Sometimes ya just gotta try something weird to find something sane...

Scenes from Jeffs Cool Movie, version 1.0

I made a really cool movie for people with dementia such as myself. This movie can be watched by the dementia/cognitively-declined patient for a truly satisfying 90 or so minutes of fun. And it had rewatchability, so important to the dementia patient.

I shall try to explain but in this case, a portion of the readers will not get it at all, all patients will get it instinctively, some caregivers who have watched their patients choose their entertainment and understand why they made those choices will get it. I made it for me....and now that I see how well it works, I am going to make many more..

You see, trying to watch what are normally fun movies with normals can either be trying for the patient (attempting to keep up and understand key plot points, or even who is who) or for the caregiver/families as we tend to prefer things we have seen before, many times in cases; this is the only way we can keep up. Our crappy memories only remind us of about half the plot/story from seeing it before, that means we only need to fathom half the stuff since only half is "new".

Now we have a pretty ramblin' media setup from my years in various gigs but say we watch something lile The Matrix. As card-carrying geeks, we have seen it about a bazillion times and worn out many a DVD until we came to worship at the altar of IsoHunt. Anyhow, the thing is, even with something as familiar as this, we can re-watch it now and 20 minutes later when I try to think back on what I had just seen, I only had fragments, usually the most visually stunning bits or maybe key moments of comic relief...and I got an idea: what if I just took the parts I am going to remember anyways and just make a single movie from a dozen or more? As the article is titled, sometimes you just gotta try something weird to find something sane.

I went through part of our catalog of movies, selected over a dozen, using the open source tool OpenShot, my go-to video-editor, I selected the most memorable bits from some key movies, and edited them all together into said 90-minute movie. Someone visiting me might view this and go WTF  but this movie is great (on the big-screen as I write this)...it is only version 1.0 because the bits are more or less randomly edited together.  Whats in this flick?

Well...

1. The 500-Smith fight scene from Matrix 2:

2. The opening musical fight, mainly credits but Beth likes the music, of Guardians of the Galaxy II:

3. The scene in Iron Man 1 where Tony tries the boot-jets for the first time:

4. The scene from Matrix 1 where Neo and Trinity rescue Morpheus:

5. The scene from Avengers here Hulk beats the crap out of Loki. Instant classic:

6. Scene from start of Thor: Ragnarok, basically the scene set to Led Zeppelin:

Hard to see but Thor is whailing on everyone with his lightning hammer Mjolnir

7. Actually part two of Ragnarok: The Zep Video; this is the end where the big bridge fight is set to Zep. Yep I was a fan back in the day; screw it, this is my movie, to entertain me and guess what? It does perfectly, no stress, just enough enjoyment or depth at any one time and if I fade out for a second, its OK because what I am seeing when I come back doesn't have shit to do with what I was watching when the fog descended. But its not done..

8. Big, very choreographed brawl at the beginning of Avengers: Age of Ultron:

9. And the brawl with Ultron at the end-ish. There was just a way that Joss Whedon choreographed these that I liked:

10. The very final footage of Bruce Lee in the Game of Death. Bruce died during the making of this and had only filmed a few key scenes of the climax. After his death, Shