Editing Home Movies

Home movies from when we were kids are always fun to watch. However, VHS isn’t the best format for preservation.

After watching the movie Super 8, my husband and I were talking about the movies we used to make as kids. A couple years ago, we had mostly gone through our VHS collection and transferred everything to DVD using our DVR. Wow, that’s a lot of initials for technology, isn’t it? Anyway, after watching Super 8 again, we both started getting a bit nostalgic about those old movies to the point where my husband actually started cataloging all the DVDs with which takes of each scene to use in the final versions of his movies. While I don’t have nearly the collection he has, I plan on doing the same with what I’ve got. 

Magic Mike

We went to the movies last night. I’ll give you a two word clue as to what it was.

My husband and I saw Magic Mike last night. It was kind of a date night for us which started with sushi, the movie, and then dessert at Red Robin where apparently a few others who had seen the movie were talking about it. Our server had seen it twice. She was awesome. The theater itself was pretty full, packed mostly with women, but there were also about a dozen guys including us who were there to watch the movie as well. I think it would be safe to say that half of those guys saw it because they wanted to and the other half looked like they were dragged by their girlfriends. The movie itself was entertaining, but I have to say the audience was better.

Productivity

Saying I’m going to be productive is the same as saying there is only a ten percent chance of rain here in the Northwest. It’s going to be jinxed.

Having goals is one thing, but stating, “This is what I’m going to accomplish today!” is another. When I have a goal, I usually have a goal date or time to complete it by and am usually pretty generous. Of course, I usually procrastinate until the last minute before starting the project and it turns into a horrendous nightmare and I vow never to make another cake for as long as I live! Okay, so perhaps I can be a little overdramatic when it comes to things like cake.

I’m hoping, however, that today will at least be productive. By that, I mean I have plans to clean the house, go grocery shopping, and work on a few sewing projects. Maybe I’ll throw in a load of laundry or two. If not, oh well. I tried. Okay, so knowing me I will end up not cleaning the house, watching a couple movies then throwing a load in the washer and trying to figure out a last minute meal for dinner.

Ratatouille

For some reason yesterday, I was in the mood to try something I’d never made before. I love those days.

Looking at the growing heap of zucchini, eggplant and Brandywine tomatoes from our garden, I wanted to do something with them. Then it hit me: Why not make Ratatouille? So I opened up my trusted Joy of Cooking cookbook to find out if I had everything else to make it, and sure enough, I did. Not only that, but there was a grilled recipe too. Me being me, I used the basic ingredient list and made it my own. All I can say is, damn, I’m that good.

Of course, since I was making ratatouille for dinner, I figured it would be fun to also watch Pixar’s Ratatouille as well with our oldest boy. I don’t know if he got the message about trying new foods and not eating garbage, but liked the movie nonetheless. He also, after managing to finally take a bit of the ratatouille, liked it as well. Funny that.

Cory’s Grilled Ratatouille

Preheat gas grill to medium to medium-high, or charcoal to medium hot coals.

Combine:

2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar

½ teaspoon kosher salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

Prepare:

1 head garlic

1 sweet onion, peeled and quartered

1 medium eggplant, sliced about ½ inch

1 medium to large zucchini, sliced about ½ inch

1 large or two small red bell peppers

1 Brandywine or 4 Roma tomatoes

When grill is ready, coat the vegetables in the olive oil balsamic vinegar mixture and place on the grill, leaving the garlic, bell pepper(s) and tomato(es) whole. For easier release, I always spray my surface with nonstick cooking spray. Grill vegetables until done, anywhere from five minutes for the zucchini to twenty minutes for the garlic. Let everything cool. Peel the tomato and remove seeds if necessary before roughly chopping. Remove the peel and seeds from the bell pepper and chop into bite sized pieces.

When garlic is cool enough to handle, combine in a large bowl:

1 head roasted garlic, squeezed and mashed with skins removed

2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/4 fresh chopped basil (or about 1 Tablespoon dried)

salt and pepper to taste

Combine all of the vegetables into the finishing sauce and let sit for a few minutes to an hour before serving. Serve at room temperature.

