The Movies of 2011

Since I wrote a blog post for the books I read in 2011, I figured I should give the movies I watched the same courtesy. It kind of amazes me how much entertainment I consume throughout a year. I also like seeing which movies I watched multiple times. I'll definitely do this again for 2012. I'm looking forward to comparing the numbers.


MOVIES

1. The King's Speech x2 (This movie is AMAZING. Everyone needs to go see it.)
2. The Karate Kid
3. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Hilariously awful, but Jake Gyllenhaal is hot so it was worth a watch.)
4. Rear Window (I love me some Jimmy Stewart!)
5. Inception x2
6. Practical Magic
7. Easy A x2 (so much funnier than I expected)
8. The Switch (I loved this movie. I thought it was adorable. I just might have to buy it.)
9. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World x3
10. Whip It
11. Despicable Me
12. Unstoppable
13. Doubt
14. Morning Glory 
15. Arsenic and Old Lace
16. Sweet Home Alabama
17. To Kill a Mockingbird (Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch is fantastic.) 
18. The Hudsucker Proxy (You know...for kids!)
19. Driving Lessons (Kind of a weird movie, but Rupert Grint is adorable.)
20. True Grit 
21. Get Smart 
22. That Thing You Do (I got the extended version from Netflix, and it was super fun.)
23. 500 Days of Summer 
24. Thor
25. Equilibrium 
26. The Village 
27. Newsies 
28. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian 
29. Star Trek 
30. No Country for Old Men (The book was scarier than the movie. But the movie was still good.) 
31. Red (Awesome, awesome movie. I need to own it.) 
32. Two Weeks Notice 
33. Super 8 x2 (Quite a good show. I would recommend it.) 
34. The Incredibles
35. Rescue Dawn
36. Dumb and Dumber (Believe it or not, this was the first time I had watched this movie. And yes, I thought it was funny.)
37. Speed (This movie was way cooler when I was 12.) 
38. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (So. effing. good.)
39. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
40. Windtalkers
41. The Social Network
42. Finding Neverland (I always seem to forget how absolutely perfect this movie is. It is phenomenal, and I love it so, so much.)
43. The A-Team
44. While You Were Sleeping x2
45. Cowboys & Aliens (So much better than I expected.)
46. Wild Target
47. Source Code
48. The Pacifier
49. She's the Man
50. Tangled
51. Hitch
52. Public Enemies
53. G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra (This movie is TERRIBLE. Absolutely terrible. That is two hours of my life that I will never get back.)
54. The Best Two Years 
55. Tron: Legacy
56. Captain America
57. The Lion King (Still as good as it was when I was eight.)
58. Young Frankenstein (A must for Halloween.)
59. What Lies Beneath
60. Warrior (This movie is kind of amazing. I absolutely loved it.)
61. The Joseph Smith movie x2 (I cannot watch this without crying. It isn't possible.)
62. The Dark Knight
63. It's a Wonderful Life
64. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows x2
65. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
66. Return to Me
67. Hard Day's Night

TV SHOWS

1. 24 Season 1
2. Bones Season 5
3. 24 Season 2
4. 24 Season 3
5. That 70s Show Season 1
6. Veronica Mars Season 1
7. Veronica Mars Season 2
8. Veronica Mars Season 3
9. Scrubs Season 1
10. Alias Season 1 
11. Alias Season 2 (The cliffhangers in this show are going to kill me. Seriously.)
12. Alias Season 3 
13. Community Season 2 (I watched it live, so it wasn't all this year, but I figured I'd include it.) 
14. Alias Season 4  
15. Bones Season 6 (Watched live. Oh my gosh, that ending!) 
16. Alias Season 5 (Finally! It felt like this series took forever to finish.) 
17. Glee Season 2 (Watched live.) 
18. Scrubs Season 2 
19. Scrubs Season 3
20. Scrubs Season 4
21. Harper's Island (13 episodes of complete ridiculousness. 32 people die. Gruesome, but somehow also incredibly entertaining.)
22. Scrubs Season 5
23. So You Think You Can Dance Season 8 (watched live)
24. Friday Night Lights Season 1 (This show is totally awesome.)
25. Friday Night Lights Season 2 (I am completely in love with this show. It is absolutely amazing.)
26. Friday Night Lights Season 3
27. Friday Night Lights Season 4
28. The Walking Dead Season 1 (Zombies everywhere!)
29. Friday Night Lights Season 5 (I think this is my favorite TV show ever. I don't know anything that can beat it.)
30. Firefly, including the movie Serenity (I can definitely see why this has such a cult following.)

A Promise

I need to blog more. I know that. It's been over a month, and I know of at least one person who is missing my posts. (I'm really hoping it's more than one, but I'll take what I can get.)

