Best Picture Challenge: Oppenheimer

 So, I finally got my act together and rewatched the Best Picture winner of 2023. 

Let's get into in. 

Oppenheimer is about a a scientist, named J Robert Oppenheimer, and the creation of the Atomic Bomb. 

Ok, look the movie is fine. I get the story and the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer is interesting. The conclusion of World War II and what happened to him after the bombs went off, all good. However, I have seen it twice and I had a hard time following it. I get the his ties to the communist party is what got him called back to court and had his security clearance revoked, but I'm not sure how RDJ's character was effect, and why his testimony was relevant. 

I love Cillian Murphy so much, and I think he did a great job in the role. I just think the movie was long and didn't have enough as rick to keep me hooked. That's probably because I don't get the feuding aspect with RDJ. 

I'm sure if I read up on the history it would make more sense but I don't think I should have to do homework to understand the basis of a movie. 

I wanted the movie to win Best Picture, because I understand the beauty, heart and passion that went into the film, but it's not my favorite Best Picture winner. 

Come Forward: June

Cinderella Man is one of those movies that I have heard about since it came out, but never actually watched it. I finally got the chance to see it and now I get it. 

I really is a great movie. 

James J. Braddock is a mind who loves to box. However, in the year leading up to, what would be come, World War II his is down on his luck. He boxes, but doesn't have a steady job. The fights aren't paying him enough to keep his family together and keep a roof over their heads. Eventually, he license to box get revoked, and he is left without any choices to keep his family afloat. He also has to hide the fact that he has a broken hand from the dock managers, or they won't let him keep the job he has. 

When the kids get sent away, due to sickness, he begs the people he used to fight for for money to get the heat back on in his house, so his kids can come home. 

The kids come home and his luck starts to slowly change. His old coach comes and says that he can have him come back and do one more fight. It wasn't going to be anything crazy, but it would be able to get him back on his feet, and give him one more chance in the ring. 

Well Braddock had other plans, but he didn't know that until he got back in the ring. Once he was there there was no getting him out.

Here is what I love about this story, that also helped me to get back on the big project. Is do the small things. 

I got so far off the project that I have been working on that I didn't know what to do. I thought that maybe I wouldn't be able to come back to it, or follow through in the way that I had been. However, I just started small and wrote what I know I wanted to write for that next part. I didn't plan on goin crazy, but I started with a small thing and before I knew it I was right back to where I was before. 

Sometime we get so overwhelmed b how big the project, or problem, is that we forget that we don't need to tackle everyone all at once. We can start small and work out way up. 

The Man Behind The Curtain: June

We are half way there! 

How is it already the the last day of the first half of the year? Time does fly when you are having fun!

Let's just jump right into this month's movie: Matilda.

Matilda was born into a family that really didn't want her. She was left alone and made to look after herself from a very young age. However, Matilda is special. She was able to write her name from a baby, could ready since she was three, and make her own food since she was five. She loved to learn, and love to read most of all. 

However, her parents didn't want her to go to school. See, her dad runs a car shop, and not an honorable one. He has been cheating people on the cars he sells, and he is getting stolen car parts. He doesn't want to be busted by the cops, so he has Matilda picking up all of the packages while her parents are out for the day. 

However, Matilda starts going to the library when she is waiting for the parts She is able to work her way through the whole children's section in a matter of years. She loves reading anything and  everything and she really wants to go to school.

When the principal buys a car from her father, her father agrees to let Matilda go to school. The only reason he agrees is because the Principal is a mean a bitter lady, who does not like children. 

However, Matilda's teacher, Ms. Honey, is a wonderful person who has had a hard life growing up. She love the children that she teaches and hope that one day everything will works itself out. 

Matilda learns that she has great powers of control. She can movie objects around her with her mind. She shows these powers to Ms. Honey. When Matilda learns that the Principal is actually Ms. Honey's aunt, and stole Ms. Honey's house and money from her, Matilda uses these powers to get everything back from her. 

Let talk about self esteem for a minute here. The thing about self esteem is that when you are young you have in droves. When you are a kid you really don't care what anyone thinks about you at all. As we get older we start to doubt ourselves, and then when other people who doubt themselves start making comments, we start to hid who we really are. 

I think there is who think we should act like and dress like, and then there is the person we deem to be acceptable to society. 

Over the last few years I have really stopped caring what others think. Now, don't get me wrong I'm not totally over caring. However, I have found that if I kept worry about what other have felt, I would have no done so much in my life. I would not have found passions I have, I would not love wearing the clothes that I wear, and I can honestly say, that I love it. 

I know there are a lot of things that I do are considered childish, or weird, but I have had so much fun doing them. I think that by doing the weird and childish thing it helps us to balance all the stuff we have to deal with as an adult. 

Be a little childish, it could make your day brighter. 

Come Forward: May

I really thought that I was caught up. However, it appears that I am not. That's totally ok! I am fighting every instinct in me that wants to bash myself over the head because I was doing so well. I know that this would be totally counter productive. 

