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.