Part Seven: Pilgrimage to L.A.

In the summer of 2003, before my senior year of high school, I had saved up my money and decided that my mom and I should take a trip to Los Angeles to see all the movie-related sights.

The first day of the trip, we somehow got lucky enough to find ourselves in the Blossom Room, a banquet room in the Roosevelt Hotel and home of the first Oscar ceremony. Standing in that room was great, and it was probably my favorite moment of the entire trip. By the end of the week we were there, I had visited every place that had held an Oscar ceremony.

The second day, we packed ourselves a picnic and headed out to the Paramount Ranch - home of breathtaking views and sets used in several films and TV shows (including "Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman"). It was a great place, and I loved walking around the old Western town they had set up. It was literally like you were walking into the past.

In addition to the standard studio and museum visits, my mom, my uncle Tom (who lives in California) and I found ourselves at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery three times. The first time was brief, as we happened to find it by accident and had another place scheduled to go. The second time we went around and explored for a while. We came across a couple of graves that we were curious about, most notably a small tomb with the name "Douras," so when we got back to where we were staying, we looked it up, and discovered that it was actress Marion Davies' real last name, which also led us to discover a lot about her history and her relationship with William Randolph Hearst. So after looking all that up, we made our third and final trip to the cemetery.

The Hollywood History Museum wasn't scheduled to open until 2004, but instead, it opened the week before we got there, and we discovered it on the last day of our trip. It was awesome. The basement of the museum was the entire jail set from The Silence of the Lambs and the elevator housed one of the windmills from the 2001 version of Moulin Rouge (my favorite movie at the time). The museum also had one of Cary Grant's cars, amongst a lot of other very cool things.

That week I spent in L.A. was probably my favorite movie-related experience of the decade.

Part Six: Stuff

I chose that rather informal title for this part because a lot of these things could be considered movie memorabilia, but others are just the random things I've accumulated over my time as a cinephile.

The first thing I started to collect is my movie ticket stubs. At first, I just displayed them up on my wall (as a border to my Titanic poster), but as the collection grew and I wanted to take them to Columbia with me, I put them in a binder in trading card sleeves. The oldest one of mine I've come across is for Pocahontas (1995), but I didn't start regularly collecting them until 2000. As far as collections go, I have also amassed quite a stock of movie lobby cards. I look for them every time I go to the theater, and other people have picked them up for me too.

My family has always loved to play board games, especially trivia. During my time in high school, the board game SceneIt came out. SceneIt combines movie trivia, movie clips and classic board game features. I can't even begin to imagine how many hours of this decade I've spent playing SceneIt.

Another board game, "Alfred Hitchcock Presents Why," is probably the coolest piece of movie memorabilia that I own. In January 2008, my friend Ameena and I went to the antique mall in Columbia and made quite the discovery when we found that. So I bought it, along with a couple other movie-related items, and we played it a few days later. It combines aspects of Clue and Go Fish, and one of the possible ways to win is by putting together a few cards to make a silhouette Hitchcock's famous profile.

I have decouphaged an old army trunk and an old bookshelf/cookie display with some of my favorite movie-related images. As those took a lot of work and look pretty cool, they are probably my favorite homemade movie items. I also have created a makeshift reel out of clear Christmas lights and pictures from some of my favorite movies, and a scrapbook which I named "MovieCat's Book of Film."

Those items only scratch the surface - I've also accumulated a lot of posters, t-shirts, glossy black and white photos of Bette Davis and Cary Grant, and a lot of small little movie-related trinkets. I would imagine that I'll only continue to accumulate all of these things in the next decade.

Part Five: Reading About Film

The movie-related books, magazines and websites I've read over the course of this decade as a cinephile have, at times, had just as much impact as the movies themselves.

It all started in the summer of 2000, in between junior high and high school for me. My parents had gotten me a subscription to MovieLine magazine, the first magazine I regularly read that wasn't Highlights or Seventeen. I pretty much loved all the features and profiles they did on movies and actors. That summer, craving some reading material, I made my way to the Jamestown branch of the St. Louis Public Library and found myself entranced by a coffee table book - Vanity Fair's Hollywood. The book contained great pictures (and some text) from the history of the movie business. As it was listed as a reference book, I couldn't check it out and spent hours at the library combing through its glossy pages. The image I remember the most from that book is an early shot of Bette Davis - as a blonde. I had already started to become a fan of her and her films due to TCM, but something about the picture and the fact that she used to be a blonde (which I am as well) made me appreciate her even more.

As I wrote in part two, Roger Ebert also played a fairly big part in my decade under the influence of cinema. It started with the TV show, but I soon became a bigger fan of his writing, both on his website and in his books. I've read most of them, and I own The Great Movies and Awake in the Dark. The Great Movies became a guide for me in seeking out movies to watch, and there was a period of time when I'd trust Ebert's word on films more than anyone else's. I don't feel that way anymore, but I will always have a very deep appreciation for Ebert, his writing and his plain, old love for cinema.

It's no secret that my love of cinema was maximized in college. After looking up books for one of my classes freshman year, I decided to look up movie books to see if I could find something to read for fun. So after getting a little lost, I finally found the hidden room that is 3 Central in Ellis Library and the movie book section. I was in awe - I was surrounded by hundreds of books on different film-related subjects. I was overcome with a ridiculous desire to read them all, but I settled on three to start. The first was Quentin Tarantino Interviews, a collection of interviews with the filmmaker, as I was in the middle of my obsession with him. The second was I Lost It at the Movies by the film critic Pauline Kael, as I had never read any of her books and always wanted to do so. The third was an absolutely random pick, Totally Tenderly Tragically: Essays and Criticism from a Lifelong Love Affair with the Movies by Phillip Lopate. The title grabbed my attention, so I picked it up, climbed up on the giant step ladder, sat down and read the introduction. I was immediately reeled in, as some of this guy's experiences mirrored my own. I checked it out with the other two, and it was only a matter of a day or two before I'd finished reading it. The honesty and the way it parallels some of my own stories, especially as I've re-read it over the years, have kept it as one of my favorite books.

Throughout high school and for most of college, I subscribed to both Entertainment Weekly and Premiere magazines. EW was (and still is) a good way to keep up on all aspects of entertainment and pop culture, and I especially remember loving to read Stephen King's column "The Pop of King." Premiere was entirely devoted to movies and I absolutely love it - the features, the lists, Glenn Kenny's reviews and, most of all, Libby Gelman-Waxner's column, "If You Ask Me." (I've even read the book of the same name, a collection of some of the columns, and consider it a favorite.) In April 2007, I went to check my mail, and much to my dismay, I received a card saying that Premiere had stopped producing their monthly magazine. I was devastated - they still have their website, but it just isn't the same as having that magazine to flip through and read every month.

More recently, I've been reading a lot about movies online. Of all the movie websites and blogs, I'd have to say that Cinematical is without a doubt my favorite. In addition to standard film reviews and news, they have great movie-related lists and features on stand-out performances and films. I also read The New York Times' Arts section and The Guardian's film section online frequently.

From Vanity Fair's Hollywood to Cinematical, reading about film has been a very valuable part of my decade under the influence of cinema.

Part Four: The Oscars

*As the 2010 Oscars, which honor the best films of 2009, will not be taking place until March 7, I will update this (if necessary) on March 7 or 8, 2010.*

Close behind my birthday and Christmas, Oscar night ranks as my favorite holiday. I think it's no coincidence that the winners of the first Academy Awards in 1929 were announced on February 17 (my birthday). Marking an end to my favorite season (awards season), not only do the Oscars celebrate the best movies of the year, they're a celebration filled with glamour and history - both of Hollywood and the movie business as a whole. As is normal for most film fans, I may not agree with the nominations or the winners, but I still love the Academy Awards.

In this decade, I've had two pretty memorable Oscar-related experiences. The first is at the center of the trip I took to Los Angeles in the summer of 2003. I visited every venue that has hosted the Academy Awards - which I'll go into more when I talk about that trip in part seven. During that trip, I also accumulated my fake Oscar. The second involves two pretty memorable wins. George Clooney and Kate Winslet, my two favorite living actors, won their first Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor in 2005 for Syriana and Best Actress in 2008 for The Reader, respectively. I was beyond happy to see them both get their well-deserved trophies.

