Ok, I'm officially a Chaplin Fan!

I

started watching Chaplin's movies yesterday on TCM because nothing else was on. Once I saw one, (The Gold Rush) I wanted to know if that particular silent film was the exception (because I liked it) or the rule. I watched several of them. Stayed up all night watching them, actually.

Today I watched "The Great Dictator", his first "talkie". "Modern Times" was released the technology was available for voice, be he still chose to be "The Tramp" and didn't say anything.

Y'all, if you've never seen a Chaplin movie, you NEED TO! I don't mean "If you get the chance" or "If you're bored". I mean you MUST see this man in action.

It's not only his movies, but who he was that has me loving Chaplin.

In between movies, they told some stuff about his real life. Like the fact that reporters always asked if he was Jewish (he wasn't) and he said "I prefer not to answer."

How cool is that?!?! WW2 Era, and this man won't say "No, I'm not Jewish."

I just finished watching "The Great Dictator", which is the movie where he spoofed Hitler & Mussolini. Excellent. The "TCM Guy" said that some people had called it preachy, but I found it inspirational in between the comedy bits.

Chaplin was a genius.

Here are the movies you should definitely see, IMO (Movie Plots are from IMDb.com):

City Lights (Silent) - A "romantic" comedy where The Tramp (Chaplin) struggles to help a blind flower girl he has fallen in love with. The ending was so sweet. That silly Tramp Smile is...I can't even find the words. It made me tear up a little bit. :-)

The Great Dictator - In Chaplin's satire on Nazi Germany, dictator Adenoid Hynkel has a double... a poor Jewish barber... who one day is mistaken for Hynkel. Chaplin's "German" is hilarious!

Modern Times (Silent) - The Tramp struggles to live in modern industrial society with the help of a young homeless woman. So good. He goes to jail for a crime he didn't commit, foils an escape attempt, and then tries to get back into jail after they pardon him.

I seriously wonder if there was anything that Chaplin couldn't do! He sang the Title Song for one of his movies, juggled, roller skated, etc. You name it, he seems to have done it. His writing was so clever. It's all the "little bits" & unexpected things that made his movies great.

You know the excitement you feel when you find something new that you LOVE? That's what I feel. I wish it was Charlie Chaplin MONTH on TCM!

Here's one of my favorite clips from Modern Times. The Tramp is hired as a singing waiter (with no experience) and he can't remember the words to the song. The woman writes them on his cuff, but then when he's dancing his cuffs fly off. This is the best clip that I could find. Enjoy!



Oh! And here's the part from The Great Dictator where he's allegedly "preachy".

Jumper

Y

ou may have heard some things about this movie which make you think it won't be any good. I know I did. I was nervous to buy it. All I knew about it was that Darth Vader (Hayden Christensen) was in it and he could basically teleport.

But it is so much more than that. I didn't know Samuel L. Jackson was in it. It was a different kind of role (IMO) for him. He played Roland. One of the "religious freaks" known as Paladins. Roland wants to kill all Jumpers because Paladins believe that only God should have the power to be all places at once.

The movie starts with a young teenager named David Rice. He is bullied (I guess) in school. One day, he wants to give his crush, Millie Harris, a gift (a snow globe that he found at a yard sale). The main HS bully snatches the gift from Millie and throws it onto a frozen lake. David walks out onto the ice to get it. He stands there just long enough to fall through the ice.

Look, this movie requires some suspension of disbelief. I have watched "Ice Road Truckers". I know that the last thing you want to do on top of a frozen lake is stop. He should have gotten the freaking snow globe and gone back to the bank. But then there would have been no movie, LOL.

So while he's in the freezing lake, he somehow transports himself to the middle of the city library. Water and all.

Then he goes home to his drunk father. Apparently, his dad beats up on him too because he has a serious chain on his bedroom door to keep his father out of his room.

His dad asks him why he's wet and he says something like "Oh, some kids from school..." then he goes into his room and chains it up. His dad comes upstairs to get more of an answer and David won't open the door. When his father is about to break into the room, he transports himself back to the library out of fear.

