krickets | so... we need to break up.

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so... we need to break up.

→ Is anybody else having issues with Firefox? I just upgraded to the newest version after holding out at 3.9 (I think it was 3.9) for the majority of the year. I haven't even had a chance to play with the new version really (I literally just updated it before making this post.) But I have been annoyed with all of the other updates I tried (and then abandoned) this year. We used to be so tight, but I feel like Firefox has had an identity crisis this year and it's almost time for us to just break up. (Our relationship is starting to resemble an abusive one.)

→ I am kind of POed at The Vampire Diaries right now. While I enjoy the episodes as individual nuggets of awesome, I do feel like episode per episode, this season is the weakest so far. I love Rebekah, actually, and that's my favorite "new thing" that I'm enjoying, but the two things that bug me the most are the overall direction of the show, and the fact that the two characters that I enjoy writing the most in fic have been lobotomized. I can appreciate angst/dark-times/twisty/distressing plotlines for my favorites. I am all about PAIN AND AGONY. But give them back their own fucking free will please? Because this? I am not down with it. (Especially when it feels like a super easy way to make certain characters look good in comparison.)

→ Watched and loved Attack the Block, for those of you playing along at home.

→ I don't know if I'm going to do cards this year. I'm feeling kind of scatterbrained lately and it's already later than I usually ask for sign ups. Some people have asked for exchanges and I'll do them, but I'm not entirely sure I'll be able to pull myself together to send a bunch of stuff out. I can barely keep up with stuff that's going on as it is. (And I still have fic to read, and holiday fic to get a head start on!) I'll probably make the decision by next week, no later.

→ Speaking of Christmas, I have started my shopping. So far I've purchased a kickass Lightsaber for a 4 year old girl who loves Darth Vader, a power rangers watch for one of my nephews, and a real legit FiOS remote control (from eBay) for a 1 year old with an irrepressible addiction to all electronics with buttons. (His parents will thank me.)

→ Finished Mindy Kaling's book this week. It was adorable and funny. I think it wasn't as good as Bossypants for me, although in some ways it was slightly better (if that makes sense). Definitely check it out if you have the slightest interest in it. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

→ Everyone who hasn't needs to watch Shameless. Just saying. I sort of secretly revised my new shameless vid: fumbling through the gray and I'm burying this "announcement" in the middle of this post because this is something that I rarely (if ever) do. I just sneakily went in and replaced the source files. (Except on Tumblr which, as usual, hates me and won't let me edit the post at all - not even the tags!) This may be a dishonest and underhanded thing to do, but I had posted it in a sleep-deprived state at 5 in the morning and I just needed it to be more perfect, you know? [Guffaw.] Anyway, for those who care and who actually read this post, there is a new version up now.

→ I recently changed my ringtone from You Can Call Me Al, back to Twisted Nerve (the whistle from Kill Bill) which I have used for, literally, years. I can't really decided if this was a good move or not. I am kind of missing the Paul Simon.

→ I have 19 movies to watch before the end of the year to meet my standard goal of "100 new movies every year." Anybody have any suggestions for what to watch to fill in those last 19 slots? There are a couple of documentaries I've been planning on watching, but other than that and new stuff coming out in theaters I'm not sure. I may just end up binging on old noirs on Netflix streaming, if all else fails.
"New-to-Me" Films [Possibly 100 of Them]

001. - 035.
001. The Fighter
002. Monsters
003. The Ugly Truth
004. W&G: A Matter of Loaf and Death [short]
005. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
006. Chaos Theory
007. Life as we Know It
008. Shooter
009. The King's Speech
010. My Soul to Take

011. Love and Other Drugs
012. Breaking Upwards
013. It's Kind of a Funny Story
014. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
015. The Girl Who Played with Fire
016. The Freebie
017. Beneath the Dark
018. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
019. Capturing Reality [doc]
020. 127 Hours

021. The Parking Lot Movie [doc]
022. Due Date
023. Ballerina [doc]
024. Seven Things To Do Before I'm 30
025. My Girlfriend's Boyfriend
026. Dogs Decoded [doc]
027. The Bridge [doc]
028. Brother's Keeper [doc]
029. How Do You Know?
030. Repo: The Genetic Opera

