Every year I enter every Oscar contest I can find. Last Feb I kept putting it off because I was busy with school...until it was the day of, and by the time I got around to doing it, most of them were past the deadline. Except for....the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. There were only six categories and I got them all correct. The prize-free movies for a year. It took them till mid April to send me my pass, and it's good through April 2009.

Papa Cash and I have used the opportunity to go to every film we can, and we have seen almost everything that has come out since then. There are small caveats, we can't use it on Saturdays, and we can't use it on movies that don't allow passes....which means we can't see them until they've been out for two weeks. It's also only good for the Marcus Theaters, and the Times and the Rosebud, which means for the most part, mainstream films. This is what we've done with it so far:

April: The Ruins, Smart People

May: Shine A Light, Run Fat Boy Run, Harold and Kumar Escape Guantanamo Bay, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Iron Man (twice), What Happens In Vegas, Baby Mama

June: Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Chronicles of Narnia:Prince Caspian (this was a slow month for us for whatever reason)

July: The Happening, Get Smart, You Don't Mess With the Zohan, Incredible Hulk, Hellboy 2, WALL-E, Wanted, Hancock

August: Mamma Mia, The X-Files (I Want to Believe), Stepbrothers, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Pineapple Express

We try to see just about everything with some exceptions. We skipped Sex in the City (I never watched the show and didn't really care), The Love Guru (because it didn't play long and I never heard anything good about it), and most of the movies meant for a younger audience like the movie about the traveling pants and things like that. A couple of things we wanted to see were pulled just as the two weeks ended (not fair!) and sometimes we couldn't make it because of scheduling conflicts (Prom Night, The Strangers)

This has been a really fun experience, even though it takes planning on our parts to be able to even make it there -our schedules just don't match up sometimes. I'm not going to go back now and tell you what I thought of these movies but I'll probably mention them as we see them and talk a little bit about what I thought about them. One thing to note-since this is free and a dream come true prize for me, generally I go into things with zero expectations and for the most part, I have fun with it.

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For instance, The Mummy -which I saw two nights ago. I think I might have seen the first one, but I don't remember enjoying it. If it weren't for the pass, I wouldn't have went to see it, and I probably wouldn't have rented it, either. I could really rip it apart if I was in the right mood. I'll probably never see it again. But it was entertaining for the most part, it was a fun night out, and Brendan Fraser took off his shirt for ten seconds so we could all see how much he enjoys lifting weights. I wouldn't have minded him sharing that a second, or a third time in the movie, but hey, we always have NAKED JAVIER BARDEM to console us if we get too bummed out.[Image]

But my point is that I tend to just go and have fun and not think about it too hard. I have to think about a lot of other things too hard for most of the year. And if I'm watching movies at home, I tend to put more thought into them, especially if they're horror movies.

We also saw Pineapple Express tonight.



[Image]I like Seth Rogen. I think that Papa Cash found it sometimes more amusing than I did, just like Superbad. But it was funny and I'd probably watch it again when he eventually buys it. Although at one point some f***er propped up his foot on the seat ahead of him and decided to do the 'leg jiggle' throughout the last half hour of the movie. Papa Cash must have been just far away enough not to feel the reverberations that were pounding into my back, so I eventually got up and sat on the other side of him, where thankfully I couldn't feel it any more. What was even more annoying was as the action intensified, so did the leg jiggle. When it got really crazy onscreen, it was like a damn machine gun. Then as the action slowed down-so did the leg jiggle. At that point I was actually wishing that Ritalin was prescribed MORE than it already is, because they obviously missed one.

ps-for anyone who missed out on 'naked javier bardem' day, just google that phrase inside the quotes and you'll see what I mean....wink wink nudge nudge.....

-Love and happy Googling,
Mother Firefly