Here's the dealio: every time I have time to write a blog post, I am suddenly not in the mood to finish any of the 15 or so drafts I currently have saved. I have plenty of material and absolutely no desire. Maybe this is because I have been very tired lately. Or maybe it's because I've spent way too much of my free time reading about the upcoming football season. Or maybe it's the new TV shows I've gotten myself addicted to (namely Mad Men and Friday Night Lights). These are the things that have also kept me from doing important things like reading my book and writing in my journal.

Whatever the reason, I haven't blogged, and this is me making a promise: In the next week, I will publish a real, legitimate blog post. I don't know which draft I will finish yet, but I will choose one and I will post it. If I don't, anyone who really does pay attention to me and my random blog can feel free to berate me for being a liar.

Give up the world, give up your life, cuz you cannot fight the television!

I have to stop getting addicted to TV shows! Especially when they're old shows that are already completed so I can spend as much time as I want watching episode after episode. After episode.

The current culprit is Alias. I never watched it when it aired, and when I started working at KLAS, I started hearing about it. Two years later, Karly, Angie, and Jenifer have successfully convinced me to start watching it, which was made easier when Karly handed me all five seasons. (Yes, five. Yes, that is definitely a bad thing.)

I started watching mostly out of curiosity, and I wasn't super sucked in. I watched a couple of episodes here and there, and it was entertaining enough that I kept watching, but I wasn't dying to know what happened next. Until Will Tippin got more involved, and then I was hooked, because Will was pretty much my favorite character. Because he's a stud, and Bradley Cooper is hot. (Nerdy hot, no less. How they managed that is beyond me.)

And then I finished season one and moved on to season two, and I was a goner. Irina Derevko working with the CIA? Double Francie? Will knows all about Sydney? Sark everywhere? Sloane being more manipulative than ever? Vaughn and Sydney (finally)? And then, of course, there was the whole Hong Kong ending and that damn ring on Vaughn's finger. (Don't even get me started on Lauren. Ugh. And no, that paragraph isn't supposed to make sense. Unless you've seen Alias. Then you'll completely understand.) Season two basically did it for me, and now I'm stuck.

Here's yet one other reason I keep watching:

*drool*

To quote Karly, Michael Vartan could be my handler any day.

And is it weird that I kind of really like Sark? I know he's a terrible awful person (especially with that whole Lauren fling, yuck), but he's kind of endearing. As much as I like him, I'm waiting to see when he'll finally get shot in the face. I don't know how he's avoided it so far.

And then there's always the comedic relief. Weiss is freaking awesome. "This is why people at the CIA and NSC don't get married. You don't poop where you sleep." I love him.

Remember that time I wondered how long I could last without an obsession? Well, now I know. It's about a month.

My life is officially mine again.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I have a tendency to get really into things (hence the section in the sidebar for my current obsession). These things generally take over my brain and occupy 80 percent of my thoughts. Sometimes I honestly wonder if I have a little OCD, which is what causes me to think about things so much.

In addition to my five month long BYU basketball obsession, the past few weeks I got seriously addicted to "Veronica Mars." It's a stupid (yet ridiculously awesome) TV show from a few years ago, featuring Kristen Bell as a teenage, amateur private eye. It's awesome, and I loved every second of it. I spent three weeks straight watching as many episodes as my free time would allow. I finished the third and final season in three days. (In my defense, there were only 20 episodes. But that's not really much of a defense.)

Well, on Tuesday night, I stayed up way too late and finished the incredibly unsatisfying third season. The series was canceled for who knows why, so it ends on a cliffhanger and Logan and Veronica don't get back together. Lame. And yesterday, the Cougars ended this insanely awesome season with a disappointing loss to Florida in the Sweet Sixteen.

And now my life is mine again. I currently have no obsessions, and it feels a little strange, I must admit. We'll see how long it lasts.

I'm gonna need a hacksaw.

Day 14: A TV show you're currently addicted to.

I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but I completely missed out on the 24 craze back when it was still on TV. Though, in a way, I'm glad I didn't discover it until I randomly decided to add the series to my Netflix instant queue. I can now watch it whenever I want to watch it, and I don't have to wait a week between episodes (though this can also be considered a bad thing, such as when I watch six episodes in a row, and when I consider that I'm only on season two and I have six more seasons to go).

24 pretty much hijacked my life last week. I watched seventeen episodes in about six days. If I hadn't been so busy yesterday, I probably would have watched a few more. I mean, I have to finish season two this week, right?

Basically, Jack Bauer is ridiculously badass, which makes him ridiculously sexy. It's interesting—I don't think Kiefer Sutherland is a particularly attractive man (I generally prefer brunettes), but as Jack Bauer, the man is HOT. I think it has something to do with the way he just takes over a situation and does what he has to to fix things—it's so manly. (I have a thing for super masculine men. I couldn't go for a femmy guy—it's so not attractive.)

