365 Days, 365 Movies: September [Charlie's Angels]

You guys! Watching an average of one movie a day has been a glorious experiment, but I'm almost positive that it's making me a dumber person. My reflexes are slower, my reading skills are diminished, and sometimes I space out for minutes at a time. I might be getting more film-literate, but at what cost!? Anyway, I still thought I would do a post about the movies that I watched way back in September, so that, if I end up turning into a real dumb-dumb, someone will be able to track my descent into dunce-hood through this blog.

September was the most fruitful month for me in terms of the amount of movies watched -- 62 in 30 days! I very quickly decided that my theme was going to be the films of the women and men of Charlie's Angels, the 2000 movie starring Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu. Surprisingly, there were a lot of films by those three women that I hadn't seen. Additionally, I watched the films of Bill Murray and Luke Wilson, because they're both fairly important to the movie as well.  Below are the movies I saw from each of them, and my thoughts on their filmography so far. Of the 62 movies I watched in September, 30 of them included some member of the Charlie's Angels family:

Good News, Everybody! [The Force Awakens]

Man, it seems like the world is heading to hell in a handbasket. Early winter is causing people to have Premature Seasonal Affective Disorder (or Pre-SAD). Interstellar was a beautiful bore of a film. Bill Cosby is probably a serial rapist. Kim Kardashian's attempts to 'break the internet' only resulted in the breaking of humanity's collective spirit. And Chris Brown still exists.

Still, it's not all bad news! There are some glimmers of hope on the horizon. When you're feeling down and out, let this news be your bridge over troubled waters:

Best of 2013 Part 1: Television and Music

Oh, 2013! What an interesting grouping of days. It's a strange thing, looking back on a year, because it's hard to remember anything that happened more than a month ago. Was there music before Beyoncé's December album? Was there television before the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary special? It's difficult to say; the mind grows cloudy. Still, in an effort to fully look back at the last year, I've compiled a list of what I feel to be the top pop culture events of the last year, conveniently ranked and separated by genre. Travel with me as we, in Part 1, look back at the television and music events that made 2013 so 2013:

Enlightened's Cancellation in Princess Bride GIFs

In case you haven't heard, Enlightened on HBO has been officially cancelled. When I first heard, the news hit me like an unexpected ROUS.

I went through some of the familiar stages of grief.  

Honestly, I couldn't believe it.

Denial

The show has such a loyal fan base! Cancelled??

But what if I started a campaign to get it back on the air? Maybe it has a life on Netflix! What about Kickstarter?

Bargaining

Then, I just wanted to fight someone. Let some honcho know that they'd ripped out my still-

'Veep': Season 2 Promo

Veep is Back!

Between worrying about Enlightened's renewal, watching the strange second season of Girls, and anticipating the third season of Game of Thrones, I completely forgot that there was a new season of HBO's Veep on the horizon. Thankfully, the good people at HBO have sent a beacon in the form of a promo video, and it is great. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is back as Selina Meyer, the trash-talking VP who takes the ineffectual nature of her position and runs with it. Most of the cast seems to be returning, and Gary Cole is in this season in an undisclosed role. It's nice to see him back in the Oval Office, since he memorably played the Vice President in The West Wing for the last batch of seasons. From the video below, it seems like the President might be playing some sort of role this year, though hopefully he won't actually appear on-screen (he was unseen for all of last season). Check out the video, and get ready for April 14th:

Why ‘Enlightened’ is the Best Show You’re Not Watching

You Need to Watch Enlightened

There are a lot of shows that I have loved that have been canceled too soon: Pushing Daisies, Arrested Development, Sports Night, and Firefly, to name a few. Recently The Hour was canceled after a terrific second season on BBC, and it seems more and more likely that the world is conspiring against me.

However, no show on television right now is quite as good as Enlightened, the HBO series from creators Mike White and Laura Dern, and I refuse to consider that it may soon join the pile of 'Gone-But-Not-Forgotten' shows of yesteryear. The show ends its almost perfect season on Sunday, and it's crazy to think that this may be the last time that viewers will get the chance to see Amy Jellicoe and her many attempts to right wrongs and quell her inner demons.

The show follows Amy (played brilliantly by Laura Dern), a woman who, after a nervous breakdown (above), attempts to get her life back together and enact change in the lives of people around her. The only problems are that she's maybe not that different than she used to be AND nobody really takes her well-meaning nagging coaching to heart. With a drug addict ex-husband, a mother who can't seem to bridge the emotional gap between herself and her daughter, a coworker who's love for her develops into a complicated friendship, and a bevy of comedians doing solidly emotional work, Amy's world is filled with unique and challenging characters. Thus, she attempts to pull everyone in new and different directions with her (often cloying) meditational wisdom.

After the end of the first season, I wrote that Enlightened was "awkward, depressing, lonely… obviously one of the best new shows on TV." The first season was contemplative, allowing viewers really soak in the sadness of the characters. This season it's been all about narrative propulsion, which took the characters (who had developed over 10 1st season episodes) and put them in situations that made them grow and change.

With the finale just a few days away, it's more important than ever that viewers tune in to the show. To help make that decision easier, I've outlined some of the many ways in which Enlightened is just so much better than anything else on television right now: