Awkward Conversations With Your Blog

Hey, blog! Holy shit, I haven't seen you in forever... Yeah... Wow, it's been a while. Heh, um... Yeah. So, how's life been for you? Yeah? Well, uh, that's good I gue- what? Oh, um... Wow. I'm sorry. That's really... Jesus, I don't really know what to say... I don't want to intrude, but, you know, if you need someone to talk to... Yeah. But hey, you're going back to school! That's a positive. Look on the bright side, you know?

What? Oh, um, not a lot. I got kind of busy. I was trying to pass my classes, and then trying to graduate, and then I felt like I needed a break, and now my break mentality has sort of set in and I'm trying to shake it and get back to doing something productive, you know? Get back into writing and reading and watching movies on a regular basis. It's going... Well, it's going. It's slower than I'd hoped, but, you know... You gotta start somewhere.

Anyway, um... I don't know how to put this, and I don't mean to be forward or just suddenly be really serious or anything, but I haven't seen you in a while, and I can make excuses and be awkward about it, or I can own up to the fact that I messed up, and you're probably feeling like I'm a really shitty blogger, and I am, but I'm going to try to get better. If I'm going to try to write on a regular basis, I need a project. With deadlines. And hopefully, if I have a project with self-determined deadlines, and I can start meeting them, it'll keep my creative juices flowing enough to help me do other things.

So I'm going to start writing you again, blog. At least, if you'll take me back. I don't deserve it, but I'm going to do my best. I don't want to set a schedule or anything yet, I don't know if I can do this consistently, but I have some goals I want to set out.

I'm going to make September science fiction month, because science fiction always seems to motivate me. I'm going to alternate between classic (or at least older) movies and newer ones. I'm going to aim for two a week: Sunday or Monday I'll do the classic review, and Wednesday or Thursday the newer one. When October comes, I'll try to lay off the science fiction and try to review more popular and newer movies, particularly leading up to the Oscars. Oof, I guess I should review the Oscar movies. I'll also probably cut back to one a week, unless two a week turns out to be pretty easy. Anyway, here's the lineup for science fiction month:

This week (August 26^th): The Andromeda Strain (1971) and Contagion (2011). It's disease week! I know there's a remake of The Andromeda Strain and I might watch it someday but a) it's a TV miniseries, and b) I don't care. And c) Contagion is way better. Oh, and d) I don't care. I'm doing these two first because a) I already started a Contagion review and got a fair amount of the way in, and b) I don't care. Expect an Andromeda Strain review tomorrow.

Week of September 2^nd: Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and Inception (2010). No, Kiss Me Deadly isn't really a science fiction movie, but the best paper I ever wrote in school was comparing it to the 1951 The Day The Earth Stood Still, so I'm reviewing it anyway. If you're going to complain about it, Inception isn't a science fiction film either. That's right, I said it.

Week of September 9^th:  The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) and either District 9 (2009) or, uh, I, Robot (2004) I guess. I dislike the Will Smith movie but I probably have more to say about it than 99.999% of people on the planet since I basically grew up on the book, and I don't know if Day The Earth Stood Still and District 9 tie together as well as I'd like. If I could I would just do Kiss Me Deadly and The Day The Earth Stood Still back-to-back, but I made these arbitrary and ridiculous rules, so clearly I must follow them, dammit!

Week of September 16^th: Solaris (1972) and Solaris (2002). It's remake week! Or rather, it's "an excuse to rewatch Tarkovsky's Solaris" week!

Week of September 23^rd: Alien (1979) and Prometheus (2012). It's remake week all over again! Just kidding. I'll have to see both again, but I'm sure I can convince myself that Prometheus is better just to piss people off and get page views. That's how blogging works, right? (Kidding again, Alien is better. Prometheus just had infinitely more potential to waste.)

Other science fiction movies I wanted to review but don't feel like cramming into an already daunting schedule, thus setting myself up for inevitable failure: Forbidden Planet (1956), Moon (2009), The Thing (1982, possibly alongside the 1951 version and/or the 2011 remake), Sunshine (2007), Primer (2004), Melancholia (2011), Another Earth (2011), and Transformers (2007) just out of morbid curiosity.

So that's that. Basically this post is just about letting people know that I still intend to carry on with this project eventually theoretically possibly. I've put the schedule above into an 8-bit Film Reviews Google Calendar, so that means I'm really going to stick to it, right?