Maybe it's the cooling weather, or maybe it's because I haven't written in a while.  Or maybe it's because Chris may finally be getting my workspace together, but I've been feeling this desire to create.  Create what?  I'm not sure yet. 

I'm just looking forward to having, after more than a year and a half, a functioning space that I can use for reading, writing, etc. in this house.  I don't have "a space" and the lighting and (probably more so) my eyes are so bad that it's impossible to read anywhere, and my laptop has been firmly planted on the dining room table since we moved here. So, if I don't watch tv, I have to sit in the dining room and...that's about it.  So now that there's been some movement from Chris working on the den (though even this weekend it's been slow going... "ten minutes of messing around on the computer" has now turned into an hour) I have hope.  I really, really hope.  The situation has become kind of desperate, and even though I may not spend all of my time in there (that would be pretty isolationist of me) I just want an option.  Plus, it may kickstart some other improvements we should be making around here as well.

Here's hoping.

SUCCESS!

I managed to get my head out of my tuchus and get my site up and running again. Hooray!

Now I just need to create some new content... hmm....

See it here: www.thecinemaphile.com

And now, a random picture of Oscar the Grouch that totally epitomizes how I feel right now.

I'm getting all high techie and stuff

Okay, not really. But I did spend an inordinate amount of time (considering the end result) on my Web site, and I am pretty damn proud of it if I do say so myself. Not too shabby for being completely self taught and technically inept.

Well, my arm is sore from reaching around to pat myself on the back, so I'm going to get back to doing things I probably should have been doing while updating my site, but in case anyone is interested, www.thecinemaphile.com is now back in business.

Hoping to watch one or two good movies this weekend - I'm going to float the idea of a weekly "Friday movie night date" or something with the boyfriend. I'm hoping that the promise of pizza or something will make this a reliable tradition.

Anticipation growing....

Anticipation is starting to grow for the Milwaukee Film Festival, which begins Sept. 23rd. I don't know of all of the movies that are going to be shown yet because the program book doesn't come out for another month, but they are leaking one title a day, and so far, they ALL look good. I love having the conflict of deciding between which good looking movie to see.

Other than that, now that we're settled into the new house I'm trying to get back into a regular viewing/reviewing so hopefully even starting today I'll get a review or two posted of things I've watched in the past couple of weeks. Unfortunately I haven't seen anything overly great, but there have been a couple of interesting films I've watched.

Here I Am, Here I Am! Over Here!

Holy cow, I almost forgot how to sign in to this bad boy.

Without getting too terribly boring and personal, I found out in May that our lease was not being renewed on our beloved duplex and therefore we had to find a new place - fast. With a couple of other irritations to contribute to my general feeling of panic while our household was in stasis for nearly two months, we did find a new great place that I do love and am really pleased to say we are almost settled into. (It's amazing how much time and talent it takes to move your items from a more than 1500 square foot flat to one that is just over 1300 square feet, especially when I'm a book collector and Chris is a pack rat.) However, one of my Christmas gifts this year was an IOU for a couple of bookcases and as soon as Chris can go to Ikea I'll get them, and finally the more than 15 or so boxes of unshelved books will be put away and I'll have a real office to work in again.

Until that happens, I'm planning on watching movies when I can and writing where I can. Netflix Instant has become one of the greatest things known to mankind, and my queue has surged to more than 170 titles (so far), most of them being classic foreign films, which is a complete accident. I'll be utilizing this service until we get storage for the many DVDs we have (another thing we lost with the other place - lots of built-in storage in the living room.)

I'm trying to revive our once-again defunct Film Club that I have with a couple of friends so that I not only have the excuse and time slot to see movies, but also the forum to discuss them (as much as I have to coax it out of them anyway).

