Movies viewed in 2017

Maybe it's my lack of interest in sports that allowed room for an increased interest in movies. I've always been drawn to them--watching them and learning how they are made--but when Veronica was born I all but gave them up for more than five years. Life took over and there was little opportunity to find 90-150 minutes during which I was alert enough to get absorbed into some fictional world.

Jump ahead to the summer of 2016. I found a good deal on a Blu-ray set of Stanley Kubrick's later films. I had watched most of his better known movies during college, and the fact that he had more out there that I hadn't yet seen nagged at me. By this time I had become a morning person and my employment status dropped to part-time. This opportunity allowed me to fit in a movie or two a week before the rest of the house was awake. Sometimes I'd have to break a movie into 2 or 3 sittings or give up a little extra sleep, which is not ideal but better than not watching movies at all.

While looking for some of Kubrick's earlier works, I discovered The Criterion Collection. This is a physical media label that is dedicated to releasing important films (classic and contemporary, foreign and domestic) in the best possible quality. The image/sound, and even the packaging, of these movies is beautiful. I fell in love. I got sidetracked from the Kubrick project because watching and researching one old film led to me wanting to see five more.

Most of what I watched in 2017 was on Criterion but not everything. My list includes rewatches, movies I watched with the kids, and a TV show that consumed my summer (Twin Peaks: The Return). I attempted to do some kind of ranking, but it was impossible with so many films I loved. These are in the order in which I watched them.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - rewatch
The Seventh Seal (1957) - three times
Breathless (1960)
The Third Man (1949) - twice
PlayTime (1967)
Scenes from a Marriage (1974)
A Clockwork Orange (1971) - rewatch
La Dolce Vita (1960)
The Mighty Ducks (1992)  - rewatch
Cars (2006)
Moana (2016)
Summer with Monika (1953)
Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Mon Oncle (1958)
Frances Ha (2012)
Brief Encounter (1945)
Barton Fink (1991)
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Zootopia (2016)
Chungking Express (1994)
Stalker (1979) - twice
Barry Lyndon (1975)
Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)
Contempt (1963)
La Jetée (1962)
Born in China (2017)
Solaris (1972)
In the Mood for Love (2000) - rewatch
Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
The Exterminating Angel (1962)
Ugetsu (1953)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) - rewatch
Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)
Taste of Cherry (1997)
La Cercle Rouge (1970)
Cars 3 (2017)
Jules and Jim (1962)
8 1/2 (1963) - rewatch
Wings of Desire (1987)
The Trial (1962)
L'avventura (1960)
Winter Light (1963)
Trust (1990)
M. Hulot's Holiday (1953)
City Lights (1931)
The Shining (1980) - rewatch
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Lucky (2017)
Elevator to the Gallows (1958)
Rebecca (1940)
Vampyr (1932)
Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)
Army of Shadows (1969)
Le Samourai (1967)
The Thin Blue Line (1988)
Home Alone (1990) - rewatch
Yojimbo (1961)
The Grandmother (1970) - rewatch
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) - rewatch
Cries and Whispers (1972)
Arrival (2016)
The Lady Vanishes (1938)

2016 recap

Another year over. And a new one just begun... well, a month and a half ago now.

I'm not a particularly political person, but I feel like something needs to be said. The election results in 2016 were upsetting and eye-opening. I didn't think Trump had a chance of winning and look what happened. I used to think any one in the role of president would elicit a certain amount of respect, but I have none for him. He's treats the majority of the population he represents as an enemy, not to mention the rest of the world. Rather than lead our country into the future, he aims for some version of the rose-tinted past. He is a bully and the wrong person for the job. End of political rant.

Looking at the year from a more personal perspective, it was a positive one. We made a major decision as a family for me to scale back my career. It has been in the works since we moved to Minnesota in 2013, when we set ourselves up to live on one income. We wanted somebody to be home with the kids--with Omri the whole day and with both of them after 3:30 and during summer vacations. It is a big step toward living less hurried, less stressful lives. Originally, we figured R would be the one to quit, but in the end it made more sense for me to do it.

The thing is, I haven't fully quit yet. I walked into my boss's office last May to give her two months notice, but instead we came to an agreement in which I continue to work a very flexible part-time. I did a few months at 10 hours a week and then bumped it up to 20 hours a week, and I'm going back down to 10 again soon. The biggest downside is that it keeps me from throwing myself into to my other goals. I have ideas about doing something with photography or attempting to write a middle school novel, but when I'm not focused on the kids, much of my free time still goes toward work. On the positive side, I'm making a lot more money part-time as a software engineer than I would pursuing the other options. I intend to put some of my unexpected income toward my own business in the future. It's just a question of when to make the leap.

Yet, I have had a little more time than usual to dedicate to creative outlets. Here's a list of notable projects from the year:

• I held 6 or 7 semi-professional photo shoots for families and volunteer events. The results haven't appeared online yet, but there's a lot of work I'm proud of in those sets. I'm also beginning to understand some of the challenges associated with this type of work, especially posing people and finding optimum lighting conditions.
• I had a photo accepted into the Minnesota State Fair fine arts competition. It gave me a lot of exposure and I was excited about the whole thing, although, admittedly, not a lot came out of it.
• I finished a short film into which I poured a lot of attention and passion. I don't know if the masses will ever appreciate it, but it stands as some of my best work and something I'll treasure for myself.
• I revived my ragged comedy series known as Cottage Cheese, knocking out about one new clip a month during the second half of the year. This is something I intend to continue, just for fun.
• As mentioned above, I started writing a novel for middle school kids, the kind I would have liked to have read at that age. I'm not much of a storyteller--with my video projects I usually prefer to capture a mood than to tell a standard story--but this story was flowing out of me so quickly even I was interested to see where it would go. It's meant to be the first in a series (books 2 and 3 are the ones I'm really excited about), so let's hope I can find to motivation to follow through and finish this project.

The kids are doing great. Veronica is in kindergarten, still at the same Montessori school. Her reading is taking off. She has been driven to master new skills like swimming without a life jacket and ice skating, and once she sets her mind to something, she gets it done.

Omri's is such a happy little boy, and he has been talking up a storm since he turned 2. I get to see a lot of him these days. Once in a while he'll come over to give me a big hug and call me his "best friend." It doesn't get much sweeter than that.

We traveled to Santa Barbara again in the spring and to the east coast in the fall. There are some concerns that we need to cut back on the travel now that we're mostly living on one income and we still have a child in private school, but it hasn't come to that yet.

I think that's all I wanted to cover from 2016. I'm still posting family photos on the Four Peas blog and still somewhat active on Twitter and Instagram, in case you want to follow along. I've been meaning to start up the old hand-written journal again too. Call me old-fashioned.

Have a good year, everybody.