As far as this decade's nominees and winners go, I haven't agreed with a large percentage of the outcomes. The most notable example of this is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It received a staggeringly low two nominations - one for Best Actress for Kate Winslet and the other for Best Original Screenplay for Charlie Kaufman. The fact that it wasn't nominated across the board (as it was the best-reviewed film of the year) - most notably for Best Picture, Best Actor for Jim Carrey, Best Score for Jon Brion, Best Cinematography for Ellen Kuras and Best Visual Effects - is a downright tragedy. Kaufman did win for Best Original Screenplay, so I was pretty happy about that, as he's probably my favorite screenwriter.

Looking at the (at times controversial) Best Picture category this decade, I didn't 100% agree with any of the winners, but the one I most agreed with was 2006's The Departed, which took home the trophy at the 2007 ceremony. Of all of that year's nominees, it was definitely my favorite.

It may have been frustrating to not always see the nominees or winners that I wanted, but, as I mentioned at the beginning, what I enjoyed the most about the Academy Awards of the 2000s were the moments that reflect the history of cinema. The montages - of films in general and the "In Memoriam" ones dedicated to the people involved with film who have died over the last year - almost always at least bring a tear to this film-lover's eye. Those moments, seeing "my picks" win and the appearances of film industry legends have sustained my love of the Oscars and film in general.

Part Three: Going to the Movies

By the start of the decade, due in large part to weekly family double-features (sometimes triple-features), I was very familiar with the local cineplexes. So as far as new movie-going experiences went, this decade was all about the discovery of independent/art-house theaters and fan-filled midnight screenings.

The first movie I remember seeing at the Tivoli - a beautifully restored movie palace on the Delmar Loop - is Gosford Park. It was nominated for several Oscars, including Best Picture, so in my yearly quest to see all the Best Picture nominees before the Academy Awards ceremony, my mom and I found ourselves headed to the Tivoli on an early afternoon near the beginning of 2002. We were running a little behind, so my mom dropped me off in front of the theater with some money while she found a parking spot. I somewhat meekly made my way up to the box office, said "Two for Gosford Park," and expected them to turn me down. (I was fifteen at the time, and Gosford Park is rated R.) Much to my surprise, they sold me the tickets, and when my mom came, I quietly exclaimed, "They sold me the tickets. They thought I was 17!" That experience, combined with the beauty of the old-fashioned movie palace and its location on the Loop, made me fall in love with the Tivoli and it's still my favorite place in the St. Louis metro area.

From there, I discovered the Hi-Pointe, Plaza Frontenac and Chase Park Plaza - the other theaters that showcased independent and foreign films in the St. Louis area. The amount of time I spent in those theaters and the Tivoli (along with the cineplexes, for that matter) exponentially increased in this decade, especially when I turned 16 and got my driver's license.

As far as independent theaters outside of St. Louis go, the greatest (or maybe second-greatest) discovery I made my freshman year of college was probably Ragtag Cinema in downtown Columbia. On one Sunday afternoon, I decided to explore the area and check out Ragtag for the first time. So I somehow made my way up Tenth Street and found myself sitting on a couch in the middle of a room with a bunch of strangers, watching Maria Full of Grace. I thought the movie was good, and I loved Ragtag pretty much instantly. Sunday afternoons at Ragtag quickly became a staple of my college schedule, and they remained so through my junior year.

While the decade's most important movie-going experiences came to me in the form of independent theaters, I also did have a few memorable experiences at the cineplexes, most notable at midnight screenings. Off-hand I can only remember what I've seen starting in the summer of 2005, but I'm fairly certain I also saw the midnight screenings of The Matrix Reloaded along with the second and/or third X-Men movie(s). So from the summer of 2005 through summer 2009, this is what I saw alongside crowds of movie fans (as far as I can remember): Batman Begins, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Bourne Supremacy, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Superman Returns, Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Sex and the City, The Dark Knight and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Of all those shows, Batman Begins is probably the one that stands out the most in my mind. I had been a Batman fan my entire life (and still am), starting with the Tim Burton movies and "Batman: The Animated Series," which aired when I was a kid. To say the previous Batman film, 1997's Batman & Robin, was a disappointment is probably an understatement, so I was hoping for better than that at the bare minimum. As a fan of Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Gary Oldman, I was also fairly excited and hopeful. The first viewing of the trailer for Batman Begins amped up the excitement and the hope. It was well worth the excitement - the film was the best superhero movie I'd seen, and I was so taken by it that I stayed up after I got back from the midnight show to write my review. All of the hope and excitement that were brewing due to that film, combined with the buzz surrounding Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker, also led to a very anticipated midnight screening of The Dark Knight three years later. You can bet I'll have more on these two films when I write about my favorite movie franchises of the decade.

Going back to midnight showings as a whole, I love them because they are when the true, hard-core fans come out. Even if the movie isn't that great, the collective experience of going to a midnight screening and seeing honest fan reactions is something that is truly unparalleled.

Between the discovery of independent theaters and midnight shows, the 2000s were definitely full of memorable movie-going experiences.

Part Two: Watching Movies on TV

During high school, every waking moment that wasn't spent eating or doing school stuff was spent either writing about or watching a movie or something movie-related. I even could be found regularly watching movies and writing while at work.

The debt I owe to TCM (Turner Classic Movies) for encouraging and really helping to spark my interest in cinema is immeasurable. I am also extremely thankful that I had access to the channel both at my parents' house and at work. The TV network single-handedly inspired my love of classic cinema, and the specific films, directors, actors and genres that are a part of that. Of everything introduced to me by TCM, I would say the most notable were The Philadelphia Story, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Woody Allen, Alfred Hitchcock, classic musicals and film noir.

Musicals are probably the main reason why I started watching TCM; the brilliance of 2001's Moulin Rouge had inspired me to want to go back and see as many of the classic musicals as I could. One night, I was scrolling through the channels, and I happened to notice that Singin' in the Rain was about to come on, so I watched it. That night, I fell in love with the musical and Gene Kelly.

In the summer before my freshman year of high school, I fell in love with Bette Davis and Cary Grant. Davis, even in her more subtle roles, gave a fierce determination and raw emotionalism in all of her films. The first film of hers that I saw was Now, Voyager, about a woman heading towards spinsterhood who decides to change her ways and start living life. While Davis' performance alone was enough for me to love it, I also really liked it because it wasn't your typical romance, and it proved that, even in the past, not everyone always wanted the perfect ending in films. And then came Cary Grant. He's suave, he's got great comedic timing, he's easy on the eyes, and he's just an overall great actor. Davis and Grant are still my favorite actress and actor, and I have "glamour shots" of both of them hanging proudly on my wall.

TCM is also to blame for Woody Allen and Alfred Hitchcock becoming two of my favorite directors. The network exposed me to a lot of Allen's films, most notably the first one I saw, Stardust Memories, and Annie Hall, which are both in my top five of his films. I also saw a good chunk of Hitchcock's oeuvre, from Rebecca and Notorious to The Birds and Marnie. Notorious was both the first Hitchcock and first Cary Grant film I saw, and is to blame for my appreciation for both men. Grant was a debonair hero, and the film as a whole was so intense and complex that I instantly knew why Hitchcock was considered such a legend in filmmaking. You can only imagine my excitement upon discovering that the college I attended offered courses that focused on both men's work.

On June 29, 2003, the film world suffered a major loss when Katharine Hepburn died. Up to that point, I hadn't seen any of her movies, so I took TCM's decision to air a 24-hour marathon of her films as my chance to get a hefty dose. So at about five or six on a summer morning, I woke up, turned on TCM and just kept watching. The only part I missed were the 10-minute periods when I went to and from work, but luckily, one of them happened to fall within the breaks between films. I was an instant fan, especially of The Philadelphia Story, which I consider to have a safe place at the top of a list of my favorite films of all time. She went toe-to-toe with Cary Grant and pulled it off wonderfully.

There are others I could delve into (Paul Newman, Peter Lorre, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Audrey Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Sydney Pollack, Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman, as a short list), but I'll move on to IFC.

My parents had (and still have) Dish Network, so right next to TCM on the channel listings, you could find IFC (the Independent Film Channel). So when I wasn't particularly interested in what was on TCM (or if I'd already seen what was on), I would watch IFC instead. I owe IFC for a lot of cinema loves as well, but the most notable of those are probably the filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai and the film Amélie.

I saw In the Mood for Love on IFC sometime in the middle of high school. It combined a film noir-like sensibility and story with one of the best uses of color I had ever seen. As far as cinematic style goes, that's something Wong Kar-Wai has in spades, and that's why I continually seek out his films.

The summer between my last year of high school and my first year of college, I saw 2001's Amélie for the first time, thanks to IFC. As with In the Mood for Love, I was also taken by the terrific use of color, but the story of Amélie and her little adventures was the main driving point for me. But I'll go into that more when I roll out my list of the top 10 films of the decade.

Aside from those two networks, I also was a regular watcher of "Ebert & Roeper" and "Inside the Actors Studio." Roger Ebert was something of a hero to me (and still is to a lesser degree) - his career was the one that I wanted to have, but I'll go into that more in Part Five, when I talk about reading about film. If Ebert had my number one dream career, and Robert Osbourne (host of TCM's featured films) claimed the number two spot, then James Lipton (host of "Inside the Actors Studio") definitely had number three. While those stacks of blue cards have become somewhat of a joke, I still think that it would be awesome to do all that research about actors and the roles they've taken on throughout their careers.

Those moments I spent sitting in front of the TV, especially in my high school years, did a large part in shaping who I am both as a person and a lover of film.

Part One: Writing About Film

It all started in the year 2000 when a pop culture-obsessed eighth grader signed up for a free gURLpage under the screenname dramaqueen2004. Cat's Celeb News was born, and when I changed it to a "more credible" Yahoo! GeoCities page in 2002, I gave it a manifesto:

Movies: My Passion
By Catherine Krummey
For as long as I can remember, I've had a love for movies. Seeing people get to act like these extraordinary people and go to extraordinary places was something truly amazing for me. I had a passion for movies that hasn't quit yet. I've always felt like I could relate in some way to every movie I see. When I was younger, I wanted to be Belle in Beauty and the Beast. More recently, I've felt like I actually was the character Josie in Never Been Kissed or Bridget in Bridget Jones's Diary. From Beauty and the Beast to Bridget Jones, movies have had a deep impact on my life.
Movies portray the extraordinary and the ordinary. Most importantly, they portray humanity. Comedy movies extend those clutsy moments we know we all have or silly jokes we hear and can't stop laughing at. Action movies give us heroes and some really ridiculous macho stuff. Drama movies extend pain, sadness, joy, love - all the emotions that make life real. Horror movies, well, they let us make sure we have someone special to cling onto when we're scared. Sci-fi movies make us wonder if there really is intelligent life out there somewhere. Biopics show us real people, real lives to be inspired by and learn lessons from.
Moments that can last a lifetime are also created by movies. I will eternally remember Drew Barrymore's speech at prom in Never Been Kissed. Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor singing to each other in Moulin Rouge. George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez's conversation/love scene in Out of Sight. Renee Zellweger's one line to Tom Cruise at the end of Jerry Maguire. And too many more to count.
Movies also create icons: legends we all wish we could be or, at the very least, meet. Charlie Chaplin. Ingrid Bergman. Humphrey Bogart. James Stewart. Katharine Hepburn. Faye Dunaway. Jack Nicholson. Al Pacino. Susan Sarandon. Robert DeNiro. Michael Douglas. Julia Roberts. George Clooney. Renee Zellweger.
But the filmmakers and screenwriters that have visions and make them real - they're the extraordinary ones. Cecil B. DeMille. George Cukor. Howard Hawks. Alfred Hitchcock. Stanley Kubrick. Martin Scorsese. Woody Allen. Francis Ford Coppola. Steven Spielberg. Steven Soderbergh. Cameron Crowe.
Then it's what these extraordinary people come together to make: movies that stand out against the rest. Vertigo. A Clockwork Orange. Taxi Driver. Annie Hall. The Godfather. E.T. Out of Sight. Jerry Maguire.
Movies shape style, music, trends and lives. Movies are pop culture masterpieces that can draw tons of followers and publicity - both positive and negative.
I might be one of those people who always criticizes movies, but at the end of the day, I'm just sitting in the theater, waiting to be entertained.