Also coming down the pike is the Milwaukee Film Festival, which will be held at the end of September. I'm very excited to attend what I believe is my fifth festival (I'll have to count all of my press passes to know for sure) and will finally be able to experience it like I've been wanting to for years now - completely work free. Normally I would go to the festival at night, see a couple of movies, drive home late, get up early to go to work, lather rinse repeat. Obviously, writing doesn't really fit into the equation too well. This year, because of circumstances and well placed paid time off at work, I'm able to have the entire festival off this year, so I'm very excited about that.

So, in conclusion, after a few months of a necessary hiatus because life got in the way, I am hoping to not only start watching movies and posting reviews again, but to re-kick start my Great Directors Project on my other blog very soon. I hope you'll come back to join me.

Blog, Interrupted

Due to some personal things occurring the last half of April and the month of May, I have to temporarily suspend my blogs. However, I hope to back better and stronger in June!

A post about nothing. No really, it is.

Boy, did I completely misjudge this whole iTunes thing I decided to start at 8:30 pm tonight. Chris has been finally cleaning out his office and he's managed to find a few different things of mine in the process. Tonight he presented me with a stack of CDs that had apparently come out of my car at one point, so I started loading them onto my iTunes and snagging certain songs for my playlist (which keeps growing and growing and...) but man, each CD takes about 20 minutes.

For someone who is completely inept at technology, I'm really impatient when I actually deal with it, apparently.

Work was a little better today but I took the cheap way out and mostly worked on superficial tasks that had to get done but were quick n' dirty and made my desk look a whole lot better at 5pm than it did at 8am. However, now I have the meaty and mostly unpleasant stuff to tackle tomorrow, so that should be a challenge.

I'm starting to second guess having merely turtle cheesecake ice cream and a handful of pretzels for dinner tonight. Oh well, too late now.

And finishing up Lauryn Hill, on to Run-DMC.

And thus ends my post about nothing. Seinfeld, I'm not.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The good is that I had a great couple of days off. Chris and I went up north to Turtle Lake Wednesday through Saturday, getting back Saturday late afternoon. It's amazing how far away one can feel when you just head five hours in one direction, but it was enough to feel like we actually went somewhere. We spent some time at the casino there; I won a bunch of money and then lost some of it, but had a fun time doing it, which was all that mattered to me. Chris takes a much more scientific approach to it, calculating what his winning percentage was, etc. while playing a quarter at a time on the video poker machine, but as long as he had a good time doing it, that's all that matters.

The other "good" is that I can look forward to several days off for the Passover holiday at the end of March/beginning of April. If I take two additional days off in between the days the office is closed, I will have something like nine days off in a row. That could be super cool. I haven't decided if I want to do that or not; I think it's going to be a matter of what happens before those days and how much I have planned for myself so that I'm not just "wasting" days off. (If there is such a thing)

The bad is that I came back to work today with just a shit-ton of work to do. There are some positions at my employer where if you're gone, life goes on without you, to paraphrase the great Louis Prima, but unfortunately mine isn't one of them. Just because I wasn't there wasn't going to make articles become written, proofing to be done and everything else to be addressed. If it was just the articles and proofing, life would be great because I actually enjoy that aspect of my job. It's everything else that is wearing me down, the tasks I can't seem to shake no matter how much my position changes. That's what's going to bring me down the rest of the week, because I found it really important to work on the proofing first, and unfortunately, that's pretty much all that got done today. Tomorrow is going to be the official "crap work day" where everything is just completely task-oriented. The rest of the week isn't looking much easier, unfortunately, because even if I do pull myself out of this deep ditch of work, I still have the articles to write, and I've really been trying to get them right somewhat off the bat; not to mention I think I have a couple of interesting subjects for once. Then Thursday night is a late showing of Lady From Shanghai which is another of those private screenings my parents host at the theater. Considering it starts about a half hour before I normally go to bed, this is going to be a challenge.

