My Movie Biography: Where It's At Now in 2012

(2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011) Well, we're heading into the home stretch now. Tomorrow is the big day. Just to let you know, you will probably have trouble visiting the site for a while. Don't worry, (fingers crossed) everything goes fine and I'll be back up and running this time tomorrow. Hope to see you there!  Anyway, 2012 in my movie biography...

• By some small coincidence, all of the movies I got at one time from Fatso were by Roman Polanski. So I started off the year with Chinatown, Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby. That was...fun.
• I saw The Muppets and The Adventures of Tintin on the same day. I felt so awkward being this 16 year old all alone in cinemas filled with children. Funnily enough, I preferred Tintin a lot more, but now The Muppets is pretty much my go-to movie when I want to feel better about life.
• I finally got out of NZ! My father and I went to Melbourne, Australia for a week and that was exciting. I was pretty excited for the plane trip, because Drive was playing on the plane and I hadn't seen it because it was an R18. I did really like it when I saw it, but I completely forgot about the fact that it was censored, so I was left wondering what was so R18 about it. Then I looked it up on the internet and apparently there were 70 swearwords in it, but I hadn't heard any of them. When I got the film on DVD, I finally embraced it and it became my second favourite movie of 2011. While I was in Melbourne I bought a crapload of movies because they had everything that I'd been looking for. And there's like, five JB Hi-Fi's in the city, so I was in heaven. Also heavenly was the Pancake Parlour, but that's another story. I also went to the cinemas a fair bit because I wanted to escape the heat. I only really wanted to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, because I thought it was going to be an R18 in NZ and it was only an MA15+ in Australia. I was so excited to be all rebellious. Then I got back to NZ and I found out that it was only an R16. Which was somewhat disappointing. I also saw The Descendants and Hugo just because I could. I really miss Melbourne. It was such a nice place. One day I hope to go back.
• While I wasn't as excited for the Oscars as much as I was last year (I blame the fact that I hadn't watched many of the movies), I still thought it was a good idea to wake up at 3am and watch the Oscar nominations for fun. It wasn't all that fun until I saw that Rooney Mara got nominated, in which case I let out this weird squeal that woke up everyone in the house. I stayed up until at least 4.30am ranting with people on Facebook about them. Which probably wasn't the best idea, because once the morning hit we were going to Palmerston North to watch War Horse. It didn't affect the experience. I still spent the entire film crying my eyes out. And when I say the "entire film", I mean the entire bloody thing. As soon as I saw that horse I was in tears.

• The Oscars themselves were kinda exciting. Mainly because I made them more exciting than they were. I just jumped up and down all day, then I took people's phones so I could search up photos of the dresses. When I saw Jessica Chastain's, I almost cried. It was so beautiful. I spent my entire Bio period checking my phone to see who won stuff, which was pretty good because the teacher was always helping other people so I could sneak my phone out. I just about ran home to see the rest of the awards being handed out, which was pretty exciting. When Bret McKenzie won, I was doing little happy dances around my room. What can I say? The Oscars just get so much excitement out of me. 
• Another exciting part of this year was being told that I was going to direct the school production. I was so excited that I even laughed at something in I Don't Know How She Does It. Alas, that didn't turn out too well.
• I made the mistake of watching Contagion while I was sick. Take it from me: it makes you feel ten times worse.
• LOL, I saw I Melt with You. I just can't forget how jaw-droppingly bad this movie was, even while it wasn't bad in a bad movie kind of way. Christian McKay, I still love you.
• June was my French New Wave month. That was kinda exhausting. But I did love the fact that I was introduced to films like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Vivre Sa Vie and Breathless.
• Hey, I did this speech. I was actually so stressed about it. Mainly because I didn't feel as ready as I usually do for it. And I was first up because the teacher "wanted to start off with some real quality". And it was like, 16 minutes long. But everyone loved it, which was something I really wasn't expecting. That day I also got to go and see Brave, which I cried a lot in. That was nice.
• I won a LAMMY for Best Rating System and also got runner up for Best Blog. That was exciting. I found out literally minutes before I had to go for school, and I was so excited about it that I just ran to my friends house. Unfortunately it was raining and blowing a gale outside, and I forgot to put my phone in my pocket. Later that day, my phone stopped working. I blame all of you who voted for me. Jokes, that was a very exciting day.

