My Blog’s August 2016 Recap

Happy September, everyone! I know I say this same sort of thing every month but I’m serious this time: When the hell did it suddenly become September?! Ahh… Back to school, after school clubs, no holidays & having no life. Not that I have a life any other month of the year anyway. Oh, and then it’ll be winter & I’ll moan even more. God I hate winter. Oh wow – I’m sounding so positive! Here’s a recap of what I posted in August…

POSTS

My Most Popular Post: Stranger Things Poster Art By Kyle Lambert. Holy shitballs – people love Stranger Things! I had a lot of comments on this post. I didn’t say much other than that I was watching it & that I liked the above artwork by artist Kyle Lambert. I did really enjoy the show & I want to see more. The hype was a bit much, though, and the “1980s” thing felt too forced sometimes. But, hell, I adore that decade so I’m not going to complain about that too much.

My Favorite Post: The Legend Of Billie Jean, Less Than Zero & Private School “80’s Quickie Movie Reviews” Post. Speaking of the 1980s, my favorite post was probably the one with my three short reviews of movies from my favorite decade. I’ll always love discussing & reminiscing about movies from this time period, even though I’m pretty much on my own when I do. This post got 5 comments & hardly any views. Ha! Don’t care – I’ll never stop posting about movies that no one under 35 has seen. (Btw – there were boobs in that post. Maybe it’ll get some views now…) 😉

*Baby Dory is one of the most adorable things ever

MOVIES REVIEWED

My Most Popular Movie Review: Finding Dory

All Movies Reviewed (ranked best to worst):
The Legend Of Billie Jean
Pete’s Dragon
Finding Dory
The Book Thief
Lights Out
Swallows And Amazons
Less Than Zero
Paper Towns
Private School

MOVIES WATCHED

In Cinema (ranked best to worst):
Pete’s Dragon
Lights Out
Swallows And Amazons

At Home (ranked best to worst):
Carol
The Good Dinosaur
Fright Night (2011)
The Invitation
Pan

TOP TEN LISTS

– Top Ten Celebrities With Color Names
– Top Ten Madonna Songs
– Top Ten Christian Slater Movies
– Top Ten Tim Burton Movies

SEARCH TERMS

My Top Search Term: “Jennifer Connelly white top”. The pervy Googlers strike again! Okay, there’s the photo of said white top above. Various versions of this search term come up a lot – the photo is from the rather bad film Career Opportunities, which I reviewed HERE for my John Hughes Blogathon. The post also contains a pervy gif of Connelly suggestively riding a toy horse while wearing said white top. I apologize – I clearly encouraged the pervy Googlers with that post…

My Favorite Search Term: “film mit killer penis”. It’s my favorite this month because WTF is that? I can usually figure out why a search term brought someone to my blog but, nope, not this time. Were they trying to type “film WITH killer penis“? If so, I’m still pretty sure I haven’t written about a movie with a killer penis. Were they searching for the Tromeo & Juliet penis monster from my Class Of Nuke ‘Em High review? Eh. Maybe.

Here are my top search terms for the month:

BOOKS

I kept it in the King family with my selection of books in August!

Book I Reviewed: The Bazaar Of Bad Dreams by Stephen King

Book I Finished Reading: Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

Book I Started Reading: 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

BLOG PLANS FOR THE COMING MONTH

August was the first month where I didn’t manage to watch or review anything from my 2016 Blind Spot list. Too busy. Oh well – I promise I’ll still do 12 by the end of the year. I realized that I put three horror movies on my list so I plan to post reviews of all three in October (including Phenomena, starring Jennifer Connelly once again in a white top!). I’ll probably post the missing Blind Spot review in November. You all told me last month that it should be Zodiac so I’ll try to make that my November post & then Akira in December.

For September, I’m again going to take it easy on posts due to lack of time for blogging. I have more of my “lazy but fun” actor top tens already written & scheduled for the entire month (yay me!). Oh, and Music Video Friday is ready to go for the entire month as well. No one looks at those posts. Don’t care – I like ’em! 😉 I’ll post reviews of movies I see in the cinema but I mainly want to spend September writing my horror movie reviews for my usual October Month Of Horror.

Upcoming Movies:

I missed out on lots of movies I wanted to go to in August (again, too busy). Not sure what I’ll manage of this month’s cinema releases but I’ll probably see Sausage Party this week. I think Kubo And The Two Strings looks good so we’re very likely to go to that one as a family. Not sure how I feel about Blair Witch – I’ll probably watch that at home if it gets halfway decent reviews since (shock horror!) I liked the original film. Does this ruin my movie blogger cred? I’d rather have a root canal than watch Bridget Jones’s Baby! The Girl With All The Gifts looks like my type of thing so I’ll attempt to make it to that one. Swiss Army Man sounds SO completely WTF that I HAVE to watch it eventually but I’m not sure if it’s worth a trip to the cinema.

