Million Dollar Baby (2004)

The 77th Academy Awards (2005)
Nominations: 7
Wins: 4

The 2000s was when I became an Oscar fan. Yeah, I know, the Oscars suck. Most of the time it’s just a bunch of Hollywood Elites patting themselves on the back and awarding the best run campaigns (not movies). But it’s also a celebration of movies. Those are like my favorite thing. So much so that in 2006 I watched every Best Picture Nominee. This is a tradition I have carried on every year since then. I still haven’t seen every nominee between 2000 and 2004 but I’m getting there. What’s odd is that it took me this long to watch Million Dollar Baby. The last Best Picture Winner of the 2000s I hadn’t seen.

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I know there are more pressing things going on than Rolling Stone’s new edition of the 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time being released last week, while things are also on the verge of getting a whole lot spookier on this blog. Still, I feel compelled to share some thoughts on this new edition of the RS 500 list, since this new list is quite an overhaul of the original one that was published in 2003 (there was also a slight update to the list in 2012). I’m not sure that Rolling Stone necessarily needed to publish an updated version, since it’s already become apparent that contemporary tastes in “great albums” have changed considerably since the 2003 list came out, whether or not there was a list to confirm it. But I’m glad they did, as the new list both preserves what was good about the original 500 while also adding plenty more albums that feel much more applicable to today’s music landscape. Continue reading →

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is another Criterion Month film that proves that sometimes it’s best to go into these types of movies knowing as little possible. While I was well aware that the film was critically acclaimed upon its release — most prominently by A.O. Scott and the Cannes Film Festival — I was less aware of why it was acclaimed. Considering it was a movie about abortion during the final days of communism’s grip over Eastern Europe, I was expecting it to be fairly grim and harrowing. Though I would say it is those things to an extent, I wasn’t expecting it to also be thrilling and genuinely suspenseful in a way that ended Criterion Month on an exciting note for me, rather than on a sad whimper. Continue reading →

We’re down to the top twenty and you know what I just realized? I forgot Attack the Block. All this recent news about Joe Cornish wanting to make a sequel with John Boyega and I totally spaced (no pun intended) on that film. I used Letterboxd to put together my list and apparently they don’t consider that film horror. I do. Then again that’s been the struggle.

What is a horror movie? I’m almost done with this list and I still don’t know. Maybe I’ll know next week when I finish this whole experiment? Also, I forgot Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers. Fuck!

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Here we are, the final week of May and the final installment of my quarantine diaries. I’m not sure if I learned much during these past few months while writing these, other than that during difficult times it’s nice to have art and entertainment that can offer you some level of comfort. I suppose I also learned that even if the entertainment industry shuts down the way it has recently, there’s still enough content out there to keep you satisfied until the end of time. Like, it’s a little weird that there’ve barely been any notable movies to get released this year, and yet I’ve had a rewarding enough time revisiting older movies these past few months that I’ve barely been affected. Still, as we transition out of this period, it will be nice to go to movies and concerts again, though let’s hope the venues for these communal experiences will even be able to survive.

So yeah, things are a little grim and the future is quite uncertain, but for now, here’s the last bunch of things that have been getting me through quarantine. Continue reading →