031. Dead Like Me: Life After Death
032. One Week
033. Hanna
034. The Last Song
035. Scream 4

036. - .070
036. The Russell Girl
037. The Dive From Clausen's Pier
038. The Velveteen Rabbit [2009]
039. The Wormhole [short]
040. The High Cost of Living

041. Dogtooth
042. No Strings Attached
043. Ceremony
044. Bastard out of Carolina
045. Scooby Doo Abracadabra Doo
046. Not Since You
047. The Education of Shelby Knox [doc]
048. Gacy House
049. The Ward
050. The Face is Familiar [doc]

051. Alchemy
052. Let Me In
053. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
054. Animal Kingdom
055. Country Strong
056. The Help
057. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
058. You Again
059. The Resident
060. Midnight in Paris

061. HappyThankYouMorePlease
062. How to Train Your Dragon
063. Brother's Justice
064. The Man from Earth
065. Tangled
066. The Darwin Awards
067. Fast Five
068. Season of the Witch
069. Red State
070. The Tree of Life

071. - 100.
071. Apollo 18
072. I Wake Up Screaming
073. Last Night
074. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
075. The Caller
076. Footloose
077. Crazy Stupid Love
078. Rabbit Hole
079. Captain America
080. Another Earth

081. Attack the Block
082.
083.
084.
085.
086.
087.
088.
089.
090.

091.
092.
093.
094.
095.
096.
097.
098.
099.
100.

BONUS
BONUS
BONUS
BONUS
BONUS

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Ah, Firefox. Little orange fox that used to make life so easy. Until the updates. I had so happy with Firefox 1.01 or something but one must update eventually. Honestly, LJ started not playing nice with Firefox and since we all couldn't get along, I mainly use Google Chrome now. It's so fast! And I even downloaded Opera the other day. I like Firefox's Adblock Plus, though. But I rarely use it as a browser anymore.

Movies. Movies! What would Crickets like? I think you'd like Hanna, Planet of the Apes (which I haven't seen), Tangled, and Footloose.

Movies I like but are seriously angsty: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The King's Speech (not angsty), and Bastard Out of Carolina. That's all that I've seen.

Which internet browser will you end up dating now?

Yeah I haven't had a chance to try out this newest version yet, but we'll see how it works out. If not I guess I'll have to use Chrome. Argh. I wonder if chrome has an adblock plus equivalent. Probably not since google creates it?

I actually watched all of those. The list above is the list of new movies I've seen so far this year. I actually kind of can't believe I've watched all those, lol.

I have no idea which browser I'll use. Time will tell.

Oops, I read the list wrong. I should give you titles you haven't watched. I recommend: The Adjustment Bureau, Billy Eliot, Punchdrunk Love, Burlesque, and Catfish.

Hope that helps! I've watched a lot of movies too, but oddly not most of the ones on your list.

I've liked all the eps up to the last two, though it seems like the thing I disliked most about 3x07 (the creepiness of Lexi's torture "method") was intentional and not just WTF writing. Still, I was sort of horribly disappointed by the last ep (I'm not a historian, but I know enough about European history to know they're doing it WRONGWRONGWRONG. *sigh*). I've pretty much given up hope that they'll manage to make the originals plot into anything awesome, and now I'm worried they'll ruin Elijah (even more). I'm really bummed about Stefan - what made his plot more interesting to me was always that the ripper was a part of him and something he had to conquer within himself in contrast with the Angel/Angelus plot, where it wasn't something that Angel had to struggle with internally. By taking away his free will, they just turned him into another Angelus.

Oh, well. At least everyone is pretty?

I have always enjoyed the eps themselves, but the show just keeps moving into a direction that I'm overall not happy with. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense but it works out in my brain, lol. The whole idea of the history given in the backstory is definitely frustrating, but I guess could be hand-waved by the idea that it's a handful of families (with a couple of witches in tow) that made this journey and so it's not necessarily something that would be on the history books? I don't even know, lol.

I still have massive hope for Elijah. All is not yet lost.

I actually didn't mind the compulsion storyline but it's going on way too long. The one thing about it that pleases me about it is the idea that he doesn't have a choice, so it cements the idea that while Damon has used this whole "turn it off excuse" (that I never bought in the first place, and apparently neither did Rose) but that it is very much a choice and not something that can be used as an excuse.

Yes, they're all still pretty. We still have that.

