Transcription
Hello all my buddies, this is Carmen, and welcome to another Chatty Crochet With Me!
In this video series, I will be crocheting something while talking about a random topic, like we’re just hanging out, and maybe you’re crocheting too! This is not a tutorial video, definitely not.
Usually, I start talking about the blanket or item I am working on. So, I’m still working on my May blanket. I’ll show you what I have, it’s just a couple of alternating rows. I have three rows of white and just started my third row of grey. It’s been slow work because it’s been so hot here in California, but I’m definitely going to try to finish this blanket and June’s blanket by the end of June, so I’m all caught up again.
Anyway, if you didn’t watch my last video where I introduced this blanket, I’m using Bernat Sheepy yarn, this is Vapor Grey and this is Cotton Tail. So I used up one whole thing of Cotton Tail, and I’m finishing up one whole thing of Vapor Grey soon. And the pattern I’m using is the gingham plaid afghan on Yarnspirations, which is linked below. It’s still my May blanket, I’m still working on the May blanket.
This yarn is super fluffy, so you can’t really see the stitches, but the nice part is it hides all your mistakes, like one of the beginning rows I accidentally did an extra square, and you can’t notice it because you can’t see any of the stitches, so I find it very forgiving in that way, it just sucks for seeing where your stitches are.
But thankfully, this pattern is easy, I’m crocheting in a straight line and it’s nice because I don’t crochet in the holes and I just crochet down this line, so basically it’s a grid, which is nice. You can also tell I’ve sewn in all the ends already, so you can’t see them anymore, again, which is nice because you can’t see anything, and you can’t see your mistakes, which is good.
I’m going to get started and today, I want to talk about the movies I watched last year during the pandemic, overall in general, and streaming! There will be spoilers, so I’ll link the movies down below so you can click and skip, I will link the movie with the with the time stamp below.
Pre-Lockdown 2020 Movies
These are all pre-lockdown, so these are from early in the year. The first one is:
Bad Boys For Life – aka Bad Boys 3. One sentence summary: The son of a Mexican druglord tries to kill Will Smith’s character (Mike), and in order to catch the guy, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence must team up with the younger team in the squad, which causes conflict as the old and new techniques clash. Honestly it’s been a while since I’ve seen this movie, but I’m pretty sure because the new techniques have newer technologies, and all that fun stuff. Not a bad movie, but forgettable. I didn’t see Bad Boys 2, and it’s been, like 20 years since I saw the first Bad Boys, but I don’t think it matters. It’s kind of like Fast and Furious, you don’t need to have seen a previous movie to see the current one. Taylor and I thought Dorn character was very good! There’s this part at the end where he’s tasked to do violent stuff, and he had the sweetest line about needing therapy after doing the violent stuff, or promising not to do violent stuff because doesn’t want to go to therapy, or he had done violent stuff and doesn’t do it anymore because he went through therapy, but the point is, it was really sweet. After the violent stuff, I think Martin Lawrence’s character promised to pay for the therapy, and he says, “You’d better!”, it was just really cute. I think it was just nice that they highlighted that you need therapy if you hurt somebody. You need therapy, just go to therapy. I feel like all cops should go to therapy.
The next movie we saw in theaters was:
Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn – One sentence summary: Harley Quinn, after breaking up with The Joker, must learn to fend for herself and teams up with other incredibly talented ladies and they form a team of sorts. The big baddies in this movie were The Black Mask and Zsasz, and Taylor and I played this Batman game with Zsasz as a bad guy in that, so we liked that nod to the more-obscure parts of Batman fandom. Black Mask was played by Ewan McGregor, which is so weird watching Ewan McGregor be a bad guy, because I’m so used to him being the good guy or the romantic love interest. He was really good at being a bad dude, which makes sense because he was amazing actor. Really scary, wouldn’t want to run into that character in a dark alley, you get the sense he is a really bad dude. This was okay, I liked it more than Taylor did. I have would loved to see the Birds of Prey movie that this ultimately leads to, but this was more of a Harley Quinn movie. I like team-ups, so I liked the Avengers movie over the Captain America movie, and I liked the Defenders TV show, even though some of the Defenders weren’t great (Iron Fist). It was fun watching them team up, and I would’ve liked to see more of the team dynamic, but it was definitely more of a Harley Quinn movie. I especially liked Huntress, and I really like Mary Elizabeth Winstead, but I would have liked to see more of the other characters, frankly.
