You Ought To Be In (12) Pictures

Many years ago, using the weekly TV guide that came with the Sunday Chicago Tribune, I started keeping track of all of the movies I had seen over the course of my lifetime.  The guide would list the two main stars for each movie, and that is a tradition that I’ve carried on in my database ever since.  Given those guidelines, it is time once again to look at the now 107 actors that have starred in at least 10 films that I have seen, as of July 1.

We continue today with the nine actors that have starred in exactly 12 movies that I have seen, down one from 3 years ago.

Kristen Bell

The Veronica Mars star made her first “big screen” appearance in my life with the television remake of Reefer Madness in 2005.  She’s been a pretty steady presence since, with a two-year gap in 2015 and 2016 being her largest.  2018’s Like Father, which I saw in 2020, remains my most recent exposure to her in a starring role.

Leonardo DiCaprio

A small bump up for DiCaprio, who first appeared on my movie screen in 1996, with The Basketball Diaries.  After a three-year run to start, I had a gap of eight years between his films, from 2002-2009.  2011 was his most prolific year, with three different films.  The most recent film of his that I’ve seen was 2021’s Don’t Look Up.

Michael Douglas

I have not seen a Michael Douglas starring project since 2015’s Ant-Man.

Aaron Eckhart

Aaron Eckhart first showed up on the list of film actors I’ve seen way back in 1999 with Your Friends & Neighbors.  Since then, his appearances have been a little haphazard, with nothing more than three two-year streaks over the past 21 years.  The most recent film of his I’ve seen was 2014’s atrocious I, Frankenstein, which I unfortunately saw in 2020.

Corey Haim

My final Haim film was 1993’s Just One Of The Girls, which I saw in 2004.  Haim passed away in 2010, so he is not likely to be moving up this list anytime soon.

Helen Hunt

I first came across Helen Hunt back in 1987’s Project X.  She racked up nine of her twelve films between 1994 and 2006, with a double shot in 1996 thanks to Trancers and Twister.  After a fifteen-year hiatus, she returned to my screen in 2021, thanks to 2019’s I See You.

Anna Kendrick

Kendrick, who packed nine films into just three years, started in 2016, when Pitch Perfect 2 was the first of four films I saw starring her.  She followed that up with another four in 2017, an additional two in 2018, and single outings in 2019 and 2021, when I watched her in Stowaway.

Liam Neeson Continue reading →

Attack Of The Empire Strikes Jedi Wars

1351633321449ozd0uThe fine folks at Disney and Lucasfilm announced the main cast of next year’s Star Wars Episode VII.  Along side returning vets Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and Kenny Baker, the new film will feature John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, and Max von Sydow.  Which, other than Driver, Serkis, and von Sydow, is a big heaping pile of who?

Not that that is necessarily a bad thing.  Nobody knew who Harrison Ford or Mark Hamill were before the original Star Wars hit in 1977 and everybody knew who Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor were prior to Episode I in 1999.  If the new films are going to follow the lead of the previous entries, I’d much rather they emulate the original trilogy and not the latest one.

30 Day Movie Challenge Day 04 – A Movie That Makes You Sad

 

The sadness here comes in the bitter disappointment of how bad these Star Wars prequels were and how they truly shut the door on what was a large part of my childhood.  Episode I’s sin was that it was boring.  Episode II is simply bad, starting with the “acting” of Hayden Christensen, who seems to have only two emotions: whiny and wooden.