ITA about TVD. Stripping Tyler and Stefan of their free will was STUPID and needs to be fixed ASAP. Also, I HATEHATEHATE that this whole Ripper!Stefan arc was created to make Damon look ~better and give him a chance to play the ~hero. I knew that was the main reason behind the arc but those first few episodes gave me the hope that maybe the arc itself would still be okay. Then, that flipping the switch crap happened :(

These are not new movies but if you haven't seen them: the Resident Evil series, Imagine Me and You, Beyond Borders, Queen of the Damned, 30 Days of Night, Garden State, The Young Victoria, The Notebook, Serenity, anything with Laura Linney, The Jane Austen Book Club, Red, the recent Jane Eyre...IDEK, give me a genre and I'll give you plenty of recs, though they probably won't be from this year as I've seen next to nothing as of late.

I didn't mind the compulsion because I knew that there was no way that Stefan would willingly hurt Elena without being forced. We witnessed this in that episode and Klaus was forced to handle that reality which made me happy. But it's going on way too long. Way too long. I have a hard time caring about characters when they're NOT the same characters I actually do care about. For me, annoying "evil" Stefan is growing old (and boring) rather quickly. And Tyler was old before it even started (basically because we're already seeing this with Stefan.)

I have always kind of wanted to see The Resident Evil films.

I'd be interested to hear some of your other recs but can't think of any genres. What are you specialties? LOL.

The whole thing is just old and has been for several episodes. I just want my boys back. And not dead. Not dying is very important, as I fear for Tyler, in particular.

I love that series. I just watched all 4 films for Halloween and they hold up really well, imo. Hot women kicking zombie ass? Doesn't get much better than that :)

A few recs for less-known films, since I kinda love things from several different genres -

Passengers (Anne Hathawy + Patrick Wilson)
The Illusionist (Edward Norton)
Chloe (Julianna Moore)
Legion (Paul Bentley)
Head in the Clouds (Charlize Theron)
The Mothman Prophecies (Laura Linney)
The Life of David Gale (Laura Linney + Kate Winslet)
The Underworld series (Kate Beckinsale)
Skinwalkers (Rhona Mitra)
Blood and Chocolate (Agnes Bruckner)
Ella Enchanted (Anne Hathaway)
Stardust (Claire Danes)
Murder by Numbers (Sandra Bullock)
Red Eye (Rachel McAdams)
The Constant Gardner (Ralph Fiennes)

Given the show's history with 7-8 episode acts, we can safely assume that Klaus will cease to be the big bad on the 14th or 15th episode (if he hadn't already as of "Ghost World"), so that's the absolute latest that plotline will go.

I'm still holding out a little bit of hope that Stefan's "compulsion" is actually just deep cover. He looked a little disappointed to get bailed out by Damon; he looked like he was considering *not* going with him. If his emotions/humanity have really been 'shut off,' the switch is faulty.

I was just thinking about the Stefan-compulsion / Tyler-siring thing, and a thought crossed my mind--that it really raises the stakes on actually killing Klaus. One of my big problems with last season's unkillable-Original-Klaus plotline was 'why bother killing him? With the power of 100 dead witches, surely Bonnie could a)trap him in the tomb, b)sink him down the Mariana Trench, or c)launch him into low-earth-orbit. Because of Stefan and Tyler, that doesn't work anymore.

Finished Mindy Kaling's book this week. It was adorable and funny. I think it wasn't as good as Bossypants for me, although in some ways it was slightly better (if that makes sense).

I just started Mindy's book today. It's not as funny as Bossypants, but I think I find it more interesting in terms of her career stories and the focus she has on her girlfriends.

Yeah I think I agree. Especially about the focus on her girlfriends. It had a much more social-life spin on it I think. It was at times more (and less) personal.

The Lisbeth series is AMAZING... uh like I could totally kill you with suggestions but most of them are older films, however newish documentary wise: All This Tea (2007)

Ideas: My Own Private Idaho, Easy Rider, The Motorcycle Diaries, The Contender, Peeping Tom, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Duck Soup, The Kid, Sherlock Jr., Shadow of a Doubt, George Harrison: Living In The Material World (2011), M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder...

I haven't heard of the Lisbeth movies (I'm already assuming this isn't the same Lisbeth of Dragon-Tattoo fame.) You'll have to tell me more!

