Movie Challenge (Day 7)

Day 7: Movie that makes you feel guilty.

Hmm. Now, I know there are movies I really feel awful admitting I like. I'm just having trouble thinking of any of them. I promise it's not because I'm avoiding admitting I like them.

Oh, wait. I absolutely know which one I feel most guilty about liking. Because it is not a very good movie. And the ending makes absolutely no sense. And the acting is awkward. But it did to me exactly what it was trying to do. It scared the crap outta me.

And that movie is The Happening.

I am one of three people I know who didn't hate The Happening. Like I said, it ended up being a very effective movie for me. It did for me what good horror movies manage to do for everyone - it preyed on a specific fear I already had ingrained within me. I am terrified of the idea of losing control of myself. I like being aware and in control of what I'm doing at all times. It creeps me out when I'm extremely tired and stop being able to really rationally control what I'm saying.

Given that, it's not really surprising that this movie left me almost literally paralyzed with fear at some point. Watching these people slowly lose control of themselves was like my worst nightmare. I was so emotionally involved in the movie that seeing the final survivors emerge at the end was an extremely cathartic experience.

It doesn't matter how cheesy the dialogue was, or how awkward the acting of the main characters was... seeing scene after scene of people lose their minds is one of the most horrifying things I can think of. And knowing I myself was safe at the end of that was an amazing sense of release.

It was a very intense, very personal movie-watching experience for me. This movie just happened to tap into something that had terrified and does still terrify me. That's what horror movies try to do on a more universal level. Unfortunately, The Happening seems to really only have been effective for me. But it was so effective for me that I'm thrown off and have trouble articulating to others why I actually really liked this movie.

Movie Challenge (Day 6)

Day 6: Biggest movie character crush.

Oh, boy. There are some pretty amazing movie characters out there, and I have fallen in love with a lot of them. But I'm pretty sure it's always going to have to come back to my very first movie character crush... Han Solo from the original Star Wars trilogy. In fact, I had a crush on Han Solo before I had a crush on anyone I knew in real life, back when I was 11 or so. Not usually a fan of the "supposed mercenary with a heart of gold" type character, but Han's a great character with a nice snarky sense of humor.

Hard to choose my favorite Han Solo moment, too, so here's this one.

Movie Challenge (Day 5)

Day 5: Your favorite movie at this time last year.

My favorite movie hasn't changed much in the past few years. It's been steadily rotating between Casablanca, Love Actually, Annie Hall, and Moulin Rouge! for several years now. Since I've already mentioned Casablanca, let me go ahead and pay tribute to Love Actually with this one.

Love Actually was one of the earlier ensemble rom coms and one of the only good ones. Heck, it's one of the only rom coms ever that I enjoy. Richard Curtis is a funny screenwriter who produces good dialogue and instantly-likable characters. The cheesy mushiness is off the charts on this movie but it's all done with a sort of "yes, we know it's silly but just enjoy it with us!" attitude that I find completely infectious. It's not a deep movie. It's not life-changing in any way. It just always makes me happy whenever I watch it.

It's hard to pick a favorite clip or favorite moment from this movie, so here's a musical moment from it that always makes me smile whenever I watch it.

Movie Challenge (Day 4)

Day 4 - The most surprising plot twist.

I'm in the unfortunate position of 1) knowing enough about movies to know most major plot twists before I see them because people spoil things everywhere, and 2) knowing enough about movies to guess at the less popular ones. The few that have taken me by surprise are things that are sort of odd choices - for example, the movie Crazy, Stupid, Love. had two minor plot twists, neither of which I saw coming, but it's not exactly what you would call a mind-bender of a movie.

So I'm going to go with the one that gives me one of my favorite movie-related stories from my childhood.

(Note: If you don't know the twist in the middle of The Empire Strikes Back, congratulations for having avoided SO MUCH POP CULTURE. But now you should stop reading, go watch the original Star Wars trilogy immediately, and then come back and finish reading this post.)

I was 11 or 12 when I first watched the original Star Wars trilogy. I knew nothing about it, but was really enjoying it and all the characters. Then, in the middle of the second movie, came the twist that was supposed to blow my mind.

For someone who had no knowledge whatsoever of the Star Wars world and characters, this should have been a great twist.

Except it didn't work on me.

Darth Vader's all about trying to get Luke to give in to his anger, trying to manipulate him emotionally to try to get him on his side. So what better way to do that than to tell him that he is Luke's father? It could make Luke feel betrayed by Obi-Wan, disconnected from his purpose. It sounds like a great way to lure him over to the Dark Side.

Clearly Darth Vader was just lying to him to mess with his head. And being the gullible creature he is, Luke falls for it.

And then, for some reason, this obvious lie wasn't corrected in the rest of this movie. I began to wonder if Luke's misconception would keep manipulating him and lead to his ultimate downfall.

