Well maybe, as I still don’t know if I will have the time to watch the movie and write up a review while simultaneously attending a wedding in Wisconsin. I think I can pull it off though, so put me down for a most definitely … probably. That means be prepared to read about Rock Hudson, Kim Novak, Tony Curtis, Angela Lansbury, Geraldine Chaplin, Elizabeth Taylor and a horde of others who don’t warrant inclusion on this list. it’s Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d!

If I haven’t made it readily apparent, I watched a ton of movies as a child. And by ton I mean billions, quite possibly literally. Growing up in Wisconsin I tended to have a lot of free time. Now, unlike the kids of today I spent most of that free time outside.

I created countless games and would spend hours playing them. One of my personal favorites was a version of baseball involving my basketball hoop and a tennis ball. You see I was always the pitcher and the object was to throw the ball into the square of the backboard for a strike, and if the ball hit the rim that was the equivalent of the batter hitting the ball. Trust me, it totally made sense to me and was a blast to play.

But when I would get tired of playing my own personal version of BASEketball I would bike to my local video store and rent a movie. Now it didn’t take long for me to work my way through the giants of the day and I soon began to search out far riskier fare. As an interesting side note, I know have the odd ability of identifying a good two decades worth of movies solely by their cover art, often times coming up with my own idea of what the movie was about based on these images.

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This weekend I traveled to my elder sister’s house for a pig roast. The reason for this event is that my younger sister will be getting married next month and the two soon to be joined families were getting together to celebrate. It was to be a day of food, family and binge drinking. Unfortunately, I had to close the day before the big gala, which meant I would get home after midnight only to get up seven hours later so I could drive five hours to southern Wisconsin. It wasn’t exactly one of my better ideas, but I didn’t have many options.

Now I’m sure you might be wondering why Anna doesn’t drive and it is a pretty simple answer, she doesn’t. You see we have this rule (Well, it’s her rule which means it is my rule) that she drives when we go visit her family, and I drive when we visit mine. This leads to some disparity in the hours logged behind the wheel for a few reasons. First, her family only lives two hours away in Brainerd, MN. None of my relatives are any closer then five hours away. Second, she doesn’t drive during inclement weather be it rain, sleet or the evening.

Perhaps you might have caught as to how these rules might limit the potential to fairly allocate our drive time. You would have caught this because I informed you about the issue beforehand. Basically, unless it is a sunny day while we are driving to Brainerd, Anna isn’t driving. It doesn’t matter if I only got a few hours of sleep or if I have had an appendage lopped off, the driving is all on me.

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When I was growing up in Wisconsin I would often times kill time at my local video store. I would roam through the aisles, looking at the VHS boxes, searching for something interesting to watch. I was fascinated with genre mash-ups and Ralph Bakshi’s films and quickly immersed myself in them. But Waukesha wasn’t exactly stationed along the cutting edge of pop culture, so I had some rather sizable gaps in both my film knowledge and exposure.

It wasn’t until college that I began meeting people who were giving enough to introduce me to German Expressionism, Italian neorealism, and Turner Classic Movies. From then on I always have had great respect for people who introduce me to new and exciting things, especially when it comes to films.

Which brings me to my girlfriend, Anna. I found my first excuse to talk to her when she was reading Watership Down, which was one of my favorite books (as well as animated films) as a child. Much to my delight she had never read it before so it afforded me the perfect opportunity to lay down some serious knowledge, and from there we soon began introducing each other to all sorts of of new experiences. One interesting thing to note is she was far more open to trying out my recommendations early on then I was with hers. This is quite simply explained. She likes Bjork, Dogville, and Ayn Rand. I like cool crap.

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