Fruition of the Quest

Well, almost the fruition. Having gone through 8 years and a wild card round, there are 10 nominees for the quest to find the “single finest film of our generation.”

The nominees are…



are you ready for this?

Home Alone (1990), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990 – wild card pick), Point Break (1991), The Mighty Ducks (1992), Jurassic Park (1993), Speed (1994), Batman Forever (1995 - wild card pick), Bad Boys (1995), Independence Day (1996), and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997).

Ben suggested that people should individually rank the list so as to come to a more complete decision – certainly if Speed is someone’s least favorite choice and two people’s favorite choice, it should not be chosen as the winner, right?  Hence, I urge you to make your votes and make your votes likewise.



Here’s my rank from 10 to 1, for added drama:

10) Bad Boys - I’ve never seen it, and I don’t care to. 

9) Point Break – I’ve never seen it and had no interest in doing so until everyone made such a big deal out of it.

8 ) Batman Forever – m’eh

7) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – As I made my final rank, I had to set aside my affection for kids’ classics.  I thought the rank would be more rounded if I made my top a mix of different genres.  I do like this movie and have fond memories of it, but it doesn’t even compare with the other kid classics on this list.

6) Independence Day – Around here is where it got tough.  Like TMNT, I like this movie and I definitely think it is generation defining.  But for its ilk, does it really match the fast paced action of Speed or the childlike wonder of Jurassic Park?  Nah.

5) The Mighty Ducks – In my original list, this was number two.  It pained me to then put it so low on the list.  In the end, it just couldn’t compete with the other movie of its kind here.  Plus, maybe there’s a difference between generation-defining and Christine’s Minnesota childhood defining.

4) I Know What You Did Last Summer – ahead of Mighty Ducks and ID4???  Who do I think I am??  Well, like I said in a previous entry – the stream of crappy horror movies that followed the smash hit Scream does nothing if not point to our specific generation’s ridiculous willingness to fork over cash over and over again for the basically the same movie.  This movie started that trend and since it doesn’t have any competition on the list, it automatically took a high spot.

3) Speed – Keanu, Sandra Bullock, a fast bus.  Need I say more?  Go 1994!

2) Jurassic Park – I personally would rather pop in a movie like The Mighty Ducks or Speed, but this was a classic matched by almost no other film of its time.  I haven’t met a single person that didn’t see it in its hay day (hey day?).  It was a cinematic phenomenon.  Plus, Todd, Ryan, Ted & Peter told us that the water ripple shot is really hard to pull off – so kudos to the Jurassic Park crew!

…………and my vote for the single finest film of our generation goes to…:

1) Home Alone – big surprise, right?

Agree with my choices?  Disagree?  It’s not too late to vote yourself.  Go here to do just that!

I love Jim!

Today I got a yahtzee high score on zeedice.com. This is not abnormal. I play during conference calls because it helps me focus on the meeting content – this translates to lots of yahtzeeing.

Today I chose to use my fame to declare a very important message: My love for the Jim.

Maybe I’m making up for my lash out during last night’s Phase 10 game (just because he uses his skip card doesn’t mean he hates me, for the record), but I like to think I’m willing to make myself a fool in front of the online dice community in order to love my husband well.





I love Jim!

UtSGFoOG – Wild Card!

We’re almost done! The years’ respective winners have been announced! They are:

Home Alone, The Mighty Ducks, Point Break, Jurassic Park, Speed, Independence Day, and I Know What You Did Last Summer

I find it satisfying that each year’s winner has been my pick, except the Point Break year (I still vehemently and ridiculously stand by Hook). And technically I voted for D2 for the year of Speed, but you may remember I was torn between the two – secretly I am happy that Speed won. I think this speaks not of my superiority in choosing, but of my utter mainstreamness in all areas of pop culture. I admit it.





Anyway, on to the point of this post! Being that Chris held a lot of power to define the scope and rules and nominees in this search, he has opened up a wild card round. Now’s our chance to vote for any movies we feel he left out of the previous lists (Lane is going to fight to her death for Free Willy).

Chris’ post is well-written and enjoyable, so I suggest you to go to his post and read it yourself (and if you wish to vote you have to do it there anyway), but I will copy and paste the bottom half of his blog which contains all the rules and some suggested wild-card noms to get your brains noodling:

There is another, more treacherous element of democracy that we indeed must consider as well. The Wild Card. As your benevolent dictator of cinema nostalgia, I must at least let you grovel for a bit until the final voting period opens up. So let this be your forum. What films from your youth signify not only a time and place in which your tastes were unbound by artfulness or intelligence, but also now represent a conscious shift in movie enjoyment? What cinema treasure beckons you to find its curious entertainment value all over again 11-19 years-ish later, only to be rejoiced with crowded apartment viewing featuring snide comments and snobbish laughter? The joy is still there for me when watching these movies, it just manifest itself in a new and exciting way, equally as relentless, but magnified through a different lens. You are by no means required to follow my convoluted mess of rules when nominating Wild Card candidates, but in case you’re curious, here are my guidelines once again…