And then, partway through Return of the Jedi, the ghost of Obi-Wan casually confirms that this is true.

And I went, "Wait, WHAAAAAAT?"

After having assumed for quite awhile now that it was all a nefarious lie, the news that this was actually true hit me like a ton of bricks. I couldn't focus for the next 20 minutes of the movie or so because I kept going over everything in between the announcement of the twist and when I actually found out it was true, reframing it all in my head to make sense with this new information.

I still do think it's odd that Luke buys into this so quickly (although the "you know it to be true" line could be part of it - he has some hunch that pushes him to believe it?) because if an 11-year-old thought it was an obvious lie, then someone trained by Yoda should certainly have at least considered that possibility.

Movie Challenge (Day 3)

(Day 3... a few days later. Because I had trouble coming up with an answer to this one.)

Day 3 - A movie you could never watch with your parents.

Well, my father and I are both pretty open in our movie-viewing preferences. There's not a lot that actively bothers us. Mom's a lot more conservative in what she enjoys watching, so there are a lot of movies I'd never watch with her. There are fewer I wouldn't watch with Dad.

Admittedly, it would be awkward to watch something like, say, Black Swan with my father, but in that movie's case, I'm convinced enough of the movie's brilliance (I love Black Swan) that getting to share that with someone else would override the awkwardness of some of the scenes in the middle. I'm a big believer in the idea of the movie as a whole as opposed to the individual parts, and I'm pretty sure my father is as well. So I'm pretty sure the only movies I could never watch with my parents are movies that I loathe myself for sitting all the way through in the first place... and a movie instantly jumps to mind. I have never felt a stronger need to cleanse my brain than I did after I watched Mallrats. I have deliberately avoided other Kevin Smith movies because that one made me feel like such a terrible person for even watching any of that. I'm not even sure what it was about it that disgusted me so much. I watched it long enough ago that I don't remember all the particulars, just the resulting emotions from when it was finally over. Yeah, never watching that one with the parents.

I am not linking a clip of this movie. You know, because I hate it.

Life Advice From Teenage Hannah (Who Turned Out To Be Completely Wrong)

Most of us are very different people than we were as teenagers.

The thing is, we *thought* we knew a lot as teens. There were truths we'd latched onto and were proclaiming as absolute, and others we'd completely rejected... only to find out later that a lot of the ones we held onto weren't right and the ones that we'd rejected were.

I want to explore some of those. Ideally, I'd like to make this a series where I invite some of my close friends to share the high school life lessons that no longer seem so wise to them, but we all know how well I do with ongoing series, so it might just be a one-time-only blog post. (If it does become a series, that title has GOT to change. I wrote this post a month ago and honestly never posted it because I couldn't think of a good title, but then thought, "I want to post this, dang it!" So if anybody has ideas for a good one, go for it.)

A Bit of Background

I was raised in a pretty conservative Christian home. I was homeschooled, grew up in church, and was always the one who knew all the answers in Bible trivia games, even the obscure stuff like Mephibosheth (the crippled son of David's best friend Jonathan) or Ehud (the left-handed guy who stabbed a king who was relieving himself). In high school I could have spouted out churchy answers to any problem you could think of, along with the Bible verses to support them.

I'm still very similar to the person I was in high school, in a lot of ways. I am still a Christian. I still hold to a lot of the ideals and beliefs that I did then. But there are also a lot of things I was taught (or, more often, just picked up from implications) that I no longer believe. My faith is not nearly as black and white as I once thought it was, and there aren't as many clear-cut answers. And that is what is mostly represented here.

So. On to the list.

In High School: Group dating is the way to go.

I was a proponent of this in middle school and the first year or so of high school. For those who aren't familiar with it, the idea is that you and your significant other stay away from alone time together - rather, you hang out and get to know each other in groups of people.

Now: No take on whether group dating ever makes sense, but it really, REALLY doesn't for introverts.

Kind of a minor one to start out with. It kind of cracks me up remembering that I was such a fan of this idea. My stance started wavering around the time I started realizing that, uh, I can't make friends in groups, much less establish and maintain a romantic relationship. One of the things I used to hear (and then repeat) about group dating was that you're more likely to be yourself in a group of friends, so the other person gets to know you as you really are... or something. The only reason I really latched onto this idea was because I didn't realize what it meant to be an introvert yet. I didn't realize that I COULDN'T DO ANY OF THIS. I am much less myself in a group of people than I am with just one other person. If Jacob and I spent all our time together with other people, I would never feel like I really knew who he was, and he certainly wouldn't know who I was. And if I still felt this life lesson to be true today, it would be because I didn't know who I was, either.

In High School: Committed Christians are outgoing, boisterous and enthusiastic.