After that, he realizes that he doesn't have to stay in Nowhere, Rhode Island (or wherever he is) and he starts robbing banks (by Jumping himself into the vaults) to finance his new life. He goes to England to pick up chicks, he Jumps to the ocean to surf, he eats lunch on top of a sphinx's head in Egypt.

All of it is pretty fun to watch. Made me wonder what I would do if I had that kind of power.

One day he finally gets the courage to go back to his hometown to seek out Millie. Everyone else in town had thought that he was dead because he never came back after falling through the ice. He did, however, leave the snow globe on a bench in Millie's back yard so that she knew he was alive.

He runs into the old HS bully and Jumps him inside a bank vault.

Payback.

But the bully meets Roland & spills the beans. So while David is taking Millie to Rome to see all the sites that she had wanted to see in HS, Roland is trying to find him and kill him.

Rent the movie. As I said, Evan watched it about 30 times since the day we bought it. I watched it with him half of those times and didn't mind listening to it while I dropped cards or whatever the other half of the time.

I liked it a lot. I like the way that just because he had this "super power", he didn't try to be a Super Hero. He did what I think any of us would do. Exactly what he wanted. He had fun with it.

The only reason I say Rent the movie instead of Buy the movie is because you might not like it as much as we did. But the special effects were not overdone. I like the way they made Jumping look. There are some cool & funny action scenes when another Jumper is jumping a car through traffic at high speed.

2 snaps up with a bootie smack. Or something. Whatever. Watch it!

I'd do him!

K

en Watanabe, that is.

Evan has finally stopped watching "Jumper" and he decided to watch "The Last Samurai". Every time I see Ken Watanabe, I think "That's a sexy man!" He's been in lots of stuff (Memoirs of a Geisha, Batman Begins, Letters from Iwo Jima). My favorite of his roles that I've seen is in Memoirs. I want The Chairman too!

Plus he's 6' tall.

Sorry Makoto (Nagano), if I had a choice between you & Ken Watanabe, you would not win.

Carry on!

:-)

New Hugh Tag

I'm so happy Valentine's Day is over.

Now I can stop making tags with pink. I don't like pink, LOL. I look good in pink, but it's such a girly color. I don't like girly.

Anyway, I made this tag.



I don't know if I'll make it adoptable.

There are hundreds (if not millions) of women who like Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt tags. But not many women who appreciate Hugh.

He's a sexy man! I can only conclude that other women are retarded.

When Evan came home from school today he said "What's wrong with that?"
Me - What's wrong with what?
E - That tag.
Me - *ignoring him*

Evan can kiss my Hugh loving ass! LOL

I think it's ironic that I'm talking about not liking pink and the tag is basically fuschia. But I don't care. I am allowed to contradict myself!

Buh bye.

TV shows I watch

Nip/Tuck
Ok.

NOBODY BELIEVES THAT CHRISTIAN TROY IS A HOMO!!!!!!!!!!

Brooke Shields guest starred as a psychiatrist that Christian saw and told him maybe the reason he can't be happy in a relationship with a woman is because he's already in a relationship with Sean. No Christian is all paranoid that he's a homo. (His son with Sean's wife was having sex - unknowingly - with a transsexual.)

Julia's baby is going to have some birth defect.

What else?

Larry Hagman guest starred as a man who had testicular cancer and the fake nuts they gave him weren't big enough. He wanted Kiwi sized nuts.

Um...

I have to admit that I haven't really inspected the nuts of the men I've been with, but nut size never mattered to me.

I just posted this at JJHF:

Last night on Nip/Tuck, Larry Hagman wanted Kiwi sized nuts.

Is this REALLY an issue for men? How big your nuts are???

Do any women care about this?

I mean, I guess you can equate it to breast size. Some women feel more feminine with bigger boobs. They don't feel sexy after a mastectomy.

I don't care about nut size.

Girth.

That's what I care about...

Big Brother

Janelle has been pissing me off all season, but she finally made a good move last night when she voted Will out. Boogie is PISSED, LMAO. GOOD! Fucker. That's all.

What else did I watch? I don't remember.