The Way We Were...

...the first movie I ever got from Netflix.

If you have not already figured it out, I watch a significant amount of television and movies. The amount tends to go up even more in the summer because my other activities go down (ie. church commitments-which are numerous). I catch up on shows I didn't have time to watch and are now on DVD or movies I missed in the theater. However, my obsession really did not start until college. I watched a lot of TV in high school and went to the movies, but never really paid much attention to specific actors or directors. This started to happen about Sophomore year of college.

Sophomore year is a phenomenon I was not prepared for and was not aware happened to most people until a couple years later. You make this great group of friends Freshman year, most of whom live on your hall or are in your classes. You see them constantly and do not have to make too much effort to find someone to hang out with. Then Sophomore year comes and everyone moves all over campus, and even on a small campus like Elon, the other side of campus seems like a world away. It is at this point when you figure out who your real friends are and who are friends of convenience - unfortunately for me, there were more of the latter. It also didn't help that three of my close friends transferred schools that year. Needless to say, I needed to find something else to occupy my time. I mean, I clearly wasn't going to study more :o)

I went to visit my brother in Jackson, Wyoming during winter break that year and one of his friends had Netflix. I thought it was brilliant, I could choose movies from my dorm room and they would be in my mailbox within two days. I am not trying to be an ad for Netflix (although, I do highly recommend it) but for me at that time it was just what I needed. It was a way for me to get my mind off of things and I was going through several movies a week. It also gave me something to look forward to doing and I was getting mail on a regular basis, which is key for any college student.

The obsession has continued mostly because I like to lose myself in these make believe worlds. It sometimes make me feel better to imagine that I could have been a pirate in another life, or a passenger on a Firefly, or a teen detective, or a vampire slayer who falls in love with the vampire with a soul, or found my one true love as a teenager and lost him because my parents didn't think he was good enough for me but find each other later in life to spend eternity together :o)

It is now goal of mine to see every single movie on my Netflix queue before I die. I still have over 200 on the list...I'm trying to get down to 150 before I add anymore...it's not going so well, but I'll keep you updated.

I swear I'm not as big of a loser as I sound...a dork, maybe...but not a loser :o)

xoxo
c

"This one... I don't even have to ask but, I will. What do you think of this one?"

I tend to go through these phases where I decide I really like an actor or actress and then I proceed to watch almost every movie they have ever been in.

I first did it with Ryan Gosling, now my favorite actor of all time. I had first seen him in Remember the Titans as the adorable Alan Bosley who loves country music. But, like what happens so often, he was a minor role and I didn't pay much attention to him. I next noticed him in the trailer for Murder by Numbers with Sandra Bullock, but I'm not a huge fan of scary movies so initially I did not see it. Then came The Notebook. I read the book first, and made my mom read it too so that she would go to the movie with me :o) It's a pretty sappy romance, but you cannot not fall in love with Noah Calhoun...especially when he is as gorgeous as Ryan Gosling :o) I then proceeded to add every movie he had ever done to my Netflix queue....

Side note: I have been a member of Netflix since the middle of my sophomore year of college (2003) and there are currently 221 movies/TV shows in my queue. I don't think it has been below 200 in several years because I just keep adding to it.

Now, aside from the random TV shows he did before Remember the Titans, I have seen every movie Ryan Gosling has ever made. Granted, that's only 10 movies, but still :o) Between Titans and the Notebook, he mostly played weird, sometimes slightly deranged characters, but he was always phenomenal. Titans, The Believer, Fracture and Lars and the Real Girl being my favorites. I liked Half Nelson, and definitely thought he deserved the Oscar nomination (I have not yet seen The Last King of Scotland, so I cannot say if he deserved to win) but it was a little too depressing for me to want to watch over and over...and over again, and that is pretty much how I determine my favorite movies. I did eventually see Murder by Numbers and it was good, as was The United States of Leland and Stay. The Slaughter Rule was just a little too weird for my taste. All of them are definitely worth seeing.

According to People.com, Ryan Gosling is now working on an album. The group is called Dead Man's Bones and I've only heard one song called "Name in Stone", but it sounds pretty good. The video is different, but I like it...

His next two movies coming out are:

All Good Things with Kirsten Dunst and Jeffrey Dean Morgan about "a detective that begins to unravel a missing-persons case that looks to spell doom -- and quite possibly death -- for the heir to a New York real estate dynasty." Not sure when it'll be released.

Blue Valentine with Michelle Williams about "a contempo married couple, charting their evolution over a span of years by cross-cutting between time periods." Out next year sometime.

I look forward to both, and many more of his movies hopefully, to come.

I do this because I feel like you cannot really say that you like or dislike an actor until you have compared his entire body of work. I definitely do not have time to do this with all actors - if i could somehow find a way to get paid to watch movies all day every day, it might be possible - but for now, I must be more picky about to whom I devote my time.

xoxo

c