I took a year off of projects last year, reluctantly. This time last year I was still trying to push myself to "make up" for the lost time. When I finally let go and said I can't do it, it was s relief. I hadn't realized that I wasn't having any fun with the projects anymore. that every single time I thought about doing them would send me into a panic. This year has been crazy, but I am loving the projects again. 

I may not be doing them how I thought that I would, but I am doing them in a more conductive way, that make life easier, and makes the projects more fun. 

The big project that I am working on this year, I felt bad because I put it down for a few months. I didn't mean to, but time just got away from me. When you stop working on something you sometimes start to think that you can't pick it back up, or that it will never be as good as you originally thought that it was going to be. That You ruined all chances of success by not working on it as much as you had been. Then I did two things, looked at my list of Motivation advice, and watched The Pursuit of Happyness.

 Chris Gardner's life is slowly turning to shambles. He invested all of his savings in a bad deal, that he is trying to make work. The money that he thought that he was going to make back quickly was dragging in. This slow income puts hot coals under Chris and his wife's relationship. They are trying their best, but nothing is working how they want it to. After seeing the work the stock brokers to, he tells his wife he is going to try his hand and becoming one. He is great and numbers and with people and figures that once he knows the ropes he will be able to make this new venture work. The problem is is that in order to get the job he has to work as an unpaid intern. 

   

His wife is having none of it and decides to leave him. She leaves him with no money, and penniless job, and their five year old son. The only income that Chris has for the next six weeks is to try and sell off the last of his bad deal while working an unpaying job. Every time he thinks that he can't get any worse, everything goes more down his. He gets robbed, he winds up homeless, the government takes his money for taxes, and he is dealing with no other choice but to bring his son with him on this ride. 

Yet, though everything is falling apart, Chris is determined to put everything back together. Everyday he picks himself up, and chooses to keep going. The weeks and weeks worth of work are relentless but they all pay off for him in the end. 

One of the things that Chris does though the whole movie is make a list. It's not written down, and repeated or anything like that. However, he keeps checked things off of this mental list, and keeps checking his progress. 

When I started this big project at the start of the year, I didn't think I was going to be anywhere near where I am now. I didn't think I would even make it as far as I have. Yet, I am so much further ahead that I ever dreamed possible that I realized that I could keep going. 

You have to sop every once in a while to see where you are at. You have to walk away and come back sometimes, and sometimes you walk away for longer than you think you will. Also, check to see how far you have come. The only way you will fail is if you totally stop. 

The Man Behind the Curtain: May

 Over the last several months I have talked about a lot of why I am the way I am or why I do things the way that I do. Thus far, we have talked about a lot of positives. I don't want to say that what I am bringing up today is negative, but I look at it negatively a lot. 

Have you ever felt like no matter what you do your running around in circles. That it's the same thing over and over and over again? 

I know lots of movie characters feel like this. They they are stuff in a loop in their life and they have no clue how to get out of it, or how to cope. Adaline, in Age of Adaline, is a great example of this. 

Adaline was a normal 20 something year old in the early 1930s. She feel in love, had a baby, and was living her beautiful, but simple, life. When her husband died in an accident, she felt the first of a long live of sorrows they she didn't know were to come. Her daughter and her were able to live with the lose and built a life. However, on her way to her parent's house, during a rare snow storm in California, Adaline lost control of her car, feel in the ivy pond on the side of the road, and died. Not that long after, lighting struck the car, which restarted her heart, and changed the parts of her DNA. She would not longer age. 

This bit of information would not be known to her until many years later, when it was very evident, that her age was not lining up with what her face looked like. Looking like you are in your late 20s/early 30s and your real age is in the 70s is rather hard to explain. When the government takes notice that she is not lying about who she is, and that she isn't aging, she has to go on the run. She spends the next several decades changing her name, and coming up with a new identity, so that no one is the wiser on who she is, or want to speak to her. 

Adaline doesn't have many people in her life. She has one friends who is blind, so had no idea that she look way younger than she is, her daughter knows who she is, and her dog is always good a keeping secrets. Other than that, no one really knows her, and she prefers it that way. Though her daughter doesn't like that she is mostly alone. She wants her mother to find her own happiness, Adaline doesn't because she knows that there is no future with whoever it is she would meet. 

This all changes when she meets Ellis. 

While she doesn't want to fall for him, she does. She is faced with having to continue to live while he knows the truth, or to leave him and be alone again. 

Will she choose love till death does them part, or does fate have other ideas in mind. 

If you sit an think about it long enough, life really is the same things over and over and over again. You wake up and do similar things like eat, sleep, breath, blink, but that very over simplified isn't it? I feel "stuck" in my life is more ways than I care to admit. There isn't a whole lot that we can do to be "unstuck", right? To quote the movie Marry Me "If you want something different you have to do something different". Now, this is a great quote to learn from, but you can't live by it all of the time. If you do, you will cross a line of doing something different that you can't undo, or dramatically change your life and you could loose control over it.

