Matt's Top Three and Half Movies List

So this is the place where Matt generally presents his top 10 movies of the year. Readers of this well-respected and tragically overlooked feature have come to treasure his off-beat, gritty selections.
Alas, then a kid was born. And he is not allowed (able?) to watch movies that don't have muppets in them.
So, for the first time in a long time, Matt will not have a Top Ten Movies list. Matt's not entirely sure he even saw 10 movies last year. Of the 10 Best Picture nominees, Matt saw just five (Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The Social Network, Toy Story 3 and The King's Speech) and just one of the documentaries, which is where Matt usually finds his favorites. Honestly, Matt didn't see many movies beyond that. So, it's not really fair to give a top 10 list with so many left unseen.
Instead, how about just a list of good movies and some comments.

UPDATE: Matt totally forgot about Easy A, which would have surely made even a full Top 10 list. The movie was clever, funny and had a superstar lead performance from Emma Stone.

Toy Story 3. Matt had an unfair bias against this movie for being a sequel's sequel. How could a Part 3 be any good? Even the Godfather III was ridiculous. But this was the best movie Matt saw this year. Funny, smart and moving.

Exit From The Gift Shop. No movie made Matt think more. This was a documentary about graffiti artists where the documentarian became an artist himself. Allegedly. There's plenty of speculation about how much, if any, of this movie was real. Exit challenged the ideas of what art is and what it should be. Plus, one of the few movies that mocked its own audience. Odd, wonderful film.

The Kids Are All Right. Was all right. Great acting by Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore. Not really a great movie. Couldn't figure out what Moore and Annette Benning's characters saw in each other.

The King's Speech. Beautiful acting from all the leads. Firth and Rush were amazing. An engaging story that Matt knew very little about. That being said...how many more movies do we really need about The Royals? It's very hard for Matt to buy that these unelected, uber-rich people have so many hardships. Still, worth seeing, for sure.

Inception. Brilliant. We have to reach a point where Christopher Nolan arrives at the end of our consciousness, right? How can someone think so much, and write so magnificently, about thinking? The fact that anyone could follow this movie at all is a tribute the director, editors and writers. This was impossibly complex movie that made perfect sense.

The Social Network. Great acting, great editing, great script. But....but...ugh. This is another of Matt's little hang ups. This is a movie about real people and it uses their real names. But screenwriter Aaron Sorkin essentially bragged that he didn't care whether he got the facts right. Now, of course, any non-documentary movie based on real people is bound to have invented scenes and dialog. (Not everything in King's Speech happened just that way.) But Sorkin wanted the cache of having a Facebook movie, having a Mark Zuckerberg movie, but he'd rather not be too bothered with the truth. As a reporter, Matt has a hard time getting over this.

OK, that's about it. All the best movies are TV shows now, anyhow! (Only sort of kidding.)

On the upside: Christian Bale's Oscar win means that Matt was in a scene with an Academy Award winner. Well, really, an Oscar winner was in a scene with Matt. Sure, the scene got cut. But, still.

Tweet me!

Did you know that those of you who are on Twitter can follow Matt at MattHBeacon? Didjaknowthat?
Of course, it's a work account so it's lots of links to murder trials and roaming chicken stories. But if that's your kind of thing, then follow away!

Mark of Fridays: Bowl sitter

You've heard stories of those crazy pole sitters who risked life and limb for fame in the 1920s. Well, there's a new fad sweeping the nation: bowl sitting!

Not quite as high, not quite as dangerous and not quite as famous. But still quite a thrill when done repeatedly, 23 or 54 times in an afternoon.

Mark of Fridays: A boy who wears many hats

Here's some photos from the most recent celebration of Hat Night at our house.

Wait. What?

You don't have a Hat Night at your house? That makes you the weirdo.
Everybody we know has a Hat Night, where they take out the box of hats and try them on.

Happy Hat Night, everyone who is not weird!

Aunt Nancy

Most you probably already know by now but, after a really brutal battle with cancer, Matt's Aunt Nancy died Feb. 5 at home. She found out that she had Stage 4 cancer in October. Before that, she didn't even know she was sick.

The chances for surviving Stage 4 lung cancer are close to zero, and the disease tore her body apart pretty quickly. At Thanksgiving she was very tired, at Christmas she was exhausted and she was gone before Valentine's Day. She didn't complain. Just the opposite: she joked, wore funny wigs and danced to her favorite song on her last day. We should all be so tough and so happy in such circumstances.
Very sad, obviously, but Nancy gave us a lot of great memories. She was a fireball of loving energy. If you met her, you probably didn't forget. She definitely didn't forget you. She would ask specific questions about Matt's college friends years after she'd last seen them. From her obit: "She remembered your successes and cared about your struggles, and never hesitated to brag about the achievements of her husband, her kids, a sibling, nieces, nephews or a friend."
Her funeral was very nice. There must have been 500 people at the wake and half of Naperville had to be shut down for the funeral procession. Lots of tears, but plenty of laughs telling Nancy stories.
We will miss her. Family parties will still be wonderful, but maybe not quite as lively.
Please keep Tom, Sara, Michael and the rest of the family in your thoughts.