Which brings me to the ugly. Despite my recent time off, I feel like I have zero time or motivation to explore any of my extracurricular interests. Honestly, they're not that much - movies, reading, culinary stuff, writing - but I'm either busy, not motivated to do it, or, like tonite, just plain too tired. I have a stack of Martin Scorsese films to watch and review for my Great Directors project next to the nice big plasma tv we have, yet I spent the first two hours at home sacked out in my chair falling asleep while watching reruns of "Bones" on TNT with Matisse equally sacked out on my feet. Maybe the change in the weather will help, or maybe I need to just kick myself in the ass to accomplish some of these things, because, let's face it, my interests aren't exactly strenuous. But let me tell you, I am even delighted that my leftovers from the other night are stretching out because I didn't have to cook dinner tonight and I still have enough for dinner tomorrow night.

I think I just need to feel a sense of accomplishment. I had a little of that on Sunday when my OCD kicked in in the middle of watching something on TV and I suddenly had to get up and organize the magazines that I had accumulated over the past several months (not an easy task based on the number of subscriptions I have) in order to catalogue the recipes in the myriad culinary ones I have, and separate out the actual "reading" magazines like The Atlantic that I've fallen behind on. After I organized all of those things I then went around organizing a couple of other things that had been bothering me, then went back to my TV show like nothing had happened. But, I felt accomplishment. I need that again, even if it's just completing a project I start or reading a book I've been meaning to read. (As I look at the "short list" pile sitting next to me that I've siphoned out as must-reads)

Anyway, I'm done whining. I just need to hunker down, stay active, and remember that my hobbies are actually enjoyable and things that I want to participate in.

I think fate is telling me to go to bed because "Be Italian" from Nine has now played twice since I sat down at my laptop, despite the fact that I have 425 songs on this play list and while I like that song I don't need to hear it AGAIN.

Forgive...

...My myriad typos in my last post - it was inefficiently typed out on my Blackberry and is actually pretty hilarious to read when I look at it again. (Irrationity)

Anyway, I can't edit it without hauling my butt out of bed and firing up the laptop sooooo... Forgive me.

Thoroughly Maudlin Shelly...

Maybe it's because I'm laying in bed right now feeling sorry for myself because I have a bad cold, or it could be the aftermath of sitting through Avatar, or it could even be the fact that I just heard that we are having ANOTHER snow storm tomorrow night in time for a crappy Konday commute to work.

Regardless of the reason, I'm feeling blue and starting to actually crack myself up with my irrationity; like, the reason I thought to write this short post - I am starting to feel bummed that my classic film viewing has all but disappeared during these 5 weeks between the announcement of the Oscar nominations and the awards ceremony. I've at least been tapig a couple of films off of TCM on the DVR for later, but it IS distressing to me that all of my reviews have been for current films lately.

I think after the Oscar dust settles I may do some fun classic film bundles or something; maybe watch all of the films I haven't seen by favorite directors, one at a time or something.

Okay, ending pathetic blog whining. Time for some "real life" whining.

I'm sitting in the parking lot of the Marcus Menomonee Falls theater waiting for Jay so we can see Invictus. Not looking forward to it but I may be surprised.

A Great Film Weekend

I had some great film experiences over the weekend: Chris and I drove an hour to Madison to visit the Sundance theater and saw three movies; Broken Embraces, A Single Man and Crazy Heart. One was better than the other two, and one ended up being a bit of a letdown, but my reviews are forthcoming.

Sunday was spent doing a general lounge-around fest, and then I finally watched Death of a Cyclist, which was amazing.

I hope to finish some reviews up today so that I can watch some more movies this week. I'm finding that if I make time to sit down and watch a film a couple of times during the work week, it makes things so much more endurable. Maybe I'll even be able to talk Chris into watching one with me - we'll see. :)

At the risk of sounding like I'm either 87 or a technical moron, I'd like to officially marvel at the fact that I'm blogging in bed. From my phone. Crazy.

Snow Day/Classic Film Day?