And a cheesy little poem:

Just a flicker of the screen,

And I'm taken to New York or Paris or somewhere in between.

Stories of loved ones and times that pass us by

That make us laugh or smile or even cry.

I'm transported to different places,

Different eras, all with different faces.

I follow the hero

On his way up from zero,

Sharing his experiences,

His heartbreak, his grievances.

I'm told a story

That will leave my life changed.

A story that always

Keeps me engaged.

A story, a moment,

A quote, or a song,

From my memory

Will never be gone.

As I became increasingly interested in both writing and cinema, I decided that I would like to pursue a career as a film critic. So, I signed up for my high school's journalism classes, and before I knew it, I was editor-in-chief of the paper. I wrote for every section of the paper, but I did tend to focus on film reviews and arts and entertainment stories.

That same semester, I decided I should change my website to reflect my changed obsession, so I scrapped everything about Cat's Celeb News that wasn't movie-related and created MovieCat Cinema on November 4, 2003. I kept the manifesto and the poem, and began to show just how movie-mad I was through my writing. It paid off - I became a member of the Internet Entertainment Writers Association, and in March 2005, the Association of Young Journalists and Writers named me the Writer of the Month, making me a semi-finalist for that year's scholarship. That success kept me going - I kept writing for the site, even as I got a journalism internship and two paying jobs as a film critic.

My internship at Louie Magazine in January 2006 mainly consisted of two things: doing clerical work and reviewing movies. The best part was when I went to a screening of Glory Road to find a seat marked off with a sign that said "Reserved for Press" and had my name on it. I was so excited that I took the sign home with me after the movie.

In the midst of my internship, I got an e-mail from MU Student News offering me a job as their female film critic. (Their reviews came in a He Said/She Said format.) It was only $10 a review (plus I got into the movie at the Forum theater in Columbia for free), but it was still something. It was bylines. The first film I did was Brokeback Mountain, and as the male critic I shared the space with was also somewhat into the Oscars, we also got to do another short piece on our picks for the winners. I was ecstatic. And it was about to get even better.

In March of 2006, through the School of Journalism's e-mail listserv, I got a job doing freelance arts and entertainment pieces for Funcoast.com, an arts and leisure website based in Sandusky, Ohio. After doing one story on twin illusionists, the editor offered me a job as their film critic - and I could review whatever I wanted, which made me pretty happy. We had to choose a film that came out at the Forum theater every week for the MUSN reviews, so that became quite limiting. And the Funcoast job was $25 a review, which had to include the price of admission - but it was still better than the MUSN post. So, for the majority of the year 2006, I saw at least two movies in the theater every weekend. It was bliss.

As the weeks went on, between having to see some of the worst movies imaginable due to Forum's limited new releases, the grammatical errors that were edited into my stories and the fact that the paper was no longer in print and only online, MUSN became a bit of a joke.

I was still enjoying the whole idea of being paid to write about movies, though. However, between those two jobs, school and other things I was in involved with, I did decide that it was time to say goodbye to MovieCat Cinema at the beginning of October.

Since I had deemed that part of my life to be in the past, I was really starting to rely heavily on the critic jobs as my creative outlet. Only a few days after I shut down MCC, I received an e-mail from my Funcoast editor letting me know that, starting in January, they were going to replace me with the AP (Associated Press) feed of film reviews.

