Saturday, February 2, 2013

I’m Not a Non-Conformist but I Play One on the Internet

For a long while now I’ve been following the blog Chick Lit Is Not Dead. A year or so ago I even sent them a print copy of Ripple the Twine to see if it would be something they’d be interested in reviewing – slash – featuring on their blog. The lovely ladies over there took a pass on my book but I wasn’t disheartened. Can’t please all the people right?

Since then I’ve followed their blog pretty regularly as a subscriber. Delivered right to my inbox, the stories and interviews were easily accessible and in finding out more about the Author and their books I was sure that either my Kindle storage space would shrink or my time at the library would grow. But a funny thing happened, I felt little connection to any of the Authors featured on the site and never downloaded more than one or two books. In a year that’s not a whole lot of material.

A while back CLIND changed their feature format and started a new thing where they asked the Author to give their best ever in a few standard categories – song, movie, book, moment, bit of advice. I thought it was pretty clever. But other than Jen Lancaster I felt like I couldn’t relate to a single one of these people. Because their top five references were far too obscure for me.

I wondered, am I stuck too much in mainstream pop culture? Is it possible that every single Author who writes Chick-Lit or Rom-Com is a hipster? Or whatever the new, trendy title is? Am I actually a conformist? Is that even a bad thing anymore? If I say I love The Goonies, Stephen King and Jason Mraz am I going to sound like a boring follower even though I’ve been reading King & listening to Jason for far longer than it's been a thing?

Then this morning I got around to reading a favorite email subscription, Catherine Caffeinated, and there it was. The answer to my pop culture follower prayers. She had posted a top 100 movies of all-time list and right there in the number one spot was a movie that finally caused me to sigh with relief. She picked Jurassic Park.

Oh happy day! I’m not the only one out there who can appreciate that sometimes mainstream pop culture is fun, that it is fine to appreciate and enjoy and that no one cares if you admit it out loud and proud. Not that it would ever bother me to admit who I am, I just started wondering what I’d have to talk about with Authors I ran into at conferences. All I could visualize was me, outside during lunch, smoking a cigarette in my crappy car while listening to Dave Matthews and they’d all be inside discussing the finer points of the latest Louise Erdrich novel. And I’d be all ‘Um, I just finished downloading Gone Girl and will probably get around to reading that in a year or so.’

In the spirit of proving just how uncultured (read: non-hipster) I really am, I’m going to post the other 99 movies that rank below The Goonies in terms of favorites. These are essentially in no particular order other than the order in which they came to mind while making the list.

Thanks for the idea Catherine. And Jen, if you ever need advice on kick ass eighties hair band metal to rock out to just give me a shout. Preferably with two fingers tossed in the air. I’d be happy to help in that department.

