Films 2014

As a lot of you know – I’m an avid film fan. at the start of 2014, I decided to make a list of every film I saw at the cinema for the year. What I’m going to do is list them here for you all to see. Any with an asterisk (*) next to it means I found the film really good or better than what I expected. I’m also adding the date that I saw the film too – by the end of it, I may give a top 3 films of 2014 at the end.

* Secret Life of Walter Mitty (3rd January)                             American Hustle (17th January)

* Railway Man (18th January)                                                Last Vegas (18th January)

* 12 years a slave (29th January)                                          I, Frankenstein (7th February)

Wolf of Wall Street (9th February)                                         * Lone Survivor (12th February)

Robocop (15th February)                                                      * Dallas Buyers Club (19th February)

Stalingrad (22nd February)                                                    Her (26th February)

The Monuments Men (2nd March)                                        Non-Stop (5th March)

Yurusarezaru Mono [Unforgiven] (6th March)                       Under the Skin (19th March)

Need for Speed (20th March)                                                The Long Way Down (24th March)

Starred Up (24th March)                                                         Captain America: Winter Soldier (26th March)

* Raid 2: Berendal (31st March)                                           * The Grand Budapest Hotel (2nd April)

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (16th April)                               Divergent (29th April)

Blue Ruin (6th May)                                                               Brick Mansions (6th May)

Bad Neighbors (14th May)                                                    Sabotage (16th May)

Godzilla (18th May)                                                               * X-Men: Days of Future Past (24th May)

Edge of Tomorrow (4th June)                                               A Million Ways to Die in the West (11th June)

Devils Knot (14th June)                                                         * Chef (28th June)

Cold in July (1st July)                                                            Transformers: Age of Extinction (11th July)

Begin Again (16th July)                                                         * Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (22nd July)

The Purge: Anarchy (26th July)                                            Hercules (30th July)

* Guardians of the Galaxy (9th August)                                Inbetweeners 2 (10th August)

Hector and the Search for Happiness (16th August)            The Rover (20th August)

* The Expendables 3 (23rd August)                                      Lucy (24th August)

Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For (3rd September)                     The Guest (7th September)

Let’s Be Cops (17th September)                                           A Most Wanted Man (20th September)

* Before I Go To Sleep (20th September)                             A Walk Among The Tombstones (27th September)

What We Did on Our Holiday (27th September)                    * The Equalizer (2nd October)

Dracula Untold (11th October)                                              The Maze Runner (11th October)

’71 (15th October)                                                                       Gone Girl (19th October)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (21st October)                       * Fury (7th November)

* Nightcrawler (15th November)                                            * Imitation Game (20th November)

The Drop (20th November)                                                      * Interstellar (29th November)

Hunger Games: Mockingjay pt 1 (7th December)                 The Grandmaster (7th December)

                                                     The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies (15th December)

There you go, that is the list of films I saw in 2014 – 67 films by my count. I was hoping for over 80, but with work and time constraints and periods of time where I had saw everything I wanted to see at that time meant I could only see these 67.

The best of the pick? I’ll give you my top 5 of the year:

5 – 12 Years a Slave

4 – Imitation Game

3 – Raid 2: Berendal

2 – Lone Survivor

1 – Interstellar

It’s been a very good year for films – for definite. Guardians of the Galaxy didn’t quite make it to top 5 for myself, Fury was also close as was The Grand Budapest Hotel. I picked the top 5 from what I remember about the acting, the atmosphere of the film and the sheer quality of how it was filmed. Let’s hope 2015 brings some quiet gems into the mix as well – I absolutely love going to see a film that doesn’t have too much of a hype to it and it turning out to be amazing.

Odd Recollections

Evenin’ one and all. A second post from myself, again with a fairly random and weird thought behind it – so I shall begin with the little tale:

I was on the bus heading to work today, sifting through random thoughts as I blankly looked out the window – the bus stopping and starting at the usual bus stops when a fleeting recollection occurred. I found it a really odd thing to remember as, okay it was funny to myself, but fairly (read really) insignificant. Ironically enough it was on another bus journey that must have occurred just 5 weeks ago (it could have been more), where I overheard a conversation between 3 guys – 2 of which knew each other and the 3rd a completely random guy that the friends had never spoken to before in their life. The conversation between them started fairly awkwardly, the random I believe was under the influence, presumably of alcohol, and just began speaking in their general direction and out of politeness one of the friends began chatting away. I didn’t really take notice, but could feel the air of awkwardness, until the conversation got geared toward food (I was hungry, okay! (also, isn’t it funny how your ears perk up to subjects that you are currently interested in – that’s a post perhaps for another day)). They were talking about how the random couldn’t handle spicy food – could only handle a Korma whereas the friends debated about the hottest they could handle. The conversation certainly spiced up (I’m sorry, I’m going to bed after this…) and the air of awkwardness seemed to have slipped away – then the random turned and said something similar to ‘You know what the best thing is, eating something hot, then something cold’. As he was under the influence he tried to explain himself with examples of ‘mince and potatoes with raw or uncooked veg’ (this was paraphrased as I can remember parts of the conversation) or ‘ a bit of the korma, then a bit of salad’ and he exclaimed his delight at it several times. The two friends accepted and agreed with the random (again, could have been out of a polite manner), but for some reason I found this scenario and conversation funny at the time. As you can see, it’s a fairly insignificant thing to remember, hell, I often have trouble remembering important dates and/or names. So, why did my brain decide that this random conversation, on a random bus journey, between 2 random parties should be remembered?

