30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 8: Favorite thriller

I think the genre of “thriller” is hard to define because it’s very often paired with another genre, like action or crime or horror.  There isn’t really a movie that is strictly a thriller, whereas it’s easier to label other movies as simply comedies or horror films or dramatic features.  Once again, I turned to imdb’s top 250 list and thought Inception would be a really good choice, since it did thrill me, but the genre of thriller wasn’t in the top 3 genres for the film.  Sure, movies can be categorized different from one person to the next but maybe I suppose thriller wouldn’t be the first genre I’d label for Inception.

Further down the list, I came across a little 1955 French film called Les diaboliques (which was remade by the Americans with Sharon Stone 40 years later and apparently it’s not very good).  I won’t go into the story much but I will say that it’s a film that made me wonder what was truth and what was lie, that really made me guess everything going on to try and figure it all out.  The climax and twist of the film is also filmed really well and for me anyway, managed to shock me and even scare me a little, despite today’s standards of shock, gore, violence, etc.  Watch it alone in the dark at night and the film will be even more effective…

30 Day Song Challenge: Day 8: A song that you know all the words to

Waaaay back when, I went through an S Club 7 phase that eventually turned into an S Club phase (after Paul left).  I remember feeling so proud of being an S Club 7/S Club fan in high school when I brought my new S Club CD to Grade 9 English class, and although nobody else sitting around me listened to them, I felt that much more special.

And then I realized I shouldn’t really feel special.  Because as it turned out, liking a band like S Club 7, who had cheesy, stupid songs about love, friendship, and general being happy was silly.  They were too poppy, too sugary for most people’s standards and I soon realized this.  Though I never grew to disliking or hating their music, after getting older, it just didn’t represent what I felt in the world anymore.  Not everything was sparkles; it wasn’t always an S Club party, and I had never met anyone who I thought was a dream come true.

Nevertheless, I realized yet again that it’s not that S Club 7 didn’t sing about earthquakes and tsunamis and the plight of the world that turned people off — it’s that kids growing up had so much less to worry about and that sometimes, you just want to reach for the stars and to bring it all back.  What’s so wrong with encouragement?

As one youtuber on the “Don’t Stop Movin'” music video succinctly said, “Ah.. when music wasn’t all about whores and sex.”

Yeah.