Hike – Cadillac Mountain, North Ridge

Bar Harbor from a little way up the North Ridge trail

Cadillac Mountain is the highest point in Acadia National Park in Maine.  It is also the highest mountain on the Atlantic Ocean anywhere north of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  In the Fall and Winter it is the first place in the U.S. that sees the sunrise.  It has a free auto road that allows people to drive right to the top.  It also has multiple hiking trails to the summit.  Some are more challenging than others.  This post describes a hike up the North Ridge trail, one that is intermediate in difficulty among them, but still not that bad.

Book – American Gods

How to describe this book?  Is it Adventure?  Is it Ghost Story?  Is it Suspense?  Is it Americana?  Is it Road Trip?  Is it Coming of Age?  Is it Fantasy?  Is it Myth?  Is it Commentary?  Is it darkly humorous?  The answer to all of those would be “yes.”  At its heart, though, it is a love letter to the sometimes forgotten America from a British author.

Humor – Angry BBQ

Just finished moving snow.  Thought this was apropos.

Humor – World War II Social Networking

What if there had been social networking sites during World War II?  It might have looked something like this.  (Note the “timestamps” of the posts.)

Movie – American Beauty (1999)

American Beauty won five Oscars, including four of the five major ones, capped off by Best Picture.  It only missed for Best Actress.  Annette Bening was beaten by Hilary Swank’s performance in Boys Don’t Cry.  Unlike most Oscar winning movies, which are very dramatic and heavy, this movie had enough humor in it to be called a comedy/drama.

Movie – Sunset Boulevard (1950)

This movie is an absolutely fearless look at Hollywood and the stars it leaves behind.  Gloria Swanson is a former silent film star who is now living out her days in her house on Sunset Blvd.  William Holden is a younger man “kept” by Swanson.  Erich von Stroheim plays the butler, who is also so much more.

Swanson’s character is semi-delusional, “knowing” that director Cecil B. DeMille is going to call her any minute to revive her career.  She lives in excess and eccentricity, doing things like holding a funeral for a chimpanzee she had owned.  The people around her feed her delusions and psychosis.

Movie – Sin City (2005)

This movie is a set of four interconnecting stories based on three graphic novels and a short story by Frank Miller.  The director, Robert Rodriguez, felt it was so important to ensure that Miller’s vision was correctly translated to the screen that he made him a co-director on the movie.  The result is an incredibly faithful visual translation from the graphic novels to the screen.

These stories are homages to the noir films of the 1940s with dangerous women and tough-as-nails men.  It is set in the fictional Basin City, but its police corruption and Old Town section populated with tons of lowlifes and criminals gives it its nickname of Sin City.  Even the heroes are pretty dark.

Movies Narrated By Dead People

“And if you’re reassuring yourself that I’m going to make it through this since I’m talking to you now, quit being such a smart-ass!  Hell dude, you never seen Sin City?  Sunset Boulevard?  American Beauty?” – Dave Lizewski/Kick-Ass, Kick-Ass

Movie narration is something that comes and goes over the years.  Some movie critics consider it such an affront that they rip the movie to shreds simply for having narration.  Personally, I rarely even notice it, and when I do I usually appreciate it.  For me, it rings really hollow when you have a character speak his thoughts out loud to other characters because those people treat it as the most natural thing, and it’s not.  The better alternative is to have the character speak only to the viewer.

This category is not a spoiler for these three movies.  Both Sunset Boulevard and American Beauty tell you right at the beginning that the narrator is dead.  Sin City consists of multiple interconnected stories, with multiple narrators, so you don’t know which one(s) will end up dead.

I could have included a couple of other movies I have seen, but those would definitely have been spoilers.  You don’t find out until the end of those that the person you have been listening to is dead.

You can find my posts for these movies here:

Sin City
Sunset Boulevard
American Beauty

On to the reviews…

Golden Globes 2011

The Golden Globes presentation was last night.  For those of you who are not familiar with them – they are awards for both movies and television handed out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.  They have been given since 1944 and are considered a good indicator of what movie awards will be handed out at the Oscars.

The key winners were:

Problems Posting Comments?

I’ve had a few people tell me that they tried to leave a comment, but were not able to.  I had two people try it in front of me this weekend and I realized I should write up some tips for this as well.  Please click "Read more" for the tips.