Top 100 Movies (but you already know #1)
  1. The Goonies
  2. Lord of the Rings trilogy (it’s one book, I count it as one movie and it’s not the only trilogy taking up a single spot on this list)
  3. Office Space
  4. The Day After Tomorrow
  5. Death to Smoochy
  6. Rudy
  7. Blue Crush
  8. Reality Bites
  9. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
  10. The Breakfast Club
  11. The Ref
  12. Love, Actually (side note - I think you can tell everything you need to know about a person by which is their favorite coupling in this movie)
  13. Armageddon
  14. The Cutting Edge
  15. 200 Cigarettes
  16. Clueless
  17. How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days
  18. Groundhog Day
  19. Die Hard (1-3 but 2 was not as good)
  20. Happy Gilmore
  21. Singles
  22. Fight Club
  23. Almost Famous
  24. The Princess Bride (inconceivable!)
  25. Dogma
  26. X-Men (1-3 mostly but Wolverine was pretty good too)
  27. Team America: World Police
  28. 8 Mile
  29. Fever Pitch
  30. Back to the Future (the trilogy)
  31. Indiana Jones (the original trilogy)
  32. Jerry Maguire
  33. Old School
  34. Grandma’s Boy
  35. Twister (we’re goin’ green!)
  36. Good Will Hunting
  37. The Wedding Singer
  38. Waiting
  39. Girl, Interrupted
  40. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
  41. Stand By Me
  42. Pulp Fiction
  43. Legally Blonde
  44. Point Break
  45. Dirty Dancing
  46. Better Off Dead
  47. Honeymoon in Vegas
  48. Can’t Hardly Wait
  49. Rear Window (one of very few psychological thrillers that make the cut)
  50. Say Anything
  51. Tommy Boy
  52. High Fidelity
  53. Forces of Nature (no judgment)
  54. American History X
  55. The Crow
  56. Xanadu
  57. Toy Soldiers
  58. Castaway
  59. Brokeback Mountain
  60. The Fox and the Hound (seriously, I still cry every time)
  61. The Sixth Sense
  62. The Bourne movies (1-3)
  63. Three Men and a Baby
  64. Grease
  65. When Harry Met Sally
  66. Sixteen Candles
  67. Noises Off
  68. I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (he og’d!)
  69. Saving Grace
  70. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
  71. America’s Sweethearts
  72. 9 to 5
  73. Practical Magic
  74. Dazed and Confused
  75. The Lost Boys
  76. Drop Dead Gorgeous
  77. Just Friends
  78. Lucas
  79. Rock Star (again, no judgment)
  80. So I Married an Axe Murderer
  81. Shawshank Redemption
  82. E.T. the Extra Terrestrial
  83. Napoleon Dynamite
  84. The Birdcage
  85. An Affair to Remember
  86. Hot Fuzz (just saw this again recently & still love it, hilariously dark)
  87. It Could Happen to You
  88. Idiocracy
  89. Keeping the Faith
  90. Ocean's trilogy
  91. Sleeping with the Enemy
  92. Pretty Woman
  93. Speed
  94. Ever After
  95. The Lake House
  96. L.A. Confidential
  97. White Water Summer
  98. The Jerk
  99. Empire Records
  100. Steel Magnolias

What movies make the cut on your list? Or are you more a reader, listener, television watcher? I'm sure I'll think of 100 more as soon as I put this list up but sitting around all day thinking of movies isn't on the agenda for this Saturday so there it is.

12 comments:

Lickety said...

I have just stumbled upon your blog and, based on this list alone, you just made my bookmarks - The day after tomorrow? Awesome (except the wolves, they sucked). And it just got better - ferris bueller, shawshank, rear window, hot fuzz. No mention of Jaws, but the reason I felt the urge to comment? No. 57on the list. I think my friends and I wore out the local videoshop's copy of that in the early 90s. But nobody else I know has ever even heard of it.

Judi FitzPatrick said...

Thanks for sharing; there's a few on your list that would also be on mine - Read Window,Hot Fuzz (thanks for the rec.), Sixth Sense, Lord of the Rings, Holy Grail, and The Jerk among others.
Love you, Mum

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

Oh my goodness yes! I think my friends, sister and I watched that movie at least once a week back in the day. It had Sean Astin (my personal all time favorite actor) AND Wil Wheaton! When he got gunned down it was like my heart stopped. Hella great movie.

Do you have a blog? Didn't see anything on your profile. Thanks for commenting & bookmarking me! I run a pretty eclectic show over here so I hope you're ready to hold on for the ride :-) Welcome!

Karen Goltz said...

Pretty eclectic, and some of them brought back a lot of memories! I'm putting together my list, and will be posting it on my blog soon.

Anonymous said...