-Released between 1990-1997, the most vividly joyous years of adolescent cinema-viewing, in my estimation
-Must be in the Top 50 of the Box Office for its year, to satisfy the argument of universal cultural relevance
-Must have been viewed at least three times during the years in question, plus at least a desire to rewatch again as an adult must be prevalent
-The first viewing(s) must be concrete nostalgic memories of epic proportion, constituting an impactful childhood movie-going/renting experience
-Cannot be genuinely good, meaning the emotions derived and artfulness learned from said film in one’s youth cannot be directly similar to the emotions derived from or artfulness appreciated from viewing as an adult

Let the Wild Card ranting begin! Fill the comments with the films that have not been mentioned that you would like to make one final argument for including the final nominations. I will choose between 1-3 of the best arguments (or most backed up, so second someone else if you agree with them) from the comments section to add to the current list of seven. Here are some examples that have come up throughout the Quest to start you off…

Mrs. Doubtfire, Free Willy, Under Siege, Little Big League, Dave, Sleepless in Seattle, Rookie of the Year, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The American President, Apollo 13, French Kiss, Now and Then, Mallrats, Sneakers, The Fifth Element (begrudgingly)

And some others grabbed from Googling the Box Office receipts for 1990-1997…

Ghost, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop, Flatliners, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, City Slickers, The Addams Family, Father of the Bride, Backdraft, Hot Shots!, Lethal Weapon 3, Sister Act, A League of Their Own, Patriot Games, Honey I Blew Up the Kid, Cliffhanger, Cop and a Half, The Three Musketeers, The Santa Clause, The Flintstones, Clear and Present Danger, The Mask, Maverick, Batman Forever, Casper, Waterworld, Species, Mission: Impossible, The Rock, The Nutty Professor, Phenomenon, Eraser, Men in Black, Liar Liar, Conspiracy Theory, Dante’s Peak, Anaconda

Personally, I’m having a hard enough time deciding between the current final nominees that I’m not sure I’ll vote in this round. But were I to do so, I would totally be fighting for the following movies:

Kindergarten Cop
Flatliners (the ultimate move for playing 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon)
Father of the Bride
Casper
TMNT
Now and Then, or
Mrs. Doubtfire (it ushered in an unbearable amount of men dressed as women gags that while not particularly bringing me pleasure, they certainly do say something about our generation)

Vote here. There will be one more voting post before this sucker wraps up. Then we’re going to have to think of something else I can blog about bi-weekly.

UtSGFoOG – 1997

1997, y’all!  How’s it feel to be 14??  Pret-ty good.



Chris has given us 5 movies from this fine year for us to choose as the ultimate generation-defining, not really that good, but we love it to this day, movie of 1997.  The official post is here.

After reading his post, I went straight to Netflix and added one of the movies to my instant watch list.  And watched it.  Instantly.  Any movie that can have that impact should get my vote – and it did.



Without further ado, the nominees are:  Air Force One, Con Air, The Devil’s Advocate, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Breakdown.



And now here’s my breakdown (get it?):





Air Force One:  Harrison Foooooooord!!  Don’t mess with the prez!  Loved it.

Con Air:  Didn’t see it.

The Devil’s Advocate:  Don’t remember it.

Breakdown:  Didn’t see it.

I Know What You Did Last Summer:  The N’Sync of the millenial-horror genre.  Scream successfully ushered in a slew of bad teenage horror movies and what better movie to define our generation than the first of that onslaught.  Amiright?  Look it wasn’t that great, but that didn’t stop me from watching it 12+ times in high school.  And it certainly didn’t stop me from opening up my web browser and starting this puppy up on the ‘flix.  That’s right y’all.  IKWYDLS gets my vote for 1997.



Big surprise.



Do you agree with my vote? Disagree? Go vote!

Next round is a Wild Card round where Chris will select the movies that people have made a fuss about being missing from the first round (it pays to make a fuss).  Then we’ll select the official winner from the winners.  

And that’ll be it.

Media-Fest

Jim and I are watching TV this year. It’s nuts. I guess now that he has stuff to grade all the time, it gives us a more time to watch TV than we used to.

I’m using the term “TV” loosely, as we got rid of our TV set in favor of a computer screen that houses the “internet.” Did you know you can watch TV on the “net?” Pret-ty good. 

We watch Project Runway, Flashforward (I say with a little regret), all the NBC-funnies (Parks and Rec, The Office, 30 Rock), Community (driven by Jim), Glee (driven by me), and The Biggest Loser (also driven by me, more specifically by my insatiable desire to cry).

We also have been seeing movies. We saw Up (I cried, oh how I cried). And last Tuesday we saw The Informant. We LOVED The Informant. I can’t remember seeing a movie where the main character was so unlikable.  I was very impressed.  Plus there were so many funny people doing a great job at not being funny! Like Buster from Arrested Development, & Joel McHale, or that guy from 30 Rock.

We also have been using our Netflix, per usual. We watched the John Adams miniseries and enjoyed it immensely. I learned more from this miniseries about American History than I did in 6 years of middle-school/high school history classes. This is more a reflection on my high school than on this HBO mini-series (Go Spartans!).

And now that John Adams is done, we’re watching the first season of Star Trek Next Generation. Currently, we’re 35 minutes into the pilot. I don’t have much to say about it except that the doctor from The Hand that Rocks the Cradle guest stars in it:

Sorry this isn’t a better entry, I’m a bit out of practice. Twitter has ruined me.