Matt's Year End Movie List Is Stupid

Another year has come and gone. This being New Year's Eve, I thought that it would be good to have some sort of year in review post... but what to review? The thing I came up with was movies. So, here is my ranking of this year's movie crop.

In this list are movies that I saw that were released in 2005, not just movies I saw in 2005. So, I went through the list of 2005 movies on boxofficemojo.com and picked out the ones that I had saw. It turns out that I saw 18 movies that were released in 2005. I ranked those movies best to worst, and here they are:

1. Serenity - By far my favourite, and therefore best, movie of 2005. This movie was based off the short lived series "Firefly". I was shocked at myself for never even hearing of the series before hearing of the movie. This movie didn't make that much at the box office, as I think people were scared of the "based off a TV series I never saw" factor. However, you certainly didn't have to have seen the series to enjoy the movie... but it's definately better seeing the series first. I realized that, and ran out to the video store to rent the Firefly DVDs before I saw the movie. I finished them just in time to catch Serenity in it's last week playing at the Princess Twin. I like the series and movie so much that I immediately went out and bought the Firefly DVDs and then the Serenity DVD when it was released last week. Here's to hoping this story isn't done yet, but I'm not holding my breath.

2. The 40-Year Old Virgin - This year's funniest movie starred Steve Carrol, formerly of The Daily Show (funniest show on TV). I saw this movie twice in theatres and then received the DVD this Christmas. Do you know how I know you're gay? Because you haven't seen this movie yet.

3. Batman Begins - So very cool. Much better than the previous Batman movies. I loved how it was like a Batman backgrounder, describing how he became Batman and how he got all his cool stuff.

4. Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - I found this movie to be purely enjoyable. Of course, I never read the book beforehand, and had no idea what the story was about. I think that fact actually increased my enjoyment, as I had no idea where it was going next. I was totally caught up in the movie from start to finish.

5. The Wedding Crashers - This was on track to be the funniest movie, until the 40-Year Old Virgin showed up. It's pretty crude, but oh so funny.

Now, I'm getting tired of writing blurbs for all the movies, so I'm just going to list the rest of them in order.

6. Star Wars Episode III (Darth Vadar Cometh)
7. War Of The Worlds (Why I continue to really enjoy Tom Cruise movies is beyond me)
8. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory
9. Sin City
10. The Interpreter
11. Hitch
12. The Longest Yard
13. Mr. & Mrs. Smith
14. Constantine
15. Jarhead
16. Guess Who
17. The Dukes Of Hazzard
18. Kicking And Screaming

So, there's my ranking of the 2005 movies. Of course, the list didn't include movies I haven't seen yet but really want to. They include: The History of Violence, Rent, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Madagascar, The Chronicles of Narnia, March of the Penguins, The Brothers Grimm, and The Ringer.

In other news, I'm having a nice week and a half vacation in the tropical paradise of Bright's Grove, but alas, it ends soon. I hope everyone manages to have a good time on the most over-rated night of the year tonight. See you soon, and go see Serenity.

It Was A Good Day Today

First of all, I finished my Christmas shopping. HAHA... I win again Christmas, better luck next year!

In other news, my office chair busted last Friday. Well, actually it was over the course of the past year or so as it had been leaning a bit, but Friday was the day where I said it's leaning too much. I looked underneath and discovered that metal fatigue had taken it's toll, and it would give out at any time. So, for the last few days I've been using one of my cheap Ikea dining room chairs to work on... not cool. But tonight I went out and purchased a brand new office chair with a grant from my bosses. Boo-Yeah.

But the day seems to be winding down and it looks like I'm developing a sore throat.

Can't have it all.

Just Giving The People What They Want...

A curling update!

This past Thursday was week 2 of the 2nd mini-season, but it was our first game since we had a bye last week. Anyway, this game was against the team we had our huge comeback against, but this time roles were reversed. We went out to a huge 6-1 lead and the other team fought their way back. Fortunatly, we held on for a 6-5 victory. Thus, we are in a tie for first place with 2 wins (byes count as wins for some reason, but everyone gets one so it doesn't matter). Briar here we come!