January 2007 really marked the beginning of the end for me and my serious track to becoming a film critic. Between everyone and their brother going on and on about film criticism being a dying profession (the Funcoast situation was a prime example), and the fact that I went from having three venues to post my criticism to none, I felt pretty defeated. (In case you're wondering about the MUSN job - I had to give it up due to a certain journalism class I was taking starting in January 2007.)

Needless to say, I gave up on the whole film critic thing, and I didn't really write anything of any consequence about film until the summer of 2009. I started using my xanga, which I started back in March 2005 as a venue for me to write about everything but film, as an outlet for the opinions and essays I wanted to get out there about film.

On August 17, 2009, I created an online writing portfolio, which showcases my writings about film (and other topics), past and present.

To date, the Funcoast job is hands-down the best job I've had. I got paid to review films that I wanted to review, and as a bonus, the first editor I had at Funcoast used to come up with the most creative lines to go along with my contact information at the end of each published review. So, to end this part, I'm going to leave you with some witty one-liners (written about me, not by me):

Tsotsi: Catherine Krummey is a movie addict. Share in her addiction: e-mail her at ckrummey@funcoast.com.
Little Miss Sunshine: Catherine Krummey once was called "Little Miss Sunshine." Once and only once -- because after that she decked the person who called her that.
Cars: The cars in the film get their kicks on Route 66, Catherine Krummey gets hers from watching flicks.
The Da Vinci Code: Catherine Krummey's Holy Grail? The perfect movie.
The Devil Wears Prada: Catherine Krummey wears Old Navy. [This is true but my editor didn't know that.]
X-Men 3: The Last Stand: If Catherine Krummey were a mutant, her name would be ... oh wait, she already is one.
Lady in the Water: Catherine Krummey got "Goosebumps" from this film.
Idlewild: Catherine Krummey likes to walk on the (Idle)wild side.
Poseidon: The editor of this publication cannot believe that Catherine Krummey dissed a movie with Josh Lucas in it, but she'll forgive her...just this once.
The Break-Up: Catherine Krummey has never gone through a "crummy" breakup.
The Illusionist: Catherine Krummey loves a little magic.

Introduction: My decade under the influence of cinema

Hello, my name is Catherine, and I'm a film addict. Good films, bad films, classic films, new films. I will pretty much watch any movie once. To quote the first essay I ever wrote about my love of cinema: "For as long as I can remember, I've had a love for movies. Seeing people get to act like these extraordinary people and go to extraordinary places was something truly amazing for me. I had a passion for movies that hasn't quit yet."

The decade started with Catherine, the 13-year-old writer with an internet connection, TCM, IFC and parents who took her to the movies at least once a week. A month and a half later, I turned 14, and I suppose you could say that's right around the time my obsession with pop culture narrowed down to film. Armed with burgeoning interests in writing, Hollywood history and filmmaking, I set out to watch, read and write about anything cinema-related that I could find. In this decade, I made my first pilgrimage to Hollywood (that I was old enough to remember), created my own movie-centric website, worked two paying film critic jobs, was president of Mizzou's Film Club, decided that I want to pursue a career in film and a bunch of other film-related things.

I started working on this project in my spare time in August, so I have a good share of it together, I just wanted to wait until closer to the end of the decade. I have the idea broken up into fifteen posts - the Introduction, Part One: Writing About Film, Part Two: Watching Movies, Part Three: Going to the Movies, Part Four: The Oscars, Part Five: Reading About Film, Part Six: Stuff, Part Seven: Pilgrimage to L.A., Part Eight: Studying Film, Part Nine: A Major Change, Part Ten: The College Film Experience, Part Eleven: Film Festivals, Part Twelve: The Best Franchises of the Decade, Part Thirteen: The Best Films of the Decade, and the Wrap-Up. I plan on getting most of the posts up by the end of the year, with the exception of the best films of the decade, as I will most likely still be seeing some of the 2009 films for the first time into the beginning of 2010. My goal is to have that one going by the middle of January.

I hope whoever reads this blog will enjoy it as much as I have; going through all the pictures, writing, movies, books, places, websites and memories has been a pretty enjoyable experience for me.