales, turned the two murderers into innocent children and the victim into a witch who liked to eat children.

Rapunzel:

Some people believe that this tale or at-least part of this tale goes back to earliest days of Christianity, about Saint Barbara. Her father was Dioscorus who was a wealthy pagan Merchant. Barbara was very, very beautiful and  her father  didn't want her to marry an unworthy suitor. He locked her away in a tower. She started to take the teachings of Christ seriously and she decided to be a Christian. It angered her father off so much that he took her before a Roman-procounsel and they tried to torture her to the point that she would renounce her faith. She didn't and ended up being beheaded by her father and he ended up being struck by lightning.Barbara became the saint over firemen, artillery and people who in endanger of suddenly dying.

Snow White(as taken from weirdworm.com):

Snow White was based on Margarete Von Waldeck, a 16th century Bavarian noblewoman.
Strikingly beautiful by all accounts, sixteen year old Margarete moved to court in Brussels in 1549. There, she caught the eye of Prince Philip II of Spain, and became his lover. However, the thought of Margarete being a princess was unbearable to her meddling stepmother (who, by all accounts, hated her) as well as Philip’s father, the king of Spain, who saw a marriage between the two as politically disadvantageous. Therefore, Spanish agents cooked up a plot to end the affair permanently, by poisoning the young beauty. Her will, written just before her death at 21, shows evidence of the tremors brought on by advanced stages of poisoning (although the perp could not be her evil stepmother, who died before Margarete’s death).Margarete also grew up in Bad Wildungen, where her brother owned a copper mine worked by small children, severely stunted by their terrible working conditions and starvation. Since it was a different time and this wasn’t considered bad enough, they called these kids "dwarfs." Also, there was a grumpy, old man who peddled poison apples to children, whom he believed were stealing from him.

Cinderella(also weirdworm.com):

One of the oldest, most prototypical of fairy tales, Cinderella also seems to be loosely based in the factual account of Rhodopis, an ancient Grecian woman. The story goes that Rhodopis, whose name means “rosy cheeks”, was a Greek girl captured from Thrace some time ca. 500 BCE, who was sold into slavery. Her fair complexion, blond hair, and light eyes allegedly made her very valuable as a slave among the dark-complected Egyptians, and she became a “favorite” of her master, who gave her very expensive shoes as a token of his favor. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately) her sucking up to her master paid off, as the golden shoes caught the eye of the Pharaoh, Ahmose II.The mighty ruler recruited her to become part of his "House of Women." Apparently, the Pharaoh in those days wasn’t ever married to just one wife, but instead had many courtesans. So Rhodopis, er, Cinderella gets to be queen—or at least manages to move up from regular slave to sex slave.


    

All the World's a Stage

Supposedly art imitates life, but often art is less an imitation than it is a full-scale reenactment. I wouldn't say that movie-makers are necessarily getting lazy or losing originality though- the number of book-to-movie or life-to-movie adaptations may be rising, but sometimes those stories are worth being told again. Often, people even forget where the story came from.

Here's some movies based on real-life events:

Balto (1995)

This lovable Spielberg animated classic chronicles a half-husky, half-wolf's journey from Nenana, Alaska to Nome- transporting by sled a much needed diphtheria antitoxin to a bunch of sick children. Although in real life, Balto was not part wolf and did not sound like Kevin Bacon, he did exist! The journey was also split up into several dogsled teams, though Balto proved himself to be particularly heroic. He led his team in near white-out conditions, mostly at night, and saved his team from falling into the Topkok River. The event is commemorated by the annual Iditarod Race, as well as with a statue in Central Park.   

50 First Dates

This romantic comedy featuring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore is about a woman with a traumatic head injury, who every day loses her memory, and yet is still able to fall in love and get married in the end. Though it seems like just another ridiculous rom-com plot, that part is actually true. There is a British woman named Michelle Philpots who suffered two head injuries herself in 1985 and 1990, and she suffers from the same condition as Barrymore's character. Philpots has also since married, and must be reminded of that fact every morning by her husband and a photo album.

Primeval (2007)

"The most prolific serial killer in the world" is featured in this movie, with a body count of over 300. He still lives deep in Burundi, Africa at the age of 60, and has never been captured. His name is Gustave- and he happens to be a 20 foot long crocodile. The movie itself is terrible, and gives the impression to viewers that it is nothing more than a low-budget B-movie horror film like Sharktopus, yet Gustave is indeed real. He is the largest of his kind and weighs a ton. Smaller prey are much faster than the giant reptile though, so Gustave has had to move on to wildebeests and even hippos. Oh, and humans when available. If you're planning a trip to Burundi any time soon, you might want to stay out of the water.


Though Balto is pretty obviously based on a true story even within the film, I don't think I would have believed a 60 year old crocodile famous for killing hundreds of people was hanging about Burundi, Africa. Luckily, I now possess that knowledge, and can stay far away.