Finally, I’m very much looking forward to Tim Burton’s Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children. I read the book (which I reviewed HERE) and said while reading it that Tim Burton should make the film if they decided to adapt it. Such a perfect choice – I can’t wait to see what he does with it even though I wasn’t the biggest fan of the book overall.

Okay – I always end these with a music clip related to something I posted or watched in the past month. So I’m just going to go ahead & once again post the theme song from The Legend Of Billie Jean: Pat Benatar’s Invincible. Because it’s awesome. Enjoy the glory of 1985! 🙂

Career Opportunities (1991) Review

Career Opportunities (1991) Review by ME, Cinema Parrot Disco!

Directed by Bryan Gordon

Written by John Hughes

Starring:
Frank Whaley
Jennifer Connelly
Dermot Mulroney
Kieran Mulroney
John M. Jackson
Jenny O’Hara
Noble Willingham
William Forsythe
John Candy
Barry Corbin

Running time: 83 minutes

Plot Synopsis: (via IMDB)
Josie, the daughter of the town’s wealthiest businessman, faces problems at home and wishes to leave home, but is disorientated. Her decision is finalized after she falls asleep in a Target dressing room, and awakes to find that she is locked in the store overnight with the janitor, Jim, the town “no hoper” and liar. A decision to go to L.A. is established, but first they must get through the night. A relationship develops, only to be interrupted by a break in by two petty criminals.

My Opinion:

Okay. I suppose it’s about time I finally do another review for this big blogathon I’ve organized (as well as the review I did with Eric for Weird Science, which you can read HERE). I should start by reviewing all the John Hughes classics that I know & love so well. Truth is, I’m finding it hard to know what to say about those just yet so for now I’ll start with Career Opportunities. I’d never seen this one and watched it about a month ago specifically for this blogathon. The other films I plan to review are my favorites so I probably won’t be re-watching all but a couple of them. However, I also thought I should pick at least one I hadn’t seen at all. Hmm… Not sure if I picked the right one!

I hate to write a negative review for this blogathon. Clearly I love John Hughes and a lot of his films (especially the teen ones) are very dear to me. I picked this as it seemed like another teen one at least. Unfortunately, it has none of the charm of things like Sixteen Candles or the great characters of things like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I’d say the latter is the one that Career Opportunities is most trying to be. It feels as if Frank Whaley is trying to copy Matthew Broderick’s Bueller & Jon Cryer’s Pretty In Pink Duckie but he truly lacks that special something that both those actors brought to their roles. And he’s just not a very well-written character. He’s a bit of a loser who’s going nowhere with his life and you don’t really care if he succeeds or not. The same goes for Jennifer Connelly’s character. Again, I don’t think it’s a very well-written character as you don’t care at all what happens to her. She’s a spoiled rich girl who contemplates shoplifting to rebel against her wealthy father & miserable wealthy life.

So these two not-very-likeable characters end up locked in a Target store overnight & do fun things like ride around on roller skates and of course quickly develop feelings for each other until, out of the blue, two burglars show up (which feels completely pointless & out of place). Actually, the whole plot seems pretty pointless and I’m not sure if they even knew where to go with the story. It’s a really short film as it is – I guess they were just killing some time adding in a couple burglars (who felt a little like Home Alone’s bandits without all the fun slapstick, come to think of it). Meh. It’s not the worst film I’ve ever seen but, a month later, it’s shocking how little of it I even remember.

I will say this, and I’m not saying it to be immature or gain male followers (mainly I’m just trying to make this review a bit longer as there’s nothing else I can really say about this film): I never knew Jennifer Connelly had such big boobs! Seriously – they’re huge in this! (Also never fully realized that she DOES indeed have a unibrow – funny how girls didn’t worry about that in the 80s & early 90s…). Anyway, apparently guys have realized this (I’m a girl – I don’t tend to obsess over boobs) because all the pictures I could really find when looking for ones for this review were of her in the tight white top she wears.

Oh! And…. There’s a scene where she rides one of those toy horses you put money in and this is also apparently a well known scene amongst Internet pervs as there are photos & animated gifs of this all over the place! (She rides it in front of the burglars while trying to seduce them). She rides it a pretty long time for the film’s 83 minute long running time. So… this movie isn’t really worth watching AT ALL unless you’re a boy who likes to watch pretty girls with big boobs suggestively riding toy horses. *CPD sits back & watches the guest reviews of this one come pouring in from the male readers* 😉

My Rating: 4.5/10

**I’d just like to say that, even though this John Hughes Blogathon is going on, I haven’t stopped watching movies. So far, you can expect reviews from me in April for Night Of The Creeps, Bernie & Non-Stop. And of course more IMDB Top 250 Guest Reviews. As Non-Stop is a current film, I’ll give you my rating! Hmm… 5.5/10. So… Just a little better than Career Opportunities! But without the sexy big-boobed horse writhing, er… Riding. 🙂