That is an awesome list! I saw at least 15 movies that I love and another 3-4 that I used to love back in the day. No need to question or apologize for your choices. If you like a movie or a TV show or a book, your reasons are valid and they're nobody's business but your own. I could never be a hipster because ignoring something popular just because it's popular is just as bad as the herd mentality of embracing what's "hot." That's so not me. I like what I like, because I like it. For example: I'm not a Beatles fan, I don't like Elvis or the Rolling Stones, or Springsteen or 99% of pop music. But Nirvana and Led Zeppelin and Metallica were all mainstream at one time, right? Most of my fave TV shows are long gone and I've never seen the ones that critics love. The only shows I watch every week are Castle, HIMYM, Parenthood, Grey's Anatomy, and The Simpsons (and The Newsroom whenever that comes back).

I've never listed my top 100 movies but someday I will. Most of them fit into one of five categories:
teen/YA rom-com - 10 Things I Hate About You, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, John Hughes movies, etc.
70's post apocalyptic sci-fi - Soylent Green, Rollerball, Logan's Run, etc.
sports movies Miracle, Eight Men Out, Bull Durham, Fever Pitch, Slap Shot, BASEketball, Jerry Maguire, etc.
Quentin Tarantino Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction (my all-time #1), Inglorious Basterds, etc. (haven't seen Django yet. long story.)
hot chick du jour There's always an actress or two that I like enough to see anything they're in. Sometimes the movie are crap, but more often than not I enjoy them. I lucked out with J-Law because she does good movies and she's talented. The only X-men movie I saw was the one she was in. (But that was because of the Cuban Missile Crisis plotline, I swear!)

Of course, not all of my faves fit into those categories. Office Space, Shawshank, and Forrest Gump come to mind. Oh, and Idiocracy is effing hilarious! That was on TV this past weekend, and I enjoyed that a whole lot more than the Super Bowl. Which brings me back to my point about being 'trendy': I did not watch one single second of the Super Bowl. Football is actually my least favorite sport right now; unless the Packers are playing I really don't give a damn!

Anonymous said...

You have a list of great ones! I will add Hotel Rwanda, Invincible and August Rush.

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

Can't wait to read it!

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

Yeah I'm not really apologizing, it just struck me that maybe I'm not all that cultured. But I say pffft to that anyway. I like what I like and screw em if they can't understand. Never claimed to be the smartest or most relevant anyway :-)

Right there with you on The Beatles, Springsteen, Stones & I also don't really like Nirvana. I know it might sound sacreligious not to love those who spawned the movement but I was a much bigger Soundgarden, AiC & Pearl Jam fan than Nirvana. Sometimes I wonder how Matt & I got together & am just thankful we didn't meet in high school when the music you listened to was one of very few defining personality traits. We'd so not be married right now lol. He's Tom Waits, the Dead, Zeppelin, They Might Be Giants and I'm more Foo Fighters, DMB, Godsmack, and Jason Mraz. Though we've given plenty of influence to each other's tastes over the years I can't see him ever popping on a New Kids song (no judgment) and you'd never catch me voluntarily tuning in Bob Dylan.

I'm also not a fan of Seinfeld, something that came up during our super bowl party. The room seemed mortified I couldn't find the humor in that show but to me they were all annoying & unlikeable & WHY would I want to sit through 30 minutes about people I don't like? I left high school for a reason.

Idiocracy is a movie I frequently refer to and wish I could be around to see if it comes to light in 500 years. Odds are good.

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

*sacrilegious

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

Sadly I have to confess to not having seen any of those yet. I know its terrible but when the heavy dramas show up from Netflix they sit for months untouched so we just stopped adding them to the queue & went with comedies instead.

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

Glad you liked it! Kind of crazy but so much fun :-) let me know if you do this, would love to see your list. Xoxoxo

Rosebud Collection said...

Had to visit fast..have been away from blogging..husband has a back problem and we have been busy with that..will start therapy soon..Well Jenn, we got hit with the storm..as well as your state..MA..dear God, it is a nightmare..drifts are up to my hips and I am not a short person..Keep us in your prayers..we put ReMax in charge of this house..maybe with some luck, it will sell..we shall see..keep you posted..
Sending love and hope you are feeling so much better..Carolyn