It got me thinking for the rest of my bus journey to work; and consequently I’ve remembered about remembering the recollection of the above – and decided to write a small post about it. I have then tried to remember other odd little things, but it only seems to happen when you’re not trying to remember them – just when you’ve left your mind to wander through the sea of random thoughts you have. Was this memory linked to being on a bus? I’m on a bus pretty much every day, so why 5 weeks between the experience and the reliving of it? Is the memory created because I found the whole thing amusing – the awkwardness, the randomness and the whole atmosphere of the situation?

I know I can’t be the only one that has had the thought “why did I remember that?!” – so, share your odd recollections; reminisce over your seeming insignificant memories but yet your mind has grabbed onto the experience.

Things like this intrigue me.

Dreams

This is going to be quite an odd post to re-start a blog/writing space online – so I hope you bare with me. The title is also kind of vague, and it is meant. This post is actual about the brain activity dreams, the dreams you have whilst you sleep and a recent experience I had. Again, it’s a very surreal topic to jump into straight away.

As we all know, we dream a lot whilst we sleep, roughly up to 7 times a night – now you may say you’ve never dreamt so much in one night, but you do not remember all of your dreams – that is dependant on what stage of sleep you are in. Usually, if you are in the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep stage, you will generally remember some if not all of your dream. Another funny thing about dreams is that everyone you see in a dream, you have actually seen in real life – your mind cannot create ‘new’ people. That could extend to randoms in the street, celebrities or even extras on T.V. (yes, cartoon characters too). I’ve often tried to think back to some of the people I have saw in my dreams (how cheesy does that sound?) to try and figure out where I may have saw them from; it’s pretty much impossible at times. Think about it, in one scene of a film I’m watching right now, there’s at least 7/8 people that could potentially end up in a dream I have tonight! You think about how many T.V shows that you may have watched today – and how many scenes they could include – the number of people that could potentially be in your dream rises exponentially. Anyway, let’s not get too bogged down in that; and that’s the ‘scientific’ part of this post over and done with (I think).

Dreams themselves can be a number of things: relaxing, frightening, exciting, marvellous, incredible, sad and joyous. As my sub-heading for this blog is ‘The Imagination is Powerful’ – there are only a few limits that you personally could imagine. Now whilst you’re asleep, your mind does the rest and creates a fairly uncontrollable safe environment for your mind to unleash itself (there is Lucid dreaming where you become self-aware within the dream and can manipulate the dream yourself, let’s leave that alone (it is cool when it happens though!)). They can be sounds, images, ideas, emotions and even sensations – and they don’t have to all of them – that is where my dream is coming into play.

So, a few weeks ago, as I was falling asleep/sleeping, the only thing that I can remember from one of my dreams that night were two phrases. I don’t remember any imagery from it, or anything else. The first phrase came from a womans voice “Don’t worry. I’m covered in blood now, but it’s okay…” – that’s freaking odd in itself – it went quiet for a few seconds, when an official sounding male voice exclaimed “It’s government controlled, it’s all government controlled” – ehh what? What’s government controlled? These are the questions that I’m still asking myself. It’s odd to think that this has been in my mind for so long, and that’s why I decided to write about. When I woke up (pretty much immediately after the second phrase), I was sweating. I usually remember dreams with images, perhaps I feel this is a little weirder because it was just two phrases, pretty powerful phrases too. I tried to think back to what may have ignited anything that would result in this; and I can’t. I have no idea at all. The only thing that I can kind of think about is that my unconscious mind is trying to suggest this Ebola outbreak is government controlled – how frickin’ crazy is that?! Think too many ‘infected’/’zombie’ movies for me – but I haven’t watched a zombie flick in a long time.

I have had other dreams that have stayed with me for a long time – like the nightmare I had about my Kermit the Frog soft toy I had when I was young going evil and chasing me with fangs – that was pretty scary. Or the one where my family and I were travelling in a convertible car (crazy in Scotland, I know – the world of dreams, eh?) with the top down, I was chewing bubble gum and decided to blow the biggest bubble I could and it exploded all over everyone and my face (aww that’s a nice funny one, right?). There’s also a dream where it became a Lucid dream (self-aware) where I was running down a well known road from the entrance of a village, I was running incredibly fast, there’s a corner coming up, with a bridge going over water, but I was travelling to fast to take the corner – this is the point I became self aware and had two decisions : slam into the wall and perhaps die or jump over the wall. I chose to jump, and it then became one of those images where someone is swiming in deep water, the view coming from the bottom left, with me swimming calmly towards the light of day – you know what I’m talking about…

There you go, an odd re-start to a wee blog. Let’s make it a little more interactive – do you remember crazy (or not so crazy) dreams that has had you thinking about them since you had them, or weeks later? I know dreams can be personal. They also come with weird and wonderful explanations/connotations too. Have you experienced a non-image based dream before? What do you think of my two-phrase dream? Let me know!