Our Summer at the Movies

Who doesn't love going to the movies during the summer?  Here at the Tire Swings hacienda we are big movie buffs, though John and I have not been able to go out and see them as much as we'd like (unless you count the times we were accompanying an eight-year-old to a "Disneyish" movie on Discount Tuesdays).  Ren, it seems, has lived there.  I think this last one she saw just the other night (The Conjuring) did a number on her.  After seeing it and dropping a friend off at his house (who, by the way, called his mom and asked that she turn on the porch light and meet him at the door), she called us every few minutes as she was enroute home to give an update on her location.  Me thinks she just wanted a person to talk to in order to keep her mind off what she had just seen. 

One of the best decisions we made when building our house was to create a media room upstairs by partitioning off one end of the bonus room.  Our media room - or "movie room" as John-Heath calls it - is not a large or fancy one (and is actually still somewhat a work in progress even after six years), but it is one of our favorite spots in the house. 

During the school year we don't have time to use it very often, but we certainly make up for it in the summer.  This summer we've run the projector so often, I cringe each time we turn it on for fear the bulb just might blow.

A couple years ago Ren requested a book as a present called 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.  The edition begins with A Trip to the Moon (1902) and ends with Atonement (2007).  As she read through it she began to make a check mark on each page featuring a movie she had already seen.  Then the rest of us took turns doing somewhat the same.  I sign my first name and John adds his initials.  John-Heath has even written his name here and there.    It's fun (albeit in a can-our-life-get-anymore-insipid kinda way) to mark off newly watched movies. 

Anyway, the other night Ren and I were talking about some of our favorite movies and I thought it would be cool to compile a list of such.  Again, we lead simple lives, people. 

 



Some Tire Swings Favorites

 

REN

(at the moment, at least)

Million Dollar Baby
(her absolute favorite)
Gangster Squad

The Help

Gone With the Wind

Remember the Titans
Sex and the City - both 1 & 2
(for the fashion)
The Devil Wears Prada
(again...the fashion)
Blazing Saddles
Psycho
(the original)
Star Wars
(the whole franchise)
Troy
Les Miserables
 

JOHN

Tombstone
Cool Hand Luke
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Glory
Empire Strikes Back
Last of the Mohicans
Zulu Dawn
Indiana Jones Series
Movies set in the South
Out of Africa
Old W.C. Fields movies and Marx Brothers movies
Vacation and Christmas Vacation
 

JOHN-HEATH

Oz - the Great and Powerful
The Little Rascals
Star Wars
The Goosebumps Series
Indiana Jones
(all of them)
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Despicable Me 1 & 2
Glory
Band of Brothers
(I tried to explain that BoB was a mini-series, but he insisted I include it in his list)
Madagascar (all of them)

MOI

Gone With the Wind, The Help, etc. 
(pretty much any and all Southern flicks)

Made of Honor
Out of Africa
Tombstone
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Sneakers
I Dreamed of Africa
(even though I am terrified of snakes)
Absolute Power
(I am a huge Clint Eastwood fan, and who doesn't love Laura Linney?)
What Lies Beneath
(I love the movie and the set.
  I would leave my home and move to Vermont this very day
if I could have the house and lot from WLB.  Sadly, the house was built for the movie and then torn down when filming wrapped.)
All the Vacation movies
(MINUS European Vacation)
Sense and Sensibility
 

Did you recognize any of your favorites?



P.S.  How could I forget Billy:  The Early Years...Ren's first "job" in a real movie (albeit as an extra).  If you'll look really, really close you'll see her approaching the tent in the tent revival scene.  She is wearing a white hat, with a dark shawl around her shoulders and passes in front of a mule.  You can also see the side of her head in the bonus features.  When we see Armie Hammer (now starring as the Lone Ranger) in ads, she loves to joke that she was once his "co-star."

P.S.S.  I have now seen The Conjuring.  It was very good.  I had to sleep with the lights on and hold my bladder til morning.  That is all I am willing to say about it, out of fear I will scare myself even more.

 

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