• I saw Shame!!!!!!!!!!!! I loved that movie so much. At the end I sat on the couch like kinda crying, kinda howling. It was a bizarre noise I was making. My pets were very worried. Ironically, that night I had watched Jack and Jill, which became my least favourite film of 2011. Shame was my favourite. 
• We Need to Talk About Kevin became the scariest film ever when that earthquake hit. Since then I haven't dared to turn the lights out when I'm watching a movie. I still can't believe that there was another earthquake the second time I watched it. For a long time after it I was in denial over the fact that I found Ezra Miller VERY attractive in that movie. After a while I was just like "stuff it". Now Ezra and I are going to get married. LOL.
• July happened. BEST MOVIE MONTH EVER. Especially when there were so many releases one week that I had to take six movies home at once to watch them all. They were 50/50, Like Crazy, The Skin I Live In, J. Edgar, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and John Carter. The quality of those movies was insane. I've never seen a week like that before in my life.

• The Dark Knight Rises happened. I was so excited that I'd just be doing something random like selling someone a Lotto ticket, and then I'd have this mini excitement surge go up my spine because I knew I was getting closer to seeing it. I'm in the minority who absolutely loved it. Seeing it was so magical. At the beginning of the film, I would casually just squeeze my friend's hand when someone exciting came on, like Bane or Batman. But then after the first thirty minutes, my hand didn't leave his hand because things were getting too intense. When he checked the time, I saw that we only had an hour of the film left and I started getting so sad - I didn't want it to end. Then once the end hit, I was crying like a baby. It was so beautiful.
  The next day, though, something strange happened. I felt so empty and sad, and I didn't know whether this was because I felt sad because the excitement was over or because I thought I was disappointed by the film (I wasn't). I couldn't shake that strange feeling. Then, that night, as I was watching Spirited Away, I found out about the Aurora cinema shootings. This shocked me to the absolute core. I just couldn't process any of what was going on. It just felt very close to home because it happened in a place which I love so much, and during a movie which I love so much. I know it didn't really "affect" me, but for weeks after that, I was haunted by the face of the shooter and of the thoughts that it could happen here. It was just such a depressing time.
• My birthday happened. That was exciting. The weekend after my birthday I thought it was all over, but I arrived home from work and my friends were there to give me my first surprise birthday party. That was cool. They made me a Captain America cake to go with the Batman cake I got a few days before. It was really nice.
• Little Shop of Horrors happened in September so I didn't get to do a lot of anything. But I'm still extremely proud of that production, even though I didn't really feel like a big part of it. 
• One of the best things about this year was that I met Lena, our German exchange student. She flew out of NZ today which makes me extremely sad. She is just the coolest, happiest person ever. I felt really bad though because we had this beach gathering for her which was overnight. That weekend I got really sick with influenza and all I wanted to do was go home because I was pretty much dying. Still, I managed to keep the illness at bay and proceeded onto being the funniest person I know for the large majority of the trip. It wasn't so nice that I got absolutely no sleep because I couldn't breathe and I looked like a train had hit me. But yes, I do miss you Lena, and hopefully you still read my blog while you're in Germany!
• Watching Prometheus this week with my friends was the funniest thing ever. Before I begin, I must say that I really liked the movie. But it seemed to run along on people being really stupid. Seriously. We were yelling at the screen most of the time. Especially at David, because he just had to touch EVERYTHING, which would ruin EVERYTHING. Had we watched that film in cinemas, we would have been those annoying people that everyone complains about.
• I have 12 days left of year 12. Next year is my last year of school. I'm terrified of that fact. 
• I guess I should end this with what I'm doing right now: I don't think I'll be watching a movie tonight because I have so much planned for tomorrow that I should get an early start. My foot is really hurting but I have no idea why. Today is the two year anniversary of The Last Station being on the new release wall, which makes me laugh because it isn't exactly a new release anymore. And yeah.

Thanks for reading this long series! Hope to see you all back tomorrow. Meanwhile, how has 2012 been for you? What movie has been the highlight of your year?