However, this line is great for what Adaline does through the whole movie. She has a routine, she has her passions, and she is cautious about what she does do and what she doesn't do. Yes, sometimes you have to take big risks for things in your life, but really if you want something different in your life you don't have to change your whole life. Just a few small parts.

For me, I don't like my eating habits and my current walk with God. I'm struggling. I feel like my lack to talking with God is killing me spiritually (it is) and my unhealthy food and lack of exercise is killing me physically and slowly (it is). The problem with me is that I feel like in order to fix both of those things I have to over hall my whole life in order to fix them. In reality, if I commit to doing the things I know that I should be doing, and making small changes for more desired effects, it will help me. I don't have to turn over and be perfect in one swoop. I can't do things over time. 

The honest truth is, when I am feeling stuff, I know it's just my life telling me that I need to look around and make some small change in my life. That could mean getting out of town to a bit, or just not eat as many fries (though that it had). Being "stuck" has been a part of my life over the last few years, however, it's been a great guiding force to learn new things, and try new things, and reach out of my comfort zone just a little bit. 

It's a tool that I need to learn to wield, and fight against.    

Come Forward: April

So, let's talk about one of the secret projects that I am working on. I won't say that it is but I will say, I feel behind. Which I so odd because there is no deadline on this one project. Nothing, nadda, no pressure. The only person that even knows I am working on something, isn't hounding me to get anything done. So, why do I feel behind. 

Well, it's because I know what I am supposed to be doing and I'm not doing it. 

 

Coach Grant is the leader of the Eagles football team. He just ended this sixth year of coaching with another loosing season. He feels like he has done everything that he could, and it's not enough. On top of that, he house is falling apart, his car is breaking down, him and his wife are having trouble having a baby, and the world is falling down around him. 

He feels like he is going to throw in the towel when he decides that do the one thing that he hasn't done, give it all to God. 

Grant is a believer that hasn't be doing much of it for a little while now. The night he hits rock bottom, is the night he studies God's word and decides that he needs to get his priorities back on track. He has to put God in his life first, and then he has to have everything in his life fall in line after that. The moment that he commit to changing his life, God starts to show up. Not just in the areas of this life that he needs to be fixed but in other ways he never expected.  

Not only did his life turn around, but several members on his team's lives started to change. Several were saved, and turning their lives to God, their relationships turned toward the better, new members join and were successful in other way they never dreamed of, and the team ends up going to the the State Championships, and winning. 

I have always loved the movie! It's one that always fills me with hope, and reminds me who I belong to. Also, who isn't inspired by the death crawl scene? That scene is so good because if we have faith the voice that is telling us we can do something, and we blind our eyes to the goal we mentally set, we get farther than we ever thought was possible. I think that is how I feel now in the project. 

I took a break from my secret project, mainly because I have been very busy and not able to provide the attention that I want to give it. Also, because I needed to step back a bit and figure some things out. Listing to that voice is a good thing. God told me last year to take a break from these projects, and now I am doing so much better all around! I wasn't forcing myself to do something that I wasn't passionate about just because "it's what I have been doing the last few years". I listened the whole week when I was worried I was going to loose the moment on this project and God just said to slow down and wait. 

The reason that I was worried about the momentum? I am in a place I never thought I would be. I never thought I would get nearly as far as I have. I am in such scary and unfamiliar territory that I have no idea what to do with myself! 

I am very excited to get started again, but I know that I can't have it control my whole life and taking a step back is actually better for me in the long run. 

No Place Like Movies At Home: Babe On Broadway

 See, like I said the last couple of days. I am better in the area than I have been in the last couple of years! It also helps that I finally out of a rut of movies that I wasn't too fond of. We have a very long line of musicals that are starting to take shape here!

We are continuing the rolls of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland movies with Babes on Broadway!

Tommy and his trio are out for the big time on the Great White Way! However, they closest that they have gotten is the cellar of an small Italian place in New York City. They sometimes pass by Broadway on their way home. Things aren't perfect but they know they are working regularly and they hope to make it big one day. One day is sooner than they think when they meet a woman who works for a Broadway Producer! She tells them that they can't speak a work of the audition that she is going to work out for them because it will upset her boss if everyone shows up!

So, what do they do? Tell struggling actor that they know while bragging. The creates chaos during the audition because hundred of people show up! They don't get their shot, and have to come up with another idea. That is when Tommy meets Penny. 

Penny is a actress herself, but just messed up her big chance and wondering what to do next. The two start talking and Penny invites him over for dinner, and they get to talking to a neighbor about getting the kids to the country. 

Tommy later finds out that the comity falls through on their promise to the kids, and he helps to put of a show to raise the money. However, the show gets so popular that the producer gets mad that he is being shown up right down the street from where his show is going on. 

Now, I love this movie but it doesn't have the same charm for me as Babes in Arms and Strike Up the Band have. I am not sure why because the music and great, and the movie is funny. however, If I am choosing to watch one of their movies it's not likely going to be this one. However, it's one that I would still recommend for someone who loves Micky or Judy!