I Am 16, Going on 17...

In a few hours, it’ll be my 17th birthday. To be honest, I don’t see 17 as a very special birthday, apart from the fact that if I lived in America I’d be able to legally watch Shame, when in an actual fact I have to wait another year to see it legally in NZ (ironically, I am getting it for my birthday). Other than that, all I can say about this birthday is that it brings to a close what has probably been the best year of my life thus far. This time last year, I did my 16 Days of Birthday marathon (it was really a year ago?), building up the excitement to the birthday that would let me get R16 movies out myself. The year didn’t disappoint. It has been filled with some great achievements and memories, of which I am proud to have lived through in one way or another. Instead of boring you all with my usual “life is great!” speech that is so blatantly throwing heavy-handed inspiration at people who probably don’t need it, I’m going to share the 16 most memorable things that have happened to me in my 16th year of living. I feel like I should be apologising for yet another personal post, but I’ve built a blog based around my strange personality – another achievement which being 16 has lead me to. So, in no particular order, here’s my year:

-Getting a LAMMY for Best Rating System, along with being Runner Up for Best Blog, and then three other nominations on top of that.

-That Paramount call. Waiting for that call was pretty much the longest week of my life, and I could probably tell you everything I did that week even though it happened nine months ago. Anyway, it was awesome to get praise for a school essay from Hollywood.

-Finally seeing The Dark Knight Rises after four years of waiting, and crying my eyes out like I’ve never cried before.

-Doing this speech, which even though I was stressing so much about it, went really well.

-I got a little dog, Indy, who is the best movie companion ever. He may be a dog, but the way he watches films is so cute and inquisitive. Plus, it is his first birthday today.

-Got over 250,000 hits. Big deal for me. I’d like to thank Google Images.

-Cried at Senna, even though I had absolutely no idea about who Ayrton Senna was. It was a great experience.

-Fell in love with these idiots. Who go by the names of Michael Fassbender, Jeremy Irvine, Tom Hiddleston and Ezra Miller.

-And fell in love with my darling Jessica Chastain. The day (three days after my last birthday) I saw The Tree of Life I mentioned to my friend how great it would be to finally see this Jessica person, and almost a year later, I love her dearly.

-Saw the greatness that is Shame, a literally howled at the end of it. I’d never seen anything like it.

-Finally left NZ and went to Melbourne. Which was great. I love that city. And their cinemas are so much better than ours. Apart from the fact that their ‘medium’ popcorns and frozen cokes are pretty much the size of a house.

-For my drama exam ‘study’ I was instructed to watch old films from comics like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. I was lead to Chaplin’s City Lights, which is one of the best films I’ve ever seen.

-I got up at 3am to watch the Oscar noms, and even though they were really disappointing, when I heard that Rooney Mara got nominated I let out this excited scream which woke up the entire house. We were going to see War Horse the next day and Mum was none too pleased that I disturbed her sleep.

-The whole bloody July. Best month for DVD releases ever. Aside from the fact that there were a couple of earthquakes during my We Need to Talk About Kevin viewings and I was a little grumpy/movie-hungover from my 'crazy movie night', I loved having so much to watch.

-Finally reading The Great Gatsby properly. I love that book to pieces.

-Every single movie night with my friends, or any moment with my friends. Especially sausage rolls. They know what I'm talking about.

And also, my 16 favourite blog posts that I've written while I was 16:

-My review of The Tree of Life which doesn't make a lot of sense now that I've seen it a few times, but I did get a pretty good interpretation of it.
-My favourite post possibly ever, all about film censorship ratings.
-How I'd sell my movies if I were to make posters for dummies.
-Why I was looking forward to War Horse.
-My teenage girl perspective on the obviously brilliant Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
-A touchy feely review of Hunger.
-Because I work at a DVD store, I thought I might write about my experiences there.
-The awkward moment where I write this post complaining about The Cabin in the Woods not coming to our cinemas and when it finally did come, no-one took me to go and see it.
-Remember when I Melt with You took over my brain with anger? Yeah, not good times. But good times for writing.
-My 'conversation' with Puss in Boots was actually pretty funny, if I do say so myself.
-It takes guts to make a movie like The Muppets.
-I actually really struggled to write this review of Tyrannosaur, but when the words actually started coming out, I got something good.
-My review of Shame. Steve McQueen knows how to get some good writing out of me.
-This 100 Film Facts About Me seemed to be quite a hit. I thought it was fun to get to know some other bloggers.
-Here's eight things you'll always see in a rom-com trailer. Trust me, I know, there's so many of them on the trailer discs at work.
-Another touchy feely review, but this time of We Need to Talk About Kevin. This movie got some really good writing out of me.

And because I feel like this post is just too "me me me", here's 16 bloggers who give us the gift of their writing all the time. Being 16 wouldn't have been awesome without them. (If you aren't here, I still love you. Really.)

And So It Begins...

Anomalous Material

Being Norma Jeane

Can You Dig It?

Cinematic Corner

Defiant Success

Eternity of Dream

Front Room Cinema

...let's be splendid about this...

Lime Reviews and Strawberry Confessions

Random Ramblings of a Demented Doorknob

Reel Insight

Southern Vision

The Matinee

The Velvet Cafe

Whoa, This is Heavy!

So yeah...happy birthday to me! How's your past year been for you?