Books – Hiking Trail Guides

This post will describe the best hiking trail guides that I have found for Acadia National Park in Maine, for the rest of the state of Maine, and for the White Mountains in New Hampshire.  If the hike I write about is listed in one of these guides I will include an Amazon link to the book at the end of the hike’s description.  I already included links to two of these books at the end of the first two hiking posts. 

The three books are A Walk in the Park: Acadia’s Hiking Guide by Tom St. Germain, the Appalachian Mountain Club [AMC] Maine Mountain Guide, and the AMC White Mountain Guide.

Book – AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

This book is the story of a through-hike of the Appalachian Trail by David Miller.  In 2003 he quit his job as an engineer to hike the trail.  Many hikers go by “trail names” while they are hiking, not unlike people on the internet choosing names for themselves.  Because his company would not allow him to take a leave of absence, he took the name “AWOL”, as in “absent without leave.”

Humor – My Day

I've had a lot of people ask me how I spend my days now, other than watching movies and reading books, of course.  I figured I'd write about a typical day in my life now.

Because I usually don't need to be anywhere in particular in the morning I sometimes just take the opportunity to sleep in.

Hike – Peary Mountain

Pleasant Mountain and Pleasant Pond

Peary Mountain is in Brownfield, Maine, south of Fryeburg.  The hike up Peary Mountain is a relatively easy one.  I did it in October with the foliage in full Fall colors and it turned out to be a spectacular hike.  I also hiked it a couple of years later during mid-summer, and while the views were still as good, the lack of foliage color lessened them.

Movie – The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

This movie stars Sarah Polley (The Sweet Hereafter, Go, John Adams) as a little girl caught up in a great adventure with the famous Baron Munchausen (John Neville.)  Appearing in supporting roles are Eric Idle, Oliver Reed, Uma Thurman, Jonathan Pryce, and “Ray B. Tutto” who looks, sounds, and acts exactly like Robin Williams.  (It is Williams.)

Movie – The City of Lost Children (1995)

The best way to describe this movie is that it is a dark fairy tale; far more Brothers Grimm than sweet innocent story.  A modern day equivalent might be the stories of Roald Dahl. 

It stars Judith Vittet as brave little street orphan Miette and Ron Perlman as a kind circus strongman named One.  The two of them are opposed by a mad scientist who is kidnapping children to take their dreams from them, since he cannot dream himself.

Movie – The Professional (1994)

The Professional features the screen debut of Natalie Portman.  It’s immediately apparent that she is destined for big things.  She is almost preternaturally mature in this role.  She acted opposite Jean Reno, who also became a star because of this movie.  You may not recognize his name, but you will recognize his face.  He became the go to actor whenever Hollywood needed a Frenchman in their movie (i.e. Godzilla, Mission Impossible, The Da Vinci Code, etc.)

Movie – Whale Rider (2002)

This film is an example of the little movie that could.  Everywhere it was shown at film festivals it won audience awards and left people giving standing ovations.  When it was released to the general public there was no marketing campaign to back it up, so you may not have heard of it.  I never heard of it myself until it came out for home rental.  I’m here to tell you that once you’ve seen this movie, though, you will never forget it.

Movies with Great Child Performances

“Never work with animals or small children.” – Old acting adage

The famous child actor/actress has been a staple of movies from Jackie Coogan and Shirley Temple right up through all the various live action Disney child stars.  There is a big difference between fame and acting ability, though.  The children who can actually act, and not just mug for the camera, are rarer.  It’s for this reason than most child stars struggle to make the transition to adult roles.

I have enough movies in this category that I will revisit it at a later point.  For the present I am going to review Whale Rider (2002), The Professional (1994), The City of Lost Children (1995), and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988.)  The four movies all feature young actresses in early/debut roles.  They range in age from eight to twelve.

Note - True Grit (2010) was later added to this category.

You can find my posts for these movies here:

Whale Rider
The Professional
The City of Lost Children
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
True Grit

On to the reviews…

On Second Thought

Since sending out the announcement for this blog five days ago it has had nearly 300 views, including people in Canada, The U.K., and Russia.  Out of all those views, though, no one has left a comment on which movie category they would like to read about next.  Somewhere (probably Japan) a little girl is crying.

Seriously, though, this indicates people don't feel comfortable voting, don't care which set of movies they read about, or are never coming back to the blog.  I can't do anything about the last one, but for the first two I can go ahead and just pick the movie categories myself.  For the foreseeable future I will be doing that.

The next category will be Great Child Performances.