More pictures from Blizzard 2011

Matt wanted to post a few more pictures of the Great Blizzard of 2011 (aka: SnOMG!, Snowtorious BIG, Snowmaggeddon, Snowmania, Snowtastic) before the whole thing is just a memory.
Right now, the snow is melting like crazy. The pile that Mark is standing on - the one Matt was sure would be there until June - is just about gone. Today, it's about 50 degrees outside.

A few weeks ago, we literally could not get out of the house. Snowed in. Today, we're going outside in short sleeves.

Illinois is weird.

Mark of Fridays: Mashed potatoes

Mark likes to eat full-body style.

(The lion was unwilling participant in this meal.)

EDITOR'S NOTE (from Matt): Those are green beans on his tray. For some reason, my mom thought they looked like poos. But we do not feed Mark poop. Actually, it's pretty gross she even thought of that!

Super Bowl fever

Here's Mark's pick for the Super Bowl. Of course, he has to root for the Pack Attack, otherwise Uncle Josh will never forgive him. Go Packers!

Mark of Fridays: Snow day

If you live here in Illinois, there's not much we can tell you about the Blizzard of 2011. You were there. You saw how bad it was.
If you live somewhere else, well, it was something else. Matt's Minnesota friends would probably scoff, but it's hard to describe how disabling 2 feet of snow in one night can be to a community.

The snow started around 3 p.m. Tuesday. All schools and most businesses had closed early because there was lots of warning.
Lynne and Mark were home by 3:30 p.m. Matt got back around 5 p.m. Early deadlines (so that delivery people could get a head start) made staying at work useless. By 8 p.m., it was snowing hard with - this was a new one - thunder snows. Odd/cool.
At midnight, Matt wandered around a bit outside. The snow was swirling in the wind, creating huge drifts and giant lulls. The ground was almost bare in one spot, then three feet high a few steps over. Still, Matt went to bed thinking this storm, like many others, wouldn't live up to the hype. But, he was excited to get to work and cover The Big One.
Ha.
When Lynne and Matt woke up Wednesday morning, it had been snowing heavily through the night. Lynne, of course, had a snow day. They had called that on Tuesday. And, seeing the results of the blizzard (snowtastrophe or snowtorious or SNOMG! or snopocalypse, if you prefer) Matt was psyched to go to work. This was real news! He planned to shovel out the CRV, then head into the office.
The first sign that this could be an issue was when he opened the garage. The door kept going up, up, up, up, up but there were no sky. Two feet is a lot of snow.
At 7 a.m. Wednesday, no one else on the block was out yet. (Let the record show that Matt had the first cleared driveway.) The wind was still blowing a bit and a light snow was falling. It was quiet. The street looked amazingly pristine. Only the mailboxes sticking up indicated where the road might be.
Because both cars were parked in the driveway, it was fairly easy to clear. Plus, the snow was light. The street hadn't been plowed yet, but Matt figured he might be able to barrel through to a main road.
Uh, no.

The CRV hit the end of the driveway. And stopped right there. It just wouldn't go back. It became quite clear that this was a special storm and that Matt has really underestimated it.
Matt knew he'd have to wait for a plow to be able to get to work. No problem, right? He headed up to the computer and started emailing and calling sources to see what was going on.
After an hour, he was back outside, helping neighbors clear their driveway. At 10 a.m., still no plow. Matt made some more calls. At 1:30 p.m., still no plow. Matt was getting antsy. It's a point of pride to go to work on days like this. One guy at work tells the story of skiing to the office in the 1979 blizzard. Matt was starting to go stir crazy. Even worse, Matt was now of Diet Coke.
Matt made a snow angel in the road. No plow. By 5 p.m. Matt had written three stories and it was clear he was not getting to the office. He wasn't alone. In an office of about 100 people, 9 made it to work. (And one of those slept there overnight.) Most of the reporting and all of the designing was done remotely. Amazing technology.

The plows finally showed up at 7:15 a.m. Thursday. That's 40 hours after snow started falling before a plow touched Eldorado Lane. I know there's a lot of road to cover, but that seems a bit ludicrous.
After Matt cleared the two foot high, four foot deep pile of snow the plow deposited at the end of the driveway, he finally headed into the office. The pile at the end of the driveway is at least six feet high.
There's some great pictures from the Beacon here. Trib has some amazing photos of Lake Shore Drive.

Now, driving down the street seems like driving through some eery ice castle, with towers of snow piling high on each side of the snow corridor. And the way the wins moved snow was amazing - almost artistic. Some backyards appear to have more than five feet of snow in them. You can see grass in others.

So, Blizzard 2011 is in the books.
The mail never showed up, which made Matt feel better about not getting to the office. (No mail Thursday, either.) And the newspapers that staff worked so hard to put together never showed up Wednesday. Or Thursday.
But, overall, all disasters were averted. Power and heat stayed on. Cars started.No injuries besides Matt's sore back. The dog managed to find a bathroom spot. Mark got to spend the day with Mom and Dad, building a story that he will get sick of hearing. And the Diet Coke has been replenished.
Only one question remains: How many days until pitchers and catchers report?

Bonus Mark pictures because we didn't post for a while