I am already really liking a lot of your suggestions! I'll have to check which of these are on netflix streaming or that I can get... by other means.

I was being lazy and I only know the swedish names so I just used hers.

I'm sure some of those and findable if not youtube might have the older one in pieces.

Well I'm definitely going to be looking for some of your suggestions.

Also: On the waterfront, Seventh Seal, Paths of Glory, Metropolis, Nanook of the North, anything by the Lumière brothers, The Birds, American Graffiti, Vanishing Point, Annie Hall, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Bonnie and Clyde, The Birth of a Nation or Triumph des Willens(I recommend either of these only if you have very strong stomach for historic injustices and prejudces), Goodbye Lenin!, Der Untergang, Cannibal Tours...

Uh Cannibal tours I would be surprised if you found it anywhere and if you did it would probably be very expensive but if a miracle happens and you aren't queasy about actual tales of cannibalism- great film.

Movies: Super 8, Source Code (how have you not seen this one???), Caramel*, Pimpernel Smith*, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies*, Paris, Je T'Aime.

*Movies on Netflix Streaming.

I have seen Source Code! I think it's on my list up there. (Along with Super 8.) I haven't heard of any of these others except for Paris Je T'Aime, although I did see New York, I Love You and disliked it... so... not too sure about Paris Je T'Aime. (If I'm remembering right they're kind of like a pair in a series? Not really a sequel but... kind of the same idea.)

Thank you!

Ahh, I didn't see them listed, but I was just kind of skimming.

Paris Je T'Aime is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better than New York. xINFINITY. The films are much more self-contained, and there was maybe one (maybe) that was just kind of meh for me. Admittedly, I am a francophile, but I think you would enjoy the majority of the films. (Several of them are snapshot-in-time pieces a la Cairo Time, which I know you loved.) There is a hilarious Coen brothers one with Steve Buscemi in a metro station. I am just saying.

Caramel is a Lebanese film about women who run a beauty salon in Beirut. The lead is also the writer/director. It made me want to go back to the Middle East.

Pimpernel Smith is a 1940s update of The Scarlet Pimpernel with Leslie Howard as the title character (a Nazi-thwarting archaeologist!). It's a little bit cheesy but there are some good moments. It was also one of Howard's last films (his plane was shot down during the war).

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies is a French James Bond spoof with lots of stereotyping, ridiculous fight sequences, and risque double entendres. Also cheesy but in a very different way from Pimpernel Smith. It is kind of what Austin Powers wishes it could be (only French).

Also, if you haven't seen them, you should definitely watch Before Sunrise/Before Sunset. They are both utterly fantastic.

I broke up w Firefox a whole back. Chrome & I are steady now. Took a while to get used to, but soo much better.

See this is what I am hearing. I am hesitant to switch but I think I might have to. Dammit.

I had to break up with Firefox a few months ago, each update was glitchier and glitchier!! Google Chrome is my browser now, and I adore it.

I'm still not very happy with VD either. There was an explosion of love over the last episode, and I'm just over here all like ... nothing I'm mad about has been fixed (compulsion and ~siring being some of the biggest), sooooo. Lol.

And thank you for giving me an excuse to watch your beautiful Shameless vid again. Show, come back to meeeeee <3333

Ugh. FIREFOX. Why you do this to me!?!?!?!

Yeah none of my things have been fixed either. And worse it's inhibiting my desire/ability to write this show. Which just sucks.

Yay! I hope you liked the changes. I so miss this show and have already started my 2nd rewatch. (Which would technically be my third time watching it.)

I finished Mindy Kaling's book last night and I absolutely adored it. I think it's about even with Tina Fey's book for me. I'll love her forever for this line: Everyone has a moment when they discover they love Amy Poehler. <3

(BTW, I watch Misfits 3x01, and you were right, the new guy isn't bad. A little too Nathan-esque maybe, but his tattoos have wooed me.)

Edited 2011-11-07 16:01 (UTC)

I find that with The Vampire Diaries I enjoy the episodes as I am watching them, but when I think about the series as a whole it's just a hot mess.

I gave up on Firefox two months ago and switched to Chrome; pretty much the best move I could have made. Chrome gets high memory usage but if it does crash (rare), it keeps a history of all your tabs so you can find what you had open easily.

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so... we need to break up.

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