Apparently we could get up to 8 inches of snow tomorrow, and after reading about Robert Osborne's wonderful life and real estate here I have visions of curling up in my chair in the living room with the cats and watching movies while the snow falls. Currently on my DVR is Anatomy of a Murder and The Wicker Man (the original, of course) but I have a whole bevy of films I could choose from and be very happy to enjoy!

However, I'm not going to hold my breath, and the reality is that I will be going to see Nine tonight with Jay and Matt, probably will be underwhelmed if most of the reviews I've read and feedback from friends are true, and we'll have just enough snow to make it really annoying to drive and park in...but not to call off work for.

Julie & Julia review forthcoming - unfortunately that's the only film I've watched so far this year.

Same As It Ever Was

Haven't blogged in a while, and I made this realization today when I was thinking about what I had to do tonight and thought, "Oh, I should definitely do a blog post before bed so that I can have a perfect record in July" then realized that it was already the sixth of July. Whoops.

Nothing huge has happened anyway, I've been settling into kind of a general malaise, though it's actually not a bad thing; rather it's been kind of nice. I think because my day to day at work is so scattered, hectic and vaguely stressful, depending on the day, that coming home, relaxing for an hour, cooking dinner, cleaning up after dinner and then spending two and a half hours (or more) doing whatever is kind of a welcome rut to be in right now. The kitchen thing has been working out famously, and I'm sure that Chris has been pleased with the home cooked meals (though in trying to stay on a decent food budget we've been doing a lot of pasta dishes, which I'm sure will get old for him, fast - which means I have an excuse to consult some of my cookbooks.) Other than that the rest of the house has been okay, though there are a few more things that need to get done before we do our first real get together here, which I'm hoping can be done in the next couple of weeks. Chris has to do battle with the landlord because the dishwasher is STILL not fixed, so I did some research online and found that new ones are not that bad, so he's going to see if we can just buy it and deduct it from our rent. I don't mind not having a dishwasher, but the sinks are really small so I end up doing dishes in shifts, which is super annoying.

Chris' Mom is in the hospital with heart issues. He got the call on Saturday that she had gone into the ICU. It seems that she's going to be okay but she's still there for one more night. His family is so insular and dependent on each other (though Chris really isn't) that I am curious to see how they handle all of this. In other news, Grandpa Hanlon had to be moved from his assisted living home to a full time care facility because his body is just completely failing him. His mind is, as well - the dementia is exacerbating everything. It's been very difficult on the family, especially Kathy, who has to balance her busy life with being there for her parents and the rest of the family. She's really lucky to have Dad though, who will do anything to help.

Speaking of Dad and Kathy we had a fantastic evening on the 4th. There was no barbeque planned, but I kind of ended up inviting myself over to hang out with them, so we ate brats and fresh fruit and just sat around and talked for about four hours. Then the three of us met up with Matt at the Times Cinema and we did a special private screening of MST3K shorts after the theater closed. I absolutely loved doing that and really had a great and memorable time. I just love my family so much - I consider my brother to be my best friend and my parents are so fantastic. If I weren't normally such a cynic and dry-humored I would really think I was a gushy nerd, but it all comes from a good place.

And speaking of Matt I don't think I'll be seeing much of him this week because his old roommate from Philly is coming to town to see some St. Louis games, but that's okay - I think that some time this week I'm going to try to watch a couple of IMDB list movies, since I kind of temporarily disbanded the Film Club for lack of interest. I haven't heard from Jay in ages, which seems weird - there haven't been any emails or anything, so who knows what's up with him. It seems like I'm always the initiator with him (and frankly, with other people too, which is part of the reason why I disbanded FC) so I'm just going to let him make contact with me at this point, and if indeed there is something wrong, he'll tell me eventually. If not, I guess he's just busy with Amanda and life.

That about catches things up. I'm going to have an extremely challenging week at work that I'm not really looking forward to but we'll see how things go. It's all becoming a rather elaborate juggling act.