Sonic the Hedgehog – One sentence summay: Trapped on Earth, an anthropomorphic hedgehog alien named Sonic tries to fit in on Earth, but after he is found, some dubious characters try to capture him and he finds friends along the way who help him. Mostly, I wanted to support the studio’s decision. So, if you guys didn’t know, when they released the first trailer, Sonic looked really funky; he didn’t have his signature eyes, and his hair was weird, he looked really cringy. The studio made a huge decision to change the entire movie with the better, more original style. This was the correct decision because the first style was really gross and cringeworthy, but the second look was so much better. The other reason we wanted to watch it is, Jim Carrey made that role his own, and I’m going to be this crazy, kooky, off his rocker scientist. He totally ate that script up, and was great in the role!
Post-Lockdown 2020 Movies
There were a couple movies post-lockdown that we watched, on streaming, that came out in 2020. The first one being:
Pixar’s Onward – One sentence summary: Two teenage elf brothers set off on an actual fantasy quest to revive their dead father, and run into problems, as you do on a fantasy quest, while their mother tries desperately to find and rescue them. The whole thing is set in this cool semi-fantasy-modern world; there’s unicorns eating out of trashcans like raccoons, there’s a manticore who manages a medieval times, stuff like that. This came out before the lockdown but we didn’t get a chance to see this in the theaters before everything closed down. Honestly, the trailer looked terrible, so we didn’t go watch this, but a friend of mine told me it was good and to give it a chance, so we watched it when it came on Disney Plus! It was pretty good! Like all Pixar movies, it gave me a little tug at the heartstrings, and they had some pretty good references to DnD and fantasy stuff. It’s a good movie, if you haven’t seen it check it out.
The next movie that came out and we caught on streaming is:
Trolls World Tour – One sentence summary: The pop trolls (the ones you already know?) find out they are one of six realms in the Troll world, and they have to travel to the other musical realms to warn them, as the Rock realm is trying to take over all the other worlds. Because the rock world thinks they’re the best. We had not seen the other Troll movie(s?), the only reason we watched this is because we both are fans of the McElroy Brothers, and they have a teeny part in this? We didn’t know who they were when we watched it, but someone put a clip on Youtube, which has all three brothers’ roles, and it’s a 33-second video. I suggest if you’re a McElroy fan, just to watch that instead. We had no idea what was going on because we didn’t see the first movie; I wasn’t a big fan of Trolls when I was little. Honestly the whole movie was a question mark. I like rock music, so when they were like “Ugh, these rock guys are so bad”, I was like “okay, calm down”. I guess it was fine for a kids movie.
The next movie I caught on streaming that came out last year (we skip all the way to Christmas), I watched:
Pixar’s Soul – One sentence summary: A music school teacher, who yearns to be a jazz musician, gets into an accident, and needs to get his soul back into his body, before time runs out on his lifelong dream. I really liked this movie, I think it grabbed me in a philosophical way, because Joe’s (Jamie Foxx’s character) drive to do something that he really wanted, and finding his life’s purpose, it just hit me in a spot that was vulnerable. Everybody has that thing, and one of the things for me (I have a lot of triggers) is finding your life’s purpose and doing that to the best of your ability. It really resonated with me, his story, and if his story resonates with you, I think you should watch this movie. This one tugs at your heartstrings a little too, and it’s a Pixar movie, so it will be silly but also very serious.
The next movie that came out in 2020 that we caught on streaming was:
News of the World – One sentence summary: After the Civil War, a traveling newsreader, who goes from town to town, stumbles across a young girl who is listed as missing, and reluctantly decides to take the girl back to her family. My mom wanted to see this movie, I hadn’t heard of it until she told me about it. It was really good. My mom is a huge Tom Hanks fan, so it makes sense she would know about it before me. He is really good in the movie, but the movie didn’t have a deeper meaning or have a moral to the story, it was basically action-adventure set after the Civil War, that stars an old guy and a young girl. It was really good, but it didn’t have any extra meaning behind it. I assumed it would since I thought this would be Oscar contender, but it didn’t have a deeper message or anything like that.
Older movies
So very quickly, we saw some older movies that were not released in 2020 but were new to us. Taylor and I watched:
Zombieland: Double Tap – One sentence summary: When Little Rock goes missing, Columbus, Tallahassee, and Wichita go looking for her, traveling from the White House, where they’re staying to Graceland, Tennessee. When this one came out in 2019, we didn’t even hear that it came out, so we figured it was a flop. And yes, this movie was not good. We hoped it would live up to the first one, but it definitely didn’t. My biggest problem with the movie is that Wichita is supposed to be really concerned about her little sister going missing but she’s definitely more concerned about her boyfriend/husband (I don’t know if they actually considered themselves married), and getting him back or repairing their relationship than actively looking for her sister. So there’s no actual conflict, and it seemed more like a mini-series or Youtube videos than an actual movie plot. But mostly, yeah, you should be more concerned about your little sister, but instead you’re thinking about “why doesn’t he care if I’m here” or “I can’t believe he found another girl already”. Like, your little sister is missing in the wilds of the zombie apocalypse, shouldn’t you actually be caring about that??