The Wørd: Orchestra

It was an orchestral weekend for me. On Friday night, I went to Detroit with my mom, my dad, and Kiersten to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra at the Palace of Auburn Hills. For those who have no idea who they are or what they sound like, I usually describe them as a "Rock Orchestra". It seems to fit. My Dad, on the other hand, described them as "Heavy Metal and Rap". So, either will work. Anyway, the music was great, and the accompanying light show was awesome. The only drawback was the I had a giant beer right beforehand, and had to pee really bad right from the start. Sure, I tried to nip that in the bud by going to the bathroom five minutes before the show started, but the liquid just haden't worked it's way down yet. I would have gone during the "intermission" an hour and a half into it (which actually was when the lead guitarist spoke to the audience and introduced the band, so it wasn't really an intermission), but I mistook it for the end of the show and I didn't go at that time thinking the show would get out while I was in the bathroom and I'd have to fight my way back to get my coat, etc. Anyway, after the talk, there was another hour and a half of music. So despite the great show... it was kinda uncomfortable.

But then I came back to Waterloo on Saturday as I had tickets to go see the KW Symphony with Josh and Jessica. It was thier annual Christmas Pops concert. They played such hits as The Nutcracker, Carol of the Bells, Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring, and of course Sleigh Ride. Also, there was a singalong portion. So, good fun.

And then today, I officially kicked off my Christmas shopping for the year. Hmmm... early start this year.

Election Quotes #1

The honour of being the first to be made fun of for something said on the campain goes to...

It's a tie between Prime Minister Paul Martin, leader of the Liberal Party and Jack Layton, leader of the NDP. Here's why... In response to Stephen Harper's pledge to have no parallel private health care they said:

Paul Martin - "I believe in a Canada that values and protects it's universally publically funded healthcare system, so that healthcare requires a health card, not a credit card."

Jack Layton - "We want our healthcare system to be one that where it's your healthcare card that gets you the healthcare, not your credit card." (Bonus points to Mr. Layton for holding up a health card and credit card as props, just incase we didn't know what he was talking about)

So, not only do they both use bad cliches, apparently they hire the same writers for them. So thank you to Paul Martin and Jack Layton by saying absolutely nothing, using the most words possible and therefore insulting my intelligence.

PS - Don't take me picking on the Liberals and NDP as giving the Conservatives an easy time. I plan to give them all a ride.

Comeback City

Tonight was the last game of the first of three sets of curling... The first "mini-season", if you will. We needed to win this one to finish at .500, but it didn't look good. In fact, despite starting with the hammer we allowed the other team to steal two points in the first end, and then one point in the next 3 ends, which put us in a 5-0 deficit. But that's just where we wanted them! Starting a stirring comeback, we score 4 points in the fifth end, followed by a steal of 2, which put us up after 6 ends. The seventh end saw them only get one point with the hammer, and we put the final nail in the coffin with three points in the eighth and final end. Final score: 9-6. Quite a good feeling to finish strong like that. Although a .500 record will probably keep us in the B division for the next mini-season, I think we were all happy with our game. Besides not losing all our games, we were close in all our loses, save one.

Curling Rocks!

Finally, December 1st!

It's here! It's here! Finally, it's December 1st! You all know what that means. Well, even if you do, I'll tell you anyway. It's the day that Christmas music get put onto the music stations on digital cable and satellite. There should be three stations: Holiday Hits, Traditional Holiday, and Holiday Instrumentals. Well, I checked out my stations this morning, and it seems the labels have been changed on all the stations to indicate the Christmas music, but only one of them right now is actually playing Christmas music, and that's Traditional Holiday. But, they'll all be there soon, I hope. Isn't it exciting? No? Well, ok, so maybe I should think of better blogging ideas. There's always this...

There were these two horses, Ned and Ted... but you don't want me to go there.