Outdoor Movies

The weather last night was perfect for watching an outdoor movie. That is just what we did.

Our church has an annual outdoor movie night in the summer as a way to do something fun and not church-related with the members. While these do not tend to be well attended, they are still fun nonetheless. In any event, it was thrilling that the weather cooperated and we could actually be out on the church’s labyrinth again. Of course, the bugs were out too.

This year we also decided to do hot dogs and chips and lemonade before the movie, which fortunately with the donations for the food covered our personal costs since we were the ones who purchased it. Actually it covered our costs with a dollar to spare. Whew!

I’m not sure what we are going to show next year or if we will even decide if the event is worth the effort, but I do know that it was great to be able to take the kids with us. Even though the movie didn’t start until after their bedtime! I’m not looking forward to finding out just how cranky they’ll be this morning for church.

Groundhog Day

I seriously thought about adding Sonny and Cher’s I Got You Babe to my partner’s iPod last night and setting the dock’s alarm clock function to play that song when it turned on. Alas, I don’t think it even has an alarm clock, or if so I couldn’t figure it out.

A tradition of ours on Groundhog Day is to watch none other than the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day. While we don’t always watch the movie exactly on the day, we do watch it within that week. This year will be another later-this-week viewing due to scheduling conflicts.

This all got me wondering how this whole fascination of an oversized rodent being able to see his shadow or not began. Most sources agree that here in the United States and Canada anyway, it’s a German custom started in the 18th century. However, the lore dates back much farther in European history where there are a multitude of traditions all on February 2nd quite related to the Groundhog tradition here. I can only suppose the German settlers in Pennsylvania brought a little bit of tradition with them when they made this their new home, and that makes sense.

So happy Groundhog day to everyone! And for all of you suffering from the crazy winter storms occurring right now, fear not! Punxsutawney Phil says that it’ll be an Early Spring!

Jobs, Movies and Birthdays

Today has a bunch of reasons to celebrate; it’s my first day back to work in nearly two years, Back to the Future Trilogy comes out today on Blu-ray, and it’s my partner’s birthday. I have a feeling the first two items will make the third that much better.

Okay, so first things first. I start my new job today and I’m a little nervous. I’m not so nervous about the job itself, I’m more nervous how being out of the workplace in general for so long will affect my performance. Of course, let’s be real here, my job is going to be sitting in a chair at a desk and talking on a phone. I’m not worried about that portion, but I am worried about how long it will take getting back into a work routine. I tried it ten months ago with this blog, making it daily to have a goal to accomplish each day, and so far haven’t missed one, including while out of town, so hopefully it will go by smoothly. After all, there is only one day of training involved.

Then there is the issue of our dog, who over the last couple years has gotten quite used to me being around all the time. Actually, I think she’ll adjust perfectly fine. Every time I’ve tried to play with her or get her to do anything she gives me a look like, “Really? You want me to get up off my ass and play?” But as soon as my partner comes home she’s all tail-waggy and jumpy and excited and wants to play… with him. Perhaps me being gone all day too will make her excited to see me when I get home. Perhaps.

Even though it is my partner’s birthday, he unfortunately has a very long day ahead of him. Between substitute teaching, helping with a school play that starts Thursday, and a special choir session tonight, he’ll be gone from 7am until 9pm. Not exactly the best way to spend a birthday, so I’m glad he had a great party on Saturday at least. Who knows… maybe I’ll surprise him with another birthday present.

Netflix, How I Love Thee

With my partner out of town for a week chaperoning a youth event in Montana (I know, lucky) I’ve been filling my evenings with movies. And thanks to Netflix we can stream movies through our Wii, since we already have three discs out that both of us want to watch.

We’ve known the joys of Netflix for a couple years now and it has made our movie purchases practically nonexistent. Working for the biggest retailer in the world I used to simply buy new releases we either wanted to watch or wanted to watch again and quickly that overwhelmed our office closet with DVDs. Eventually when the need for cash arose, aka, the layoff, we began the process of downsizing our collection, selling the movies we no longer wanted, some of which were still in their original shrink-wrap and packaging. Thank you Amazon Marketplace!