Short and savory

So I made an italian pasta/meat dish tonight and watched MST3K shorts in the kitchen while cooking. To paraphrase Ina Garten, "How fantastic is that?"

That's all for now - I'm so tired that if I go on much further I'll ramble even worse than usual so I know when to cut my losses.

Idle hands are the devil's playground...

I think the rule of blogging is that if you don't really have anything to say (or in my case, don't have anything to say and don't really feel like saying it) you shouldn't bother. But, well, I've been off and on with the blog that I promised to keep daily...right... so I guess I can do a boring diary post.

Not a very effective day at work; I find that I am busy all day but I feel like I'm essentially spinning my wheels because I'm not seeing anything technically go away from my project board or my desk, I'm just putting out the fires that come my way on a minute-to-minute basis. So I guess that's something, but I'd really like to see some stuff going away soon.

Unfortunately I'll be seeing my desk area going away in about two days because I'm getting moved...again. Third time in about two years, which is kind of frustrating. I'm also getting moved into an area I'm not too thrilled about moving to, but hey, whatevs I guess. I think I'm going to go through withdrawals being away from the rest of the creative team I've been able to just shout across the hall to, and the priceless looks between Jeanne and I are going to go away, which makes me sad. Maybe I'll actually get more stuff done over there though, who knows. I guess I can't completely discount it until I work through it a couple of days.

The fantastic news from the weekend is that after spending about two days on it, the kitchen is finally done. It was so great to work in my kitchen for about two and a half hours last night, watching Red Zone Cuba on MST3K and prepping meals for the week. And tonight I cooked my first meal - it was kind of cute sitting at the dining room table with Chris and discussing our day over chicken and noodles in a cream sauce. Afterward he ran to Dairy Queen and got me a brownie batter blizzard because he's a good guy. I paid for it though, of course hahaha.

That's about all she wrote for tonight. I still have to write my review for "Up", so I should probably get to that in the next couple of days. Again, I really question doing that for some of these movies because they are so outdated by the time I see them and review them, but I guess it keeps me in practice until I can get my site up and get accredited.

SLEEEP in heavenly PEACE!

Well, I have to say that I'm proud of my honey. He stepped up when I needed him to and we managed to get a lot done in the kitchen today over the course of a couple of hours. Unfortunately, as most things do when they get organized, the kitchen looks more like ass than ever, but it's about ten minutes away from being something pretty fantastic. It's just a matter of putting stuff in their proper places. I've got to give Chris credit though, he really did a lot of work today in there. It was kind of fun organizing with him and we actually came up with some really great solutions. We also discovered that we have about twice as much cupboard space (or more) than we did at our last house, so that was a really pleasant surprise. I also have a perfect spot set aside for my eventual Kitchen Aid mixer (can you believe I've actually been wanting that thing for about 20 years?) that will go right next to my nifty red food processor. Good lord, if my 20 year old self was witnessing this display of domesticity I think she would throw her copy of her dogeared Camus paperback at me and chastise me for being too lame. Oh well, at least this way I get my Kitchen Aid mixer AND my Camus is still in decent shape in my bookcase.

Anyway, the day was mostly spent doing that stuff, so I couldn't argue when Chris asked if we could go to one of our favorite restaurants for dinner tonight. As an added bonus he stopped off at the store and took further advantage of the mega sale on Coke products they had OH MY GOD I'M TURNING INTO MY MOTHER.

Sigh. Well, I knew I probably should have just skipped the blog for tonight, but hey, my stream of consciousness rule for blogging got the best of me. Meanwhile, I can hear Chris wrestling in the kitchen with some stuff so I'd better see what's going on and then maybe we can watch some of Dead of Night Theater before going to bed. Even though I still have a laundry list of things to do tomorrow, he did such a great job today that I won't even give him the stink eye when he gets up at noon again tomorrow. And I'll go see Up with him since he wants to see it.

But only if we finish the laundry list... hehe.

