Franks 51: Movie Recommendations

While you wait...

I don't have a a favourite movie, I spent far too much time as a young adult, hold up in my apartment with my cat for far too long, watching movies endlessly while laying on the mattress on the floor of my “efficiency” (a single room apartment with a bathroom, very, er...uh...cozy). In addition I would go to the cheap seats multiple times a week (by myself, the cat stayed at home) - I consumed movies like I consumed food in those days.

I have a list somewhere of every movie I can remember seeing up to 2003? 2004? It's a document to be sure. Instead of rooting through back-up disks of information, to find the list in it's entirely, I instead off the top of my head I created the top 51 (the best I can remember - more recent movies generally not included)...51! without even mentioning the lesser quality, more easily digestible, good-because-they-are-terrible and funny; Better off Dead (early John Cusack), Vampires Kiss (very cheesy 80's movie with a young Nicolas Cage), 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (can't I fit more?), Airheads (cast is priceless), Only You (yeah, it's terrible), Girl Interrupted (say what you want), But I'm a Cheerleader (OMG, lesbian/gay reform “school” hilarity), Being John Malcovitch (interesting concept), Slums of Beverly Hills (for all the right reasons), Mixed Nuts (heehee!), Death at a Funeral (the Belgium one, not the American one), The Wedding Singer, Whip It, Juno, Drop Dead Fred (I bet you have no idea what that movie is about), The Man with Two Brains, The Jerk, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Shop Girl, Mad Love, Mr. And Mrs. Smith (for so many reasons), Sixteen Candles, The Road To Wellville...yeeps, I'm right off track.

Oh, and I noted the musicals and documentaries...no tricking you to watch them here.

• Almost Famous
• American History X
• Army of Darkness
• Blue Velvet
• Brazil
  Breakfast Club
  Bridge to Terabithia
• Bubba Ho-Tep
• Capitalism: A Love A Story
• Cassablanca
• Chicago musical
• Dirty Dancing
• Drawn Together: The Movie (NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART – HIGHLY OFFENSIVE - I have yet to find an intelligent person to watch it all the way through with me)
• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 
• Eyes Wide Shut
• Fight Club
• Frankie and Johnny
• From Dusk Till Dawn
• Grosse Point Blank
• High Fidelity
• How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
• Inglorious Bastards
• Insomnia
• It
• Josy and the Pussycats (if only because it took me a bit to get what was going on, you know, the irony of it)
• Monty Python (all)
• Naked Lunch
• Natural Born Killers – back when I could maintain a top 10, this was there
• Newsies musical – a young Christian Bale
• One Hour Photo
• Pretty In Pink - classic
• Princess Bride – awesome cheese, I can recite along with the movie
• Pulp Fiction – how can you not like that
• Quills – dark, disturbed, scandelous...the Marquis De Sade
• Religulous documentary
• Reservoir Dogs
• Say Anything
• Schindlers List
• Secretary
• Shaun of the Dead
• Switch
• The Invention of Lying
• The Oh in Ohio
• The Sound of Music musical
• The Stand
• Total Recall
• Way of the Gun
• Welcome To The Dollhouse
• Wizard of Oz
• Young Frankenstein (and other Mel Brooks Blazing Saddles, The Producers,
• Zietgest documentary ...

Crap, then there is Silence of the Lambs, The House of Yes, Riding in Cars with Boys (hello soundtrack!), Poison Ivy, Bridge to Terabithia, Wild Things (mmm), Blast from the Past, The Truman Show, Oh Brother Where Out Thou, Batman (with Danny D.), Batman Begins (yum Christian Bale), Pushing Tin...Oh, and almsot everything Kevin Smith has made...that... and now I've lost you and that's way more than 51.

When I tell you I've watched a lot of movies (fat young adult, no friends willing to visit me in th country where I rented the room) I've watched A Lot of movies. Over a thousand if not more. That's why I can't just pick one...or fifty. But that list of 51 is rock solid tops in my mind. It's winter, why not rent some movies?

Like my love for movies, so goes my love for music...and books...and art...and photography...and travel...and well, we'll talk about that later.

:)

Fat Girl

One thing I haven't talked much about is being a former fat person, other than my recent story about how I lost close to 100 pounds.

When I was losing the weight I didn't think much about how, or if, it would change me as a person, not just the exterior but the “interior me”. In over 6 years of being "the new me" I have experience a life I had only dreamed of; I'm happy, healthy, have wonderful people in my life and am just embarking on life after 30.

Today I got a reminder that as much as the weight lose has changed me, there is a part that seems to never want to go away. I'm going on the assumption that every woman has an occasional day where her morning herald is "I'm so fat!" (or variation of that idea). My fat days dredge up memories of being fat; and how seemingly easy it had been to get to that point, and how not-so-easy it had been to get to this point.

This was one such morning. I believe a status at some point in early morning made reference to me feeling like I was an "oil covered whale".

I realize, in retrospect and with rationality, that this was far overstated; but with as much news coverage that I have been following regarding the oil in the Gulf of Mexico, all I could think of was large oily whales...

Anyway. Some days it feels like losing 100 pounds hasn't influenced my judgement of my own body in a positive manner, if anything it has made me a harsher critic. I don't mean to say I still hate my body. I don't. Overall, I love my body - there are parts of it I am not fond of, and on occasion the number of those parts increases and the fondness decreases. So today I kicked myself if the tush and forced myself to the gym, a past time that had recently lost favour over other activities - like anything NOT going to the gym. On these days all it takes is a trip to the gym to make me think about my accomplishments in maintaining my weight.

I think an important part of keeping ones weight off for the long term is to remember. Remember how terrible it felt for you to be fat. Remember how much more unhappy you were with life. Remember all the work you put into losing the weight and how hard it was.

Now that I have lost the weight, and have maintained it for over 6 years, I finally realize why healthy woman are so knowledgeable on health and nutrition issues. They have to be. A person has to keep the information fresh in the mind. I call it 'being on a diet all the time'. And I don't mean a diet-diet, like the traditional idea of diet; I mean the kind of diet that involves paying attention to food, and the things you put into your body. I'm talking about knowing the general amount of calories in the things you put in your mouth on a daily basis; and understanding and implementing, moderation. I believe, in weight loss, knowledge is power.

But today I realized, even with all the power, a woman is still a woman, and a former fat girl is still a fat girl ibside. It's a part of me I'll have to embrace and keep an eye on in order to enjoy lifetime weight loss maintenance.