What We Saw This Year, 2006 Edition

Life

We went out the theater to see exactly zero movies this year. That’s gotta be a first for me since like I was three years old. Like since my parents started dressing us in our jammies to take us to the drive-in in the big old Buick station wagon.

Dawn and I watched thirty movies on DVD. Well, we finished twenty-eight of them. Crash and Napoleon Dynamite sucked so bad that we couldn’t finish them.

  • All Quiet on the Western Front
  • Love Me If You Dare
  • The General
  • Oscar and Lucinda
  • Office Space
  • Pride and Prejudice (Keira Knightley version)
  • Good Night, and Good Luck
  • Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
  • Crash
  • Ju Dou
  • Vanity Fair
  • Raise the Red Lantern
  • Rory O’Shea Was Here
  • The 40-Year-Old Virgin
  • Sideways
  • Empire of the Sun
  • Napoleon Dynamite
  • The Quiet American
  • The Chorus
  • The Third Man
  • Barton Fink
  • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
  • Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
  • Russian Dolls
  • Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
  • They Drive by Night
  • An Inconvenient Truth
  • Croupier
  • The Last Kiss
  • Little Miss Sunshine

My favorite of the year was probably The Third Man. The Enron and Al Gore documentaries were thoroughly compelling. I’m sorry to say that I liked Master and Commander more the first time I saw it, before I had read any of the books, although it was still completely enjoyable. And I’m also sorry to say that I pretty much missed the charm of Little Miss Sunshine.

Probably watched more TV on DVD than movies, and most of that British.

Series of made-for-TV movies:

  • Horatio Hornblower
  • Sharpe Series

Classic books made into mini-series:

  • Pride and Prejudice (1980 Fay Weldon version)
  • The Barchester Chronicles
  • The Forsyte Saga (1960s version)(Creepy. Didn’t finish.)
  • The Forsyte Saga (1990s version)(Boring. Didn’t finish.)
  • Daniel Deronda
  • Middlemarch

British television series proper:

  • All Creatures Great and Small (First three seasons)
  • Good Neighbors
  • Inspector Morse (May belong in series of movies category. Watched like five of them.)
  • Prime Suspect (Same as Morse re: series of movies. Watched three.)

American television series proper that we only watched a couple of episodes:

  • The Office
  • Veronica Mars

American television series proper that we watched all episodes:

  • Wonderfalls

Dawn thinks Ioan Griffud is yummy. I don’t think we saw enough Audrey Tautou this year. Best discovery was Prime Suspect. Helen Mirren is the best. 

One thought on “What We Saw This Year, 2006 Edition”

  1. I’m right there with ya on Prime Suspect, and “The Third Man.” I’d never seen the latter until last year, and I plan to add it to the DVD collection at some point. Has anyone (other than Rod Stewart) equalled Orson Welles’ fall from grace?

    We already own the first series of “Prime Suspect.” One supposes that that will be on the Xmas list for some time.

    I can see how you turned “Napoleon Dynamite” off before it ended… it was a very strange, acquired taste. Still, you owe it to yourself to check out Napoleon’s dance scene on Youtube, which was surely the strangest part of, and highlight of that film.

    So, I’m with you on that one, but… what’s not to like about “Little Miss Sunshine?” Wasn’t Arkin funny? Is he ever not good?

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