P.S. I just noticed that one of the examples for labels for the blog posts is "scooters". What the hell?!

I do not like the cone of shame

Well, as per the norm I got no DVR movie viewing done and even less done around the house. However, it is all worth it because I ended up having a really nice day with my brother.

It started this morning when he came by and we went to Gamestop to pick up the latest Guitar Hero (nerds) and then I treated him to some lunch. He then came back to the house where we proceeded to "rock out" for about an hour and a half after which I sat around for a bit and then futzed on the computer before taking a great hour-long nap (but I had the most bizarre dream where I had a really bad brace job on my teeth and I had all of these wires poking out - I even woke up and felt my teeth, strange). Then he and I went to see "Up" which was one of the most charming films I've seen. I really can't stand animation, unless it's something like Miyazake or some anime (and even that is limited to like, 4 titles I like out of the tens of thousands that are out there) and Pixar is particularly annoying to me. However, this was a great movie and I laughed so hard I cried and cried so hard I was afraid I was going to embarass myself and my brother. Hopefully I'll get to the review today or tomorrow.

Anyway, it was a nice day and it put me in good spirits for when Chris came home with the groceries, and we set about putting them all away right away and cleaning out the fridge. He's already promised me that we would work on the kitchen tomorrow so that should be really nice to do. I'd like to do some weekend prep so we can have easy meals this week.

Speaking of Chris, it's kind of cute that he's sitting in his office watching Michael Jackson videos on the computer.

Thriller

I know that by now, even only 10 hours (or less) since his death there have been a million things said about the death of Michael Jackson. I was completely shocked to find this out, of course, and was really sad to hear about it because throughout all of his bizarre (and possibly illegal) behavior he's exhibited over the past twenty or so years, no one could deny that he was a one-of-a-kind musical talent who could dance the pants off anyone. He was an unbelievable entertainer and though musically, I think his best years were way behind him, his death will go down in history in the shocking/before his time category that will ensure his legendary status.

I've been thinking about death for the past day or so, before I even heard about MJ or Farah Fawcett dying today, because last night I watched the exhaustive two and a half hour documentary, Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures. I had seen this documentary about five years ago and was both blown away by its thoroughness as well as the fact that it was clearly made by filmmakers and film lovers for filmmakers and film lovers. The material was not remotely dumbed down in any way. Tom Cruise, of all people, voiced in the documentary exactly what I was thinking the first time I saw this film, "There will never be another Stanley Kubrick film". And that fact, combined with the sheer adulation I feel for the man made me cry (though to my credit, I think he had died just a couple of months prior to me seeing the film) because it kind of put the finality of death into a tangible perspective for me. Of course I know that after someone dies, that's it. But when someone makes such incredible contributions to film and art history, the knowledge that you have only what is in the past to hold on to, and nothing new to look forward to, is a really depressing notion. Another thing I noted this time around was that Martin Scorsese mentioned that seeing a Kubrick film was like an event because you had to wait so long between films, but you always knew that it would be worth it. That just reminded me that no matter who you are, if you're a film buff, and if you love experiencing films so much that it physically hurts sometimes, you're going to feel the same way others do. It's gratifying to me to know that I have even just one thing in common with men like Scorsese and Woody Allen, even if it's an insatiable love of film and a deep reverence of Kubrick.

On the personal front, there hasn't been a whole lot happening. I helped Matt out a little with some work things and finished most of what I should have this week at my own job. I started the kitchen somewhat (mopped the floor, including under the stove, moved the microwave and cart, etc.) but there is still a great deal of organization to do so that is something that will have to be completed this weekend by Chris and I. Tomorrow being Friday I have off, so I plan to take full advantage by hopefully knocking a couple of movies off the DVR and just doing some general relaxing. This week was pretty uneventful for me, but sometimes that can be a good thing I guess. I definitely think we need to complete a laundry list of stuff this weekend, but remember to do something fun at least once as well.