Life, Writing, Weirdness

Okay, yes the winter break was over two weeks ago. It’s been a busy couple of weeks and not necessarily with academics, though there’s been a bit of that.

For whatever reason, the winter break every year tends to move me from my regular episode viewing with the occasional movie thrown in to almost daily movie viewing with the occasional episode of a show thrown in. This year was no exception, but it seems like a lot of what I’ve watched over the break should get classified as comfort viewing.

I don’t do a lot of rewatches in recent years, although there are a handful of films that tend to get watched around once per year in this house, so that makes this break a little odd in the same respect.

For reference, here’s a quick alphabetical list of the movies watched during the three weeks since my last final exam ended:

1. Die Hard (1988)
2. Galaxy Quest (1999)
3. Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
4. Red One (2024)
5. Scrooged (1988)
6. Spaceballs (1987)
7. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
8. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
9. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
10. The Princess Bride (1987)
11. Up (2009)
12. Galaxy Quest (1999)
13. Wallace and Gromit: Revenge Most Fowl (2024)

Yes, there are three Star Trek movies in there. It’s hard for me to watch The Wrath of Khan without continuing on to the next two films. I take them as a trilogy to be watched together and enjoy them every time. Die Hard is a traditional Christmas movie for me and it’s a coin flip whether the Muppet Christmas Carol or Scrooged is my favourite Dickens adaptation. You’ll also note the presence of my other two favourite movies on this list: Spaceballs and The Princess Bride.

You do see a small proportion of recent movies on the list and that’s as typical for me in movie viewing as it is in episodic or serialized video storytelling (TV shows, if that label still applies widely enough). Recent movies tend to make up only about a quarter of my viewing. I’ve got about a hundred on the “to watch” list right now and the average release date is 2007, with a range of 1970 to sometime in the next couple of months.

So because it’s two weeks after the break, I’ll admit to having watched a couple of movies since the break ended, though the frequency of movie watching will decrease a lot over the next few weeks.

1. Hard Day’s Night (1964)
2. Timescape (2022)
3. Atlas (2024)
4. Wicked (2024)

Hard Day’s Night was for a course I’m taking this term, but felt less like the jukebox documentary it was billed as and more like a classic 1960s British absurdist comedy with Beatles songs sprinkled through it.

Seen any good films lately?

Be well, everyone.