After careful deliberation we picked a plan that worked for us, which turned out to be three discs at a time, which is especially helpful during those television season and series marathons. However, with the Watch Instantly feature we had to hook up the laptop to the TV and stream that way… until recently. When Netflix created a disc for the Wii to stream movies through it we quickly ordered a copy. My partner and I have pretty similar tastes in movies, but I have to admit that I also enjoy some of the quirkier, darker and wittier independent movies, most of which he wouldn’t so much want to watch. Also while we both enjoy sci-fi flicks, I have a much broader appreciation of the genre beyond the box-office hits. And of course, growing up on horror films I still like to watch the occasional slasher movie. So what better time to view them than while he is out of town?

Let’s face it, I’m a movie geek. I love watching movies and when I was younger even had aspirations of becoming an actor, writer, producer and director of them. I enjoy well acted, well written, well directed and especially visually stunning cinematography. I’ve seen some pretty awful movies that failed in the first three things but was filmed so amazingly that everything else didn’t matter. Then again, I’m weird like that. And if I am watching a period piece, like, say, The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn and Olivia deHavilland and can clearly see a car drive by in the background, I’m okay with that because the movie as a whole is great. Of course, it doesn’t help that Patric Knowles as Will Scarlett was a hottie.

But alas, while my partner is away I shall enjoy my evening double features of weird and quirky independent movies he probably wouldn’t want to watch. Then again, of the four movies I’ve watched so far I think he’d like them all so I might have to watch them again with him.

Family Movie Night

While we don’t have any children of our own, we do have plenty of nieces and nephews, and I certainly have my fair share of brothers and sisters I was responsible for helping to raise. When it would be time to watch a movie, I never really paid attention to ratings, as growing up, family movie night meant Nightmare on Elm Street, Alien (and Aliens), Terminator (and Terminator 2), and pretty much what most would consider not appropriate for children 8 and under to be watching. So of this, I am certain: You can’t decide a movie’s watchability based on its rating; I am not qualified to judge a movie’s watchability based on the viewer.

A while back, we were watching our nephews, who were six and four at the time, and thought they’d like to watch Jaws. So being the cool uncles, we put the movie in and let them watch it, and they were completely enthralled by the shark. More than halfway through the movie, and well after *** SPOILER ALERT!!!*** Alex gets eaten by the Great White, the older nephew keeps asking, “When are they going to save Alex?” and when they get on the boat to go attack the shark answered himself, “Oh! Now they’re going to save Alex!” His little brother, Jericho, only four at the time mind you, gives him an incredulous look and informs him, “Alex is dead, Elijah, the shark at him.” Now, Elijah had to think about this for a second, and in his logic, asked, “Then why are they going to find the shark if they aren’t going to save Alex?” to which Jericho responded, after rolling his eyes (and this is no lie), “To kill the shark,” before turning back to the TV to finish watching the movie. Watching Elijah get all teary eyed, I thought to myself that I’d have to reassure him that the possibility of him getting eaten by a shark were quite low, and at the most he’d lose a limb, but fortunately the animatronics shark showed back up on the screen, and his eyes were once again glued to the TV.

I mean, I should have known that I didn’t have the ability to judge a movie’s appropriateness for the audience when my mother and I decided that Candyman would be an excellent choice for my sisters combined birthday party sleepover, filled with over a dozen seven to ten year old girls. Or maybe when my little sister and I decided our ten year old brother was old enough to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show, since that was how old she was when she first watched it. And it doesn’t seem to stop at movies, as when my other sister showed up and we were watching Queer as Folk and she blurted out, “I didn’t know two guys could do it like that!”

No, I don’t think we have had good judgment on the matter of what kids are able to not only comprehend, but also understand that a movie is only fiction, and not real. Although, I do have to say, my little brother and cousin watching The Blair Witch Project were totally convinced it was real, and I played up their inattentiveness by saying that we could go to those woods as they were only fifteen minutes away. Yes, I have a bit of an evil sadistic streak in me, but I think we have gotten to a place in our lives where we can be better judges of what is appropriate and not for kids to be viewing. Of course, there is still a part of me that wants to watch Pan’s Labyrinth or Grave of the Fireflies with the little ones.