Catchy Name Needed

As I mentioned yesterday, I think, we wanted to go see the Spider-man movie in a theater one more time, so we went today. I think I'm done needing to see it in a theater now. It must still be doing booming business, we went to the Cinemark, which has 18 screens, and I'm pretty sure Spider-man was showing in over half of them, and the (smallish) room we saw it in was full or very near it, anyway. We were sitting on the front row and it was full, and that's usually the last thing to fill up. (Rob and I are weird, we like to sit up front.)

I feel like I should talk about my favorites of the year or something, but I can't really think that I have one favorite. I already talked earlier this month about the ones from earlier in the year  - Nomadland & its fellow contenders, that is - and since the Oscars were late, those have already competed and are done. And I talked about Licorice Pizza, which to my mind was more "interesting" than anything else. What else is supposed to be Oscar contenders this year? I know I've looked at a bunch of "best of 2021" lists as they came out all month, and hardly any of it is anything I had seen. I guess Dune will be in there, and I did like it a lot. Encanto will probably be on the animated list. (It's already on Disney+, and I'll probably watch it again soon.) Usually in January when not much is being released, we revisit the likely nominees as we find them. (Variety has Belfast as the #1 contender - that's something I'm probably interested in seeing. And we've been saying we may pick up Netflix for a few months - we had cancelled it because we weren't watching it that much. And Power of the Dog is one that we'd probably watch there.)

(If you put a gun to my head about a favorite, I'd probably say Dune, followed by Shang-Chi. But if you asked me again tomorrow, I might change my mind!)

2022 so far:
Spider-man: No Way Home (2nd time)

2021 movie list, starting with the most recent we've seen:
Licorice Pizza
Spider-man: No Way Home
Encanto
My Neighbor Totoro (Ghiblifest)
Ghostbusters Afterlife
Eternals
Dune (twice)
Spirited Away (Ghiblifest)
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (twice)
The Suicide Squad
The Green Knight
Black Widow
Army of the Dead
The Courier
Raya and the Last Dragon
Nomadland
Judas and the Black Messiah
Promising Young Woman
News of the World

...and Rob saw all of those plus these:
Nightmare Alley
Antlers
Halloween Kills (twice)
Lamb
Malignant (twice)
Candyman
The Night House
Don't Breathe 2
Old
Escape Room 2
The Forever Purge
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
A Quiet Place 2
Spiral
Separation
In the Earth
The Unholy
Nobody
The Father

columbina was trashing the Oscars earlier (don't go looking for the entry, this was in GuildWars chat) and I was defending them, and he didn't seem to understand why. But I love the Oscars. I certainly don't get as excited about the whole thing as I used to but I still enjoy them. I think maybe it's because they're really about movies, not about celebrities. I know it becomes as much about the celebrities as the movies, but I still give it a pass. I can't really defend my fondness for the whole big ridiculous monstrosity in any really coherent way, but darnit, it's just the Oscars. They're an institution.

Also, there's a really odd liveblog going on oscar.com - I haven't quite figured out who's writing it, but I'm guessing it's not a publicist or anything.

(There will probably be another entry later about jewelry, but I will make that a separate thing.)