one. haunted mansion. this was not a film i'd selected. i'd spent an evening with my younger brother, his children, his wife, her sister and niece. we had an outdoor movie night, swimming and soaking in a hot tub. the ghosts make this movie. eddie murphy does NOT.

family night at my brother's house... it was this or or hocus pocus, and i'd already seen the latter, so... i voted for this one. i think i would've preferred to watch hocus pocus again. it wasn't awful. but it wasn't awesome, either. the kids enjoyed it. terence stamp starred in valkyrie with tom cruise who starred with bacon in a few good men.

two. before the flood. watched this one to learn about some work i'm doing. it's interesting enough.

NOT because i wanted to so much as i needed to for a job i'm doing. i can't STAND leonardo dicrapio. he was in the departed with jack nicholson who starred in a few good men with tom cruise.

three. easy a. i love emma stone, and she's her typical, cute self here. it's an interesting story, and i enjoyed it. it can be pretty ridiculous at times, but then almost immediately following the silly, there comes a scene that is really sweet. i like it. i'd watch it again. it's the only movie of the five mentioned here about which i can say that.

i liked it. there are some spots that are utterly ridiculous, but almost immediately after those would be something that was pretty cute or clever. emma stone starred with bacon in crazy stupid love.

four. john wick. i do love keanu reeves and ian mcshane. this movie is all special effects and gratuitous violence for the sake of those things. not a fan.

i thought the story was stupid, the film another excuse for special effects and techno music. the only good thing about it was ian mcshane and willem dafoe. i'd planned on watching the sequel. that's not happening now. keanu reeves starred in something's gotta give with jack nicholson who starred with bacon in a few good men.

five. peter rabbit. another flick the kids picked. i was really glad when it was over.

yall, this movie was SO, SO stupid. the only good thing i can say about it is that the end comes quickly. connection: rose byrne starred with bacon in x-men: first class.

and that makes twenty-five for me!

i'm hoping to complete the bonus round, as well. still tweaking my list.

latecomers to the fall film challenge are welcome!

the fall film challenge: bonus round

if you have completed the regular round of the fall film challenge, you are eligible to compete in the bonus round. choose one film for each of the following actors:

kevin bacon

sean bean

jim beaver

halle berry

emily blunt

alison brie

john candy

peter coyote

russell crowe

peter finch

megan fox

michael j. fox

vivica a. fox

jamie foxx

ryan gosling

heather graham

gloria grahame

alec guiness

jon hamm

ethan hawke

john hawkes

jack lemmon

walter pidgeon

anthony quayle

brett rice

if you notice, the last names of these actors sort of have something in common: bacon, bean, berry, brie, crowe, graham, guiness, hamm, lemon--kind of like something edible. you can make substitutions to the list, so long as the actor's last name is in that vein--lucy pickles, for example--but they must be approved by me.

if you have seen one film by each actor listed above, you can watch other films by those actors for extra credit. each movie is valued at ten points.

a supplement to the second question

yall get caps today because i'd started typing this in an email then decided to post it here and am too lazy to tweak it.

A friend asked me the other day what excites me. My father had posed a variation of this question many, many years ago for a creative nonfiction project I call the Griffin Inquisition—the second question. I don't know how much of that answer applies anymore, but I did like what I wrote then.

I can’t remember the last time I was excited, to be honest. It doesn’t take much to make me happy or sad, empathetic or angry. But rousing me to an excited state—and I mean to use the term to describe giddiness—is a challenge. The only things that have managed to stir up some semblance of that emotion in me in the past couple of months are the films Life Itself and What They Had—and yes, they are dramas, and yes, they will most assuredly make me cry (I’ve seen the former three times now and have wept at each viewing). 

I’m excited when I fall in love with a story, whether it’s told in the pages of a book or the lyrics and music (because yes, the music tells a story, too) of a song or on the screen, but that doesn’t happen often. I spent my years in college listening to professors run their mouths about works of literature I felt weren’t worthy of the praise. I got an English degree but did not love classic literature. It wasn’t until I took some undergraduate English courses at UTSA that a man got me to appreciate it. He assigned us Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens; it was the first of three novels we were to read for his class, and we began reading it on the first day, and I fell in love with it before I’d finished the first page. That doesn’t happen often, by the way. I was taught to be critical of text, of stories. When I’m shopping for books with other friends, they might gush over a dozen books. I’m hard pressed to find one that I think might be halfway decent. I’m TOO critical. I know this. The only books that have managed to enrapture me in this way are the Harry Potter novels, Eleanor and Park and Landline by Rainbow Rowell, The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, Right Before Your Eyes by Ellen Shanman, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and Wonder by R.J. Palacio.

There are songs that can do this, but it’s rarer. The only one that comes to mind is Sometime Around Midnight by The Airborne Toxic Event.

Films can do it, but that’s rarer still. Life Itself is the most recent example I can give you for that.

I’m excited by the idea of love, but I’m also terrified of it. TERRIFIED. Same with sex—and the terror there is exponentially greater.

The past two years, I've spent a day cheering on IronMen near the finish line. I get pretty excited about doing that.

Several years ago, I had season tickets to the Aggies’ football games. In 2010 I watched them defeat Texas Tech, then Oklahoma, then Nebraska, all teams that were MUCH better—or so it seemed—than they. I was damned excited about that.

In 2004, when the Americans 4X100 Men’s Freestyle team defeated the Australians, which wasn’t supposed to happen, I was jumping up and down on my coffee table. 

I like to think I save excitement for things that are REALLY special. 

Those last moments are the ones that are the biggest in my mind. 

Once a man bought me a long-stem rose—because I was late, he’d said… I was late because I couldn’t fit into any of my good clothes anymore, so he’d gone to the florist next to his apartment complex and bought me one red rose. It was the first time I’d ever been given flowers by a man outside my family. That excited me, but in different ways than these other examples. Years later, another man I’d just begun dating and with whom I’d not shared any address information found out where I worked and sent me a bouquet of long-stem roses. Dozens of them. I was embarrassed, not excited. He sent me another bouquet the following week, different flowers, just as beautiful. I was as embarrassed by them as the first. Maybe it depends on the man, but I like the one rose SO much better than the bunch. But roses are easy. Obvious. It's hard for me to get too excited about them.

I suppose the best example, though, the one that makes me happiest, is the day where I'm not physically or mentally in pain. Those days are so, SO incredibly rare. They are beautiful things. BEAUTIFUL things. I can't remember the last time I had one of those.