Oscar Day

So I'm making some serious headway on being prepared for once for the Academy Awards.

Today, it being my day off, I went to the Elk Grove theatre and did an Oscar double-feature: Syriana and Memoirs of a Geisha. Geisha was really great, and it might even break my top 10 of the year. Visually it's just a pleasing film to watch, and the story was really wonderful, despite being possibly tragic. This was the longer of the two and actually went by faster for me. I could tell that Syriana was a good film, but it was far too political for me. I was able to follow the basic gist of what was happening, but ultimately I spent 2/3 of the movie not knowing who people were or what they were doing. Well-directed though.

So now if I go see Match Point and Walk the Line next week, I should be about as caught up as one would hope. For Good Night and Good Luck and A History of Violence I'll simply have to wait and Netflix them when they hit DVD in mid-March.

Netflix has been critical in my ability to catch up on movies. In addition to my viewing Crash, I've since watched Red Eye (quality thriller, Cillian Murphy rocks), The Island (vastly underrated sci-fi action flick; I loved it), and just recently Oldboy. A Korean film originally released in 2004, this hit the states just last year, therefore qualifies for my top ten movies list of 2005 which I'm currently prepping. It should be done in time for the Oscars, though as I said, the above mentioned films will have to be omitted for the time being.

But back to Oldboy. You guys know what kind of movies I like, and you know more or less what I've seen. Taking this into account, when I say that Oldboy is one of the most fucked up movies I've ever seen, you can understand the kind of weight that statement carries with it. But definitely a quality film which I'll probably ask for for my birthday; it's definitely, as Mark used to say (and a term I'm finding myself needing to use more and more), DVD-worthy.

Speaking of my birthday, it's in just under a month now. Hard to think I'll be 24. But not that hard. Regardless, I'm sure I'll put up some kind of birthday list here (or somewhere) eventually as well.

I've also started playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas finally. Originally I had wanted to beat GTA III and/or GTA Vice City first, but eventually I decided that'd be too tedious. And I'm glad I didn't wait. GTA:SA kicks a ton of ass. They seriously keep improving on the formula by leaps and bounds. Sad that I still kind of suck at the games though.

I think that's it for now. Time to go proposition the Kat.