that thing you (wanted to) do

there are many things we've wanted to do, only to put them on hold and never actually get around to them. when i was younger, this defined my unaccomplishable dreams list, which includes such things as:

1. travelling the world
2. writing my own novel (although in recent years i would settle for 'textbook', instead)
3. uninhibited, repercussion-free threeway
4. creating my own ice cream flavour
5. winning the Nobel Prize
6. uninhibited, repercussion-free threeway

so on and so forth. dramatics aside, some of the intents are more noble than others, and even since young i find those to be the less practical among the bunch. to re-visit this general theme, recently i started baby steps towards the final goal, if only to keep me away from the dark depression that has come to crowd most if not all of my waking hours not spent preoccupying myself with menial (which by others' definition would be fruitful) tasks. i digress.

i tried to watch some of the movies i had thought to be interesting but could not find the time to watch (or resource, as in london my interenet connection was the very definition of horribaddible). but in any case, i watched about 30 movies in the span of 3 months (which if you think about is only one every 3 days, and not that impressive). in any case, here are a select few movies that come to mind, and i would like to bring into focus so that those who enjoy similar taste to mine should not miss out on some great stuff.

speed racer. ok the monkey and little kid were just as annoying as they were in the anime i watched as a child. this is in itself a pro for nostalgic value, and a con as an unnecessary adaptation to the movie. that out of the way, it's an awesome movie. i cannot see why all the critics hated the hell out of it. it's. a. kid's. movie (/ anime adaptationn which was intended for kids anyway). sweet bose-einstein condensate jesus, why do you guys hate so much? i dunno. i guess it's one of those things which will appeal to a minority of the watchers, and if you happen to be one of these select (deficient) people, more power to you. if not, it's not a thoroughly horrible movie to sit through. i really recommend this for those who can leave their brains outside the cinema (or living room) for the movie's duration, and/or reminisc about the anime from younger days.

the namesake of an indian food, i find this a very odd title for a japanese anime pretaining to psychological disorders - paprika. this is not the most amazing anime i've seen, and it's not the most creative either. but it is a very very interesting subject (one which i used to take sincere interest in) and it's one of those thing i've just wanted to watch for a long long time and finally had the chance to. has this skewed my expectancy of the quality of the film? probably. has this made me forget the fact that it's not even groundbreaking animation (which is what i usually come to expect from annime genre movies, irrespective of the storyline)? pretty much. but i still kinda like it. i wouldn't actually recommend watching it, but if you have the time to spare, by all means.

i've probably mentioned this title before, and if i have not, then suffice to say, it is probably the best movie of all time from my personal point of view. requiem for a dream. i've watched it countless times, and i just wanted to watch it again to see if it was still as good as it was back then. it is. personally, i find it better than the shawshank redemption which many of my friends consider to be the best movie ever. better than star wars (as you may expect i am referring to the episodes IV, V and VI, and not episodes I, II and III). better than jurassic park, and (albeit only slightly) better than the LOTR trilogy (consider that i go nuts of dinosaurs and medieval fantasy. the only way to top this would be velociraptors in plate mail armor yelling 'YOU SHALL NOT PASS'). ok so if you looked up the best movies of all time, there would probably be the likes of casablanca and citizen kane, but those were before my time, and i'll add them to my 'to be viewed' list, but in the mean time, let's just go with this - requiem for a dream is one of my favourite (if not my definite favourite) movie ever.

on a side note, a couple of movies i also re-watched and thoroughly liked are: schindler's list, memoirs of a geisha, and transformers (not the cgi one, but the animated one from my childhood. super awesome). notice how optimus prime dies, again, in 'revenge of the fallen', which i refuse to even link because, considering it was targetted for a more mature audience, the storyline was crappy and thoroughly full of plotholes, and the only redeeming fact for me paying 10 bucks to watch it was that it was 3 hours long (even the fact that megan fox was in it did little to add to this). in any case, we should recycle more used ideas in cgi laden movies to make sure that old ideas which have been tried and tested will generate sufficient turnover that we don't need original thinking. why work more if you generate the same amount of money anyway? rabble rabble.

where was i. yes, more movies that i got around to watching. there was a romantic-comedy which i actually found pretty good. i cannot remember the title right now, but now that i think about it, there were quite a few that caught my attention over the summer. 27 dresses was alright (i watched this while waiting on a flight i think? can't remember), love actually was pretty funny, ummm. i can't remember the others. there was one with a blind guy but i can't remember what it was, and i don't think i finished the movie because my sister wanted to watch something else. there was one with cameron diaz and 2 other women and that was really funny. the sweetest thing. i actually had to do some research to find some of these links so you had better click on a few. yeah i can't remember anything else from this genre. don't get me wrong i like the occasional romantic movie but i just can't remember the titles. they're the kind of movies i watch and forget, as opposed to the ones i linked prior to this paragraph, which actually stuck :/ what can i say.

there's definitely a lot more movies i want to cite here but this is getting a bit long so i'll probably save them for a subsequent post.