Movie night: Cinderella (+ a lot of Elementary)

Julia was driving, I was in charge of the music (took full advantage of that fact and chose 'hits from 1998') and Hanna (blue hat) fell asleep in the back seat. We arrived at 6 pm and the sun still hadn't set! 

Cinderella was much better than we'd thought (it only got two stars in our local paper) and I have to say it's my favorite fairytale retelling to date. 

The rest of the weekend was spent re-watching season one of Elementary, eating blood oranges and doodling dinosaurs in top hats.  

Action, slow motion and explosions - oh, my!

I've watched 65 movies in 2015 (so far). I've never counted before and doing so made me realize that I have a really predictable taste. To be fair though - this chart only applies to what movies I'll want to re-watch a 1000 times (I have liked the occasional thriller or sci-fi too):

Just give me a slow motion musical with romance and a bit of explosive fight scenes and I'll love it forever!

Change comes slowly (if it comes at all)

Since I've been trying to do better this year, I thought I'd review my progress so far:

* I wanted to watch "less but better" which I've sort of been doing:
Since January 1th I've watched 64 movies - which is a lot. But I've gone with my mood for once, which has meant about 60% re-watching (instead of starting 10 movies at the same time 'so I can watch THEM ALL!') and I haven't gotten stuck watching one over and over again either. (I'm sadly not exaggerating if I say that there was a time when I watched Singin' in the rain for a week straight and hallucinated that Gene Kelly was my husband) Lastly, I've also made it a priority to watch movies with the people I love - instead of just watching stuff on my own. 

* I wanted to buy less and clean out my movie collection which I have:
I have cleaned it out - from 111 to 45 movies and I haven't bought a single one this year! (enormous progress) Instead I've borrowed movies from my family/watched stuff using Cmore and Viaplay. 

My two other goals involve doing more stuff like this. And so naturally I haven't made ANY progress yet.

In the (bad) spotlight: February

February was (unintentionally) "bad movie month" for me. Here are my least favorite ones, IN order:

1. Dracula untold 
I can't even describe how excited I was to watch this movie! I knew it would be bad, from watching the trailer, but I thought it would be "slow-motion-fighting-with-explosions-and-one-liners"-bad. The
kind of bad that I love, because it's a total escape from reality. Imagine my disappointment when the movie was taken more seriously on the surface, than I had though (i.e no explosions) but instead was full of plot holes, horrible female characters and the worst ending I've seen in a long time. An ending that had nothing to do with the Dracula you'd come to know throughout the movie. Can I rate it in sad faces? It gets 5!

2. Left behind
This is a movie where NOTHING happens. Very. Slowly. The trailer tries to make it look like it's filled with action, but it's not. Also, it really angers me when a story centers around a religion, in order to scare the viewer into thinking a certain way. 5 sad faces! 

3. The taking of Pelham 123
The ending was too quick - especially with that build-up! And Denzel Washington turned out to be more human than hero. It made me want to poke him very hard in the eyeballs! 3 sad faces.

Ambition for: March

Do I even have a goal for March? I'm not feeling too hot at the moment (life stuff) and spring is sort of "springing" really early here in Sweden, so who knows if I'll even make time to watch that many movies this month? 

If I feel like it:

* Exodus: Gods and Kings
* The Shawshank Redemption/Godfather (me and my sister Julia are planning to watch classics, that we've never watched before)
* Cinderella - in the cinema
* Elementary, season 1 (re-watch)

Best wishes,
The woman who does little else, but likes to kid herself that she actually does

What is happening? Last month, we had like 1,6 feet of snow in one day..

Excited, like a mad woman

Love, Rosie
DVD release: 2nd of March in Sweden
Knowing myself, I'll rent it and then never watch it. Until like 2016.. BOOM! I'm gonna be all over it and wonder how I could ever rent-but-not-watch it.. 

The Judge 
DVD release: 16th of March in Sweden
I'm a very actor-oriented viewer - if I like someone and it looks like my cup of tea (i.e not sci-fi/horror/black comedy/American Pie).. I'll want to watch it! And I like Robert Downey Jr.  

Dumb and Dumber To 
DVD release: 16th of March in Sweden
I have a thing for sequels (if they feel like a good idea) and I'll watch them religiously. I'm so excited to see what happened to Harry and Lloyd!   

Exodus: Gods and Kings 
DVD release: 4th of May in Sweden
I just wanna re-watch the heck out of this! (Meaning I want to watch all the action scenes and interactions between Christan Bale and Joel Edgerton over and over, like a mad woman)

Kingsman: The Secret Service 
DVD release: 15th of June in Sweden
I'm gonna trust my sister Sara again, because she's been raving about this! And I'm very intrigued to see Colin Firth involved in some action, for once.

Fyi, this is what that looks like..

Happy face/sad face

My thoughts from the 2015 Oscars (with the aid of my most used emoticons):

:D "Yaay, J.K Simmons!"

:/ "I know What's eating Gilbert Grape came out in 1993, but I don't care! I'm good with giving Leonardo Di Caprio one for Arnie Grape this year.."

:( "It's all subjective really. And it definitely depends on how you look at things! There's no need to issue threats to Swedish presenters, just because they aren't 'experts enough'!"

:S "Geez, John Travolta.."

<3 "Iiiih! Whiplash! And The Grand Budapest Hotel!"

 Can't they make a "throwback Oscar" happen?

Movie night: Fifty shades of Grey

I did better than I thought I was gonna do! My sister Sara was peeking through her fingers for the majority of the film, but I only closed my eyes twice. It wasn't great - but it wasn't awful either. The dialog was really horrible ("I don't make love, I fuck. Hard!") but the actors took it seriously and that helped. I'd say that it was very much like watching a movie made from a Harlequin book.. and that's essentially what it was! 

When I drove home (without feeling tired at all), we had a long discussion about obsession and being able to focus on other things in life, besides your partner. Anastasia wasn't and I think that that really was why Sara closed her eyes as much as she did..

My niece-to-be was in the car with us too, which helped me stay awake!

Reminding myself, before The Oscars..

Elin, this is what YOU need for a movie to be great (lack of awards shouldn't matter):

1. It speaks to you on an emotional level - You empathize with a character/have been through the same thing/You feel strongly for the main character (You're fond of underdogs)/You learn to see things in a new way etc.

2. It has believable and committed acting (kissing and crying are real tell-tale signs for you..).

3. You've been thoroughly entertained! 

4. It sets a good pace and keeps it, with no gaps in the story and no clues left unanswered.

5. It has a dept if you want to look for it, but it can also be watched solely for entertainment purposes (Take Lord of the rings: Fellowship of the ring, for instance - it's a really entertaining story but when you want to, you ponder the fact that humans are week and vulnerable and not capable of saving the world. They need to be better; evolve. Into sort-of humans (Hobbits).

6. It's esthetically pleasing (slow motion shots are a plus for you).

Ambition for: February

Since I've cleaned out my movie collection, I feel like re-watching them this month. I won't get through all 45 of them, though, but I'll start (I've organized them in alphabetical order, so I'll just watch "300" first and see how far I get).

Other than that, I really want to watch:

* Dracula untold 
* Australia (my sister Sara's been begging me)
* The usual suspects (a re-watch, but I've forgotten almost everything)

And I really look forward to watching 50 shades of Grey with my sisters on the 13th. I just know we'll bond over how uncomfortable it'll be to watch that movie in the cinema - it looks like it's gonna be crowded too!