Another movie that came out in 2019 that we didn’t see at first, but I still wanted to watch was:
The Kid Who Would Be King – One sentence summary: A young, unassuming elementary school boy finds the mythical sword of Excalibur, unsheathes it from rock, and needs to team up with his schoolmates who might not all like him, to fight against the depths of evil and save the world. It received a high score on Rotten Tomatoes, about 70 or 80%, so we checked it out. It wasn’t bad, but it was definitely a kids movie. It was funny in some spots, like there’s a scene where time restarts up again and the kid ends up sitting on a random stranger’s lap, and that’s pretty funny. And then some really dumb things, like, you’re telling me a bunch of elementary school children fought off literal demons from hell, and none of the kids get dead? Seriously? Like not the main characters, but not even one of the extras?? It’s improbable!
Another movie that didn’t come out in 2020 but I saw for the very first time was:
Gone Girl – One sentence summary: On the day of their fifth wedding anniversary, a woman goes missing, and her husband is the lead suspect. Again, spoilers! There’s a plot point where, it is revealed that Amy is alive and orchestrated the whole thing and I knew that part; I listen to a lot of true crime stuff, and it was referenced a couple of times. I understand they assumed I would have seen the movie already. I can’t remember the podcast, but they said even if you haven’t seen the movie, you should still watch the movie, even though that is the spoiler. I was always interested in the movie and never got around to watching it. My mom and I usually watch a movie for Christmas, and 2020 being what it was, we watched a bunch of movies, and of course one of the movies was Gone Girl; I knew she would love it so we watched it together, and she really loved it. She kept telling me after “that was a really good movie that you picked” and I was like “Thanks Mom! I knew you would like it”. I had known the spoiler and this was my first time watching it, and it was so freaking good! The acting on the part of Rosamund Pike is just outstanding, she was so good in the movie. Although I would not suggest watching this with your parents; one of the scenes is a sex/death scene, and it was very awkward, very awkward.
Rewatches
And then, there were some rewatches; during our lockdown time, sometime we watched some movies we had already seen before, I’m sure you’ve done the same thing. One of the movie we rewatched was:
Dodgeball – One sentence summary: To save Average Joe’s gym, the gym owner, gym employees and gym members enter a dodgeball competition, having never played dodgeball before. This was such a fun rewatch, I hadn’t seen it or rewatched it since it came out originally. It was fun watching the silly stuff! I remembered Steve the Pirate, and I knew he was Alan Tudyk, but over the years I became a bigger fan of Alan Tudyk, so rewatching it was like “Holy crap Alan Tudyk is so great!” The whole movie is so quotable! “If you dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball!” Wise words to live by. But yeah, if you haven’t seen it yet, watch Dodgeball, and if you haven’t seen it in a while, watch it again!
The other movie we rewatched last year was:
Airplane – One sentence summary: When the pilot and passengers of an aircraft have a bout of food poisoning, a rogue, ex-fighter pilot struggling with PTSD and a drinking problem must learn to overcome his issues and land the plane. This is the first time Taylor and I watched this movie together! This movie is just so good, such a classic; I’m sure they teach this movie in film writing classes, and if they don’t they should! This is the movie that started a lot of these tropes, and we should all watch it every couple of years anyway.
Wow, you guys, look at that, how’s that for Yarn Chicken??
And that’s it for the movies I watched in 2020. Taylor and I used to watch a lot of movies pre-lockdown, before the pandemic, and it was nice to watch movies at home. But recently, Taylor and I watched a movie in theaters! We’re both vaccinated, and it was an older movie, so we were almost the only people in the theater anyways, but it was such a delight, I can’t wait to keep going!
I think my favorite new-movie-to-me last year was probably Soul, but Gone Girl was definitely a runner up. But Soul was such a good movie to me, and hit that nerve, just a good movie.
Here’s what I have left on my blanket now! I need one more row of grey here, and I’ve run out of grey, like I said. Only a bit more to go, I want to make it taller than it is wide, and then I still have to do the stripes going down.
Let me know what movies you watched during 2020, and how many you got to see before the lockdown! And how many you started streaming, and how many you rewatched! Recommend some movies for me! I don’t like horror movies, but if you recommend some, I’ll make Taylor watch them.
That’s it everyone, thanks for watching! Bye!