... FOR "MILESTONES AND SUCH"

Finding The Wrong Words celebrates an important milestone today: 5 years up and running! Hard to believe when I started this blogging adventure on February 3, 2010, that we'd still be going strong all this time later. Thanks to everyone who's given their unwavering support over the last half decade. I appreciate your comments and your readership more than I can possibly express. Now let's keep it going for another five years and beyond!

... FOR "ACTORS WHO SHOULD PLAY OTHER ACTORS' FAMILY MEMBERS"

New year, new feature here at Finding The Wrong Words...

Have you ever looked at a particular actor and thought, "Why, he/she is the spitting image of this other actor/actress I love so much! This can't be a coincidence. If I didn't know better, I'd say they were separated at birth!" And the idea fascinates you so much that you're compelled to check the IMDb, only to find that the two actors are not, in fact, related in any way?

How can this be? More importantly, why hasn't anyone had the bright idea to cast these folks as family members in a movie before? This is especially distressing once you realize that Hollywood has a long and tortured history of casting people who obviously have no business being siblings. Kurt Russell and William Baldwin in Backdraft, for example (wouldn't it have been simpler to hire, I don't know, Alec Baldwin as Billy's older brother?). Or Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves, cast as (half) brothers in Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing (yeah, right). The eclectic ensemble of 2003's Cheaper By The Dozen are clearly the product of an extramarital affair or two, with blonde, brunette and redheaded children all running around under the same roof. And can anyone point out the family resemblance between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in Twins? (Okay, so that last one's a joke).

... FOR "THE GREATEST ANTI-CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS MOVIES OF ALL TIME"

Well, it's Christmas time again, folks! Which means exactly one thing here around the office: endless conversations about what does and does not constitute a Christmas movie. This debate began roughly three years ago, when someone (I think it was myself) singled out Die Hard as the Greatest Christmas Movie Of All Time. This choice, of course, was met with heaping doses of disapproval and disdain (including the immortal argument: "Die Hard doesn't count! Santa Claus isn't even in it!") and has only gotten worse over time.

To which I reply: Why shouldn't it count? What is it about Die Hard that screams NOT A CHRISTMAS MOVIE! anyway? I mean, Home Alone counts as a Christmas movie. Why discount Die Hard when Home Alone tells the same basic story - albeit with less gunplay and foot-slicing – yet still counts itself as a holiday staple in households across America? What makes Die Hard any different from your It's A Wonderful Lifes or your Miracle On 34th Streets, despite the fact that it centers around Mr. Bruce Willis killing the crap out of terrorists for two hours, rather than reindeer and festive good cheer?

... FOR "MOVIE COINCIDENCE OF THE DAY #8 ('THE SANTA CLAUSE 2' / 'BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III' EDITION)"

Ah, Christmas. That time of year when we gather close to the ones we love, preferably in front of a warm fireplace with a cup of fresh wassel in our hands. A time to bask in the warming glow of each other's company with the snow falling in thick blankets outside. A time of peace, joy, and understanding. And if you're Santa Claus in desperate need of finding a wife before your contractual obligation to do so expires on Christmas Eve, a time to come clean to the beautiful high school principal you've been wooing in hopes she'll return with you to the North Pole to live out the rest of her natural life.

Complicated? To say the least. In this scene from Disney's The Santa Clause 2 (2002), Scott Calvin (Tim Allen), shrunk down in size the closer he comes to his deadline, tries to convince the lovely Carol Newman (Elizabeth Mitchell) that he is, in fact, the most famous holiday mascot in the history of the world. Needless to say what happens does not exactly bode well for their relationship. Then again, the last time I tried convincing a girl that I was actually Santa Claus, she reacted in pretty much the same way:

... FOR "RANDOM UPDATES TO THE SITE"

When I first embarked on this blogging adventure in February of 2010, I'll admit I was a novice at it in more ways than one. Learning to let my freak flag fly, for one thing, figuring out how to stand toe to toe with (and sometimes head and shoulders above) the millions of other movie blogs out there, by offering up a different spin on the basics of filmcraft - technique, trivia, retrospectives, reviews - than you're probably used to. Or struggling to stay relevant, by paying respect to the films of the present (which, let's be honest, is all people really want to hear about) and also to the films of the past (which, let's face it, is where all modern motion pictures get their ideas). Also learning that you can't be everything to everyone all of the time; sure, people love their Comic Book Movies and their MacGuffin With Egg, but try blogging a quiz or two (or three, or eight), and readers will have nothing to do with it. (It took me too long, perhaps, to realize that once one person responds with the answers, it's pretty much pointless for everyone else.)

Still, the thing that's disappointed me the most is that I haven't been able to build up an audience to the degree I'd initially hoped for. I have my core readership, of course, to whom I'm eternally grateful. Ultimately, though, the responsibility of bringing traffic to the site rests entirely on me, and only me, and I've been slow in making that happen. Never one to toot my own horn, I was uncomfortable at first posting updates to Facebook, or anywhere else for that matter, expecting, I guess, to succeed on the strength of my words alone. But it takes a certain amount of shameless self-promotion to make it anywhere in this world, a fact I've only started warming up to, and now that I've started posting to Twitter and Medium.com, we'll see what that does for the site. (Special thanks to Ether Ling for crafting a marketing plan to help bolster the blog.)