Watching Citizen Kane in A Movie Palace

I'd never seen the movie "Citizen Kane" before this month.

Somehow the idea had gotten into my head that the first time I saw Kane should be not on video but in a theater. And somehow I stuck to that idea from whenever it first came to me, probably in college, up to the present. I think I'd had a few chances to see Kane on a big screen which hadn't worked out in the intervening years. Finally, I set aside time to go see it at the Ohio Theatre as part of CAPA's Summer Movie Series. Not even car trouble kept me from finally getting to go see Orson Welles' famous movie.

Before the movie, at intermission, and after the movie there was live organ music. The Ohio Theatre's organ is bright white (bright enough to make taking a photo of it with my phone difficult) and it raises and lowers into the orchestra pit. I remember, as a child, finding that fascinating and disturbing. (Even the phrase "orchestra pit" suggested something that was more suited for Indiana Jones than musicians to my young mind.)

Bonus Tuesday Post - Other Lists of Favorite Movies

I was talking with someone on Twitter earlier today about favorite/top movie lists and mentioned that I had made a list of my favorite dozen movies of 2000-2009 a while back. He asked if it was available to read somewhere, but it's buried in Facebook notes.

Since there was some interest in my 2011 movie lists (part one, #10-6 and part two, #5-1) I figured I'd go ahead and make this available for everyone to read.

A couple of prefatory points:

1. I don't see that many movies. So if you look at these lists and say "Hey, why isn't such-and-such movie on the list?" it may very well be because I never saw it.
2. I'm copying-and-pasting the text straight out of the Facebook notes, as written in late 2009 (films 12-5) and early 2010 (films 4-1).

Now, for the lists...

Top 10 Films of 2011 (#1-5) & #writemotivation Weekly Wrapup

Last week I posted the bottom half of my list of my 10 favorite films that I saw for the first time last year. Note that these are films from all years -- I've only seen nine 2011 releases, so I literally couldn't make a Top 10 list for 2011 itself! These are all films that I could recommend with few or no reservations.

5) Murder He Says (1945) - Fred MacMurray stars in a wild comedy about a pollster with the Trotter poll service who stumbles into a mess when he comes across a dangerous rural family while looking for a missing coworker. Nonsense rhymes, missing money, and more.

4) The Uninvited (1944) - Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey star as brother and sister who movie into a seaside house only to discover that there's a reason it was for sale. This is a fantastic haunted house movie with one of my favorite visual effects from all of the movies I watched this year. (It involves a flower sitting on a table.)

3) True Grit (2010) - The Coen Brothers create a new adaptation of Charles Portis' novel starring Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld and Matt Damon. I've still not seen the John Wayne original, so I can't compare the two adaptations, but this one was a well-made movie with a lot of humor and great performances.

2) Dial M For Murder (1954) - Ray Milland shows up twice in my top five for 2011. In this Alfred Hitchcock thriller, he shares the screen with Grace Kelly. Something I didn't realize until putting together this list was that this film was originally intended to be released in 3-D!

1) Kuroneko (1968) - The film center at OSU showed a double-bill of two Kaneto Shindo movies one night this summer. The first was Onibaba, which I'd heard of before. The second was Kuroneko, based in part on Japanese legends of ghosts of wronged people. And like with the double-bill of Malick movies I mentioned last week, the film I was primarily interested in ended up being my second favorite. I was very glad when a Criterion DVD of this was released late last year. I need to make some time soon to re-watch this, my favorite of the 67 movies I watched for the first time in 2011.

In January, as part of the #writemotivation project, I'll be blogging every Monday about how things are going with my writing goals. Here's how things are looking so far, about 1/2 of the way through the month.

Top 10 Films of 2011 (#6-10) & #writemotivation Weekly Wrapup

In the first part of 2011, before I got back into writing regularly, I was watching a lot of movies. I was also keeping track of what I had watched and making brief notes about most of them on Facebook and on the forums of a movie review site I like. I saw 67 movies for the first time in 2011, 66 of them between January and August.

For fun, I put together a list of my 10 favorite films that I saw for the first time last year. Note that these are films from all years -- I've only seen nine 2011 releases, so I literally couldn't make a Top 10 list for 2011 itself!

These were all films that I could recommend with few or no reservations. I'll list five of the movies today and five another day soon.

10) Heaven Can Wait (1943) - Don Ameche, Gene Tierney, and Charles Coburn star in this Ernst Lubitsch-directed movie about a man (Ameche) who has died and is expecting to end up in Hell, recounting the experiences of his life.

9) I Married a Witch (1942) - Fredric March, Susan Hayward, and Veronica Lake star in this amusing Rene Clair-directed adaptation of the novel by fantasist Thorne Smith. Two Salem-era witches get loosed in 1940s America and tamper with the life of an young politician.

8) Le Million (1931) - French musical comedy about a lottery ticket in the pocket of a missing jacket. Tons of fun.

7) Source Code (2011) - It may not be great science fiction -- the central premise is borderline-ridiculous -- but it's a great thriller which also has cool science fiction trappings. I rewatched this one with my daughters a couple of weeks ago and was pleased to see that I still enjoyed it on a second viewing.

6) Days of Heaven (1978) - Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, and Sam Shepard star in this Terrence Malick movie. The film center at OSU showed a double-bill of this and Badlands one night this summer. I had expected to be more interested in Badlands, but found Days of Heaven to be the more satisfying of the two. Gorgeous visuals throughout, good sound work, and a good score all helped make this one of my favorite movies of 2011.

In January, as part of the #writemotivation project, I'll be blogging every Monday about how things are going with my writing goals. Here's how things are looking so far, about 1/4 of the way through the month.

1) Spend time in the first half of January analyzing my first draft of "Adrift" and time in the second half of January planning the second draft. - Oof. A big "fail" on this one so far. I haven't even opened up the documents. Ultimately, I'm not going to nipick on the whole "first half"/"second half" of the month thing, but I suspect there's a fair chance at this point that I'm not going to meet this goal unless I radically change my current writing routine.

2) Write 25,000 words of new fiction including at least one new short story. - This is going reasonably well. I'm on my netbook, so don't have my spreadsheet, but I know I'm right around 5000 words as of last night (the 8th). It's close to on-pace for my overall 2012 goal of 250,000 words. And it's really only one good day of writing off page for the monthly goal. But it's also absorbing a lot of my writing time, which is at least part of the problem with meeting goal #1. I've completed two new short stories, so that part of the "Write 1/Sub 1" monthly goal has been met.

3) Keep all my writing routines -- Seinfeld Chain, blogging schedule, etc. - No problems at all here so far. I'm considering making some changes to my blogging schedule, but those will be announced in advance and probably won't appear until February.

4) On 1/31, have one non-time-sensitive blog post written and ready for future use on a day when I'm not able to post something "new." - I've started on this, but don't have a full post sitting aside yet.

5) Submit one or more short stories for the first time this month. - Done. So I've completed the entire "Write 1/Sub 1" goal for the month.