This connects to the previous one, actually. This one isn't always said out loud, but it's a powerful unspoken implication in American Christianity. It's not entirely the church's fault -the same things are told to introverts in non-spiritual terms in the rest of the world. It's just kind of leaked in. The louder, more extroverted Christians are praised for "truly living their faith," while the quiet, introverted Christians are told they need to "get out of their comfort zone" so they can really live for God.

Now: A person's enthusiasm and outgoing nature has absolutely no correlation to their walk with God. None whatsoever.

Sometimes I wonder if this is one of the reasons I never really made friends in high school, because I was so busy trying to be extroverted that I hid a lot of who I really was. I complained to my online friends how hard it was to do the right thing and push myself to reach out to anyone and everyone around me... not realizing that it was hard because I'M NOT AN EXTROVERT. I was pushing and guilting myself into being someone I'm just not because I thought that was what God wanted me to do. And, ya know what? I sucked at it. I'm a terrible extrovert. So I was even more awkward than I usually am and never really connected with anybody. I really wish sometimes that I could go back and relive those years knowing what I know now about who I am.

In High School: If you don't go to church, you won't have a strong walk with God.

This was always the easiest way to measure whether someone was "backsliding." I assumed the people who only came to church every once in awhile were not doing much with God outside of church either. The most devoted to God were the ones who were in the church all the time, although only going to one service a week was acceptable if you were really busy or lived far away.

Now: Church is good, but your actual relationship with God comes first, and you don't always need church to be close to God.

I'm still figuring this one out. It still feels wrong to say. But I absolutely know the above sentence to be true right now. I know this because I haven't really regularly attended church since I lived in Illinois 3 years ago (and even then it was kind of iffy) and my relationship with God is going GREAT. I'm learning and growing and changing and life is good. In fact, my relationship with God is much stronger than it was when I was a regular churchgoer, and CERTAINLY stronger than it was when I was an *avid* churchgoer. It doesn't just happen on its own or anything - I'm still putting tons of effort into my relationship with God.

My first year here in Huntington I tried to find a church to attend but found that every week it was just causing more and more stress to go and be a part of it. Finally, I decided to give myself a break from church for a couple months, and the weirdest thing happened - my relationship with God got better. I grew closer to him, spent more time connecting with him, felt like I heard from him more often. I tried going back to church and, once again, became very distanced from him. So I stopped again. And that's kind of where I am now. Sure, I would like to someday be able to find a church I can connect to, but right now I'm perfectly okay supplementing it with alone time with God and God-themed discussion with the Christians around me.

In Conclusion

So there are a few of the ways in which my worldview has changed from when I was in high school. I'm sure that 10 years from now, there will be many more changes. Maybe I'll have to do a "life advice from mid-20s Hannah etc. etc." series. Heh. But overall, I think I have figured out a lot of things since then. I feel like I'm more open to other people's thoughts, closer in my relationship with God, and more willing to live without all the answers. Which is good, because I'm not going to have them any time soon. Life's a lot more uncertain, a lot more about trial and error and learning how to fail than I thought it was in high school. And I'm OK with that.

The Movie Challenge (Take 2)

Hey, remember when I tried to do the 50 Day Movie Challenge last year? And it failed miserably because I posted one time and then forgot about it? Well, movie blogger Brittany Rivera over at Snap. Crackle. Pop... Culture has started on the Facebook movie challenge as well, and I thought, "Right! That's fun! I should try that again!"

But you know what's happened since that first movie challenge thing started? There are now alternate versions all over the place. So it's no longer 30 or 50 all together... there are at least four different possible lists. Some of them are duplicates, yes, but all four have some unique questions. So I'm going to try this again and work through all four of these lists. I have them all in a list and am going to choose a question at random from it until I'm done with all of them. (Or, well, at least that's the plan.)

So here goes.

The one time I posted, the question was about my favorite movie, and I said Casablanca. So I'm not answering that question again if it comes up.

Day 2 - Favorite book-to-movie adaptation.

Oh, this is an easy one for me. I read High Fidelity by Nick Hornby in high school and loved it, and I was pretty worried to watch the movie adaptation. The book had such vivid, interesting characters, and I was certain that the movie would never be able to measure up to it. Something would be done wrong. Something would be terrible.

But, it turns out, nothing was.

With the sole exception of Ian (and even then not too much), every single character was exactly how I had imagined them to be from the book. I suddenly understood what people meant when they talked about characters they knew coming to life on the screen. It was almost eerie how well it matched. Even when there were changes from the book as far as plot, the characters were so true to the spirit of the book that it didn't really matter.

It's been a little while since I rewatched this one, but even just watching this clip I found on YouTube makes me want to go back and watch it again. I'd do it right now, except I left the copy I got for Christmas at home in Illinois. Whoops.