Movies & I (part 1)

I have been going to my friends' weekly movie night regularly. I'm a movie junkie. The first experience in a cinema happened when I was about 6 or 7-- I watched Hayao Miyazaki's "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" -- one of the best animated films which I could not fully understand at that age. I grew up watching animated movies and Hollywood blockbusters (but I have always hated Disney flicks). Until Stanley Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange"-- at that point, at the age of 17, it opened my eyes and the doors of my perception. Since then, I am addicted to movies that worth my time. During my 2 years of boring life in Abilene, watching movies was the best thing I could do in this desert town (and using the first incarnation of Napster). There was a small video store "nearby" the campus. I would spend 15 minutes to walk there and rent movies I looked up from the internet. They did not have the best collection... but I just watched whatever I can, including some Kubrick, some Evil Dead... I also tried to go to the theaters to see some mediocre flicks. I just want to be in the cinema.

Every year I went home (Macau), I would go to China with my mentor/friend Sid for "movie-shopping". China has a lot of illegal pirate DVD vendors. It is a heaven for movie junkie because they have tons of foreign movies and indie cult flicks and the price is like a dollar for a DVD. Some of you very righteous (or just self-righteous) ones may think that this is wrong, but the truth is I can't even find these great movies in legal-DVD-selling shops (some you can't even find in America). 99% of the shit sold in legit shops are very mainstream, they are just too conservative to sell little-known movies. Over the years, I have bought a shitload of movies and I have not watched all of them up to this date.

Then I moved to Austin. Little did I know Austin was a great movie town. Then I noticed this small theater right by campus in the Dobie "Mall". I convinced my then-girlfriend Erica to see Amelie with me. It was great and since then going to movie (and movie-hopping in other theaters) became a weekly routine for us.

I'll continue my story with the next blog later.

Gotta sleep.

Pulp's "Something Changed"--- somehow it made me wanna cry.

hopefully, I'll get my reparation money from the fucking car insurance company this coming week.