I just like watching Jack Bauer kick some major ass, that's all.

This is why I can't find new TV shows

A couple of weeks ago, I signed up for a free month trial of Netflix so I could try out the instant streaming on my blu-ray player, which probably wasn't the wisest decision. Now that I have experienced the wonders of instant streaming, I'm not going to be able to say goodbye to it. I'm stuck paying that monthly fee now. Crap.

The other problem with instant streaming is that I have become completely addicted to another TV show. I guess it's not a terrible thing, since my last major obsession ended last year. There is no more "Lost" to fill my TV needs. But much to my joy, the first four seasons of "Bones" were on instant play on Netflix! I had watched a few episodes and I liked the show, but I hadn't allowed myself to get addicted. Until now.

Cora and I routinely watch at least two episodes a night. Our current record is seven episodes in a day. (Which, by the way, included going to church, taking naps, going to ward prayer, and playing games with a group of friends. That, my friends, is pretty impressive.) The show is ridiculously addicting. It's got a great mix of drama and comedy. They manage to crack jokes while looking at a mangled skeleton. I'm not sure how the writers pull it off, but they definitely succeed.

And besides the fact that the show is really funny (and also kind of creepy at times...pathological killers freak me out), Seeley Booth is friggin' hot. I don't care if this makes me sound like a teenager. I mean, look at him:

That's all the evidence needed. Plus, his character is fantastically attractive. And wears good jeans. Booth has fast become my favorite male TV character.

Basically, I'm completely addicted. I'm super excited for the new season to start next week. All I have to say is that if Booth and Bones don't get together in the first freaking episode, I'm going to be angry. They've dragged it out long enough. In the meantime, though, I'll satisfy my cravings by continuing to make my way through the first five seasons. Netflix instant streaming is pretty much the best/worst thing ever.

Spending Money

This is slightly old news, but I haven't blogged about it yet, and I thought I would rectify that situation.
So I've been wanting to get myself a TV for a while now. I figured I might as well own one, seeing as how I've got a decent movie collection that is always growing and a Wii with some awesome games. It was kind of dumb that I was completely dependent on my roommates as to whether or not I could actually play the Wii. The only problem with this was that I didn't want just any TV; I wanted a nice one. Which, unfortunately, is expensive.

But about a month ago, I found a pretty decent deal on a 40" TV at Walmart. And I was a little impulsive and bought it.

It's pretty sweet—I like it a lot. It goes up to 1080p, so I was pretty stoked about that.

After this purchase, I realized that I didn't have a DVD player, which was a problem, what with my aforementioned movie collection. Again, I ran into the I-want-the-best-in-my-electronics syndrome, so I started looking around for a decently priced Blu-Ray player. Because let's be honest, Blu-Rays look pretty dang awesome. And . . . I found a refurbished Samsung for a pretty awesome price.

I thought I would have major buyer's remorse after these two pretty major purchases, but I was fortunately mistaken. I freaking love these things. That might make me materialistic or addicted to entertainment, but I kind of don't care, and I don't regret spending all of that money.

Except that now I have to be all adult and exercise self-restraint for a little while. How lame.

I just might have an aneurysm

from how incredibly excited I am that LOST is starting again tonight. Does this make me a nerd? Yes. Will I annoy people throughout the course of the sixth and final season? Yes. Will this stop me from geeking out about it? No.

(This picture intrigues me, since it's a representation of da Vinci's The Last Supper. Though I must admit that the fact that John Locke is in Jesus' position kind of freaks me out.)

Finally!

Anyone who really knows me knows that I'm obsessed with LOST. It's pretty much the most addicting TV show I have ever watched. I absolutely love it. It's one of those shows that I think about and talk about the entire week after a new episode, because there is so much to look for and so much to pay attention to. I've watched the first four seasons twice now (and will watch season five again once the package arrives), and I still miss things. It is just that intricate. And the final season, season six, starts on February 2nd. Only 33 days away, after over 8 months of waiting. What happened after Juliet detonated the bomb? Will they still be on the island? Will they reset everything that happened after the crash? Will someone finally learn sense and shoot Ben in the face? What the crap is up with the four-toed statue? What exactly do 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 have to do with the island? Where is Claire? And why is Christian Shephard all buddy buddy with Jacob when he's supposed to be dead? So many questions! And only 33 more days until they start getting answered. Finally. I can't wait.

Thanks Day Twenty-Three

This is kind of a random one, but sometimes, I am thankful for TV. I've had a mega uber stressful week(ish), and being able to just plop down in front of the TV and forget about things for a little while is so great. Sometimes I just need to be distracted from life, and TV is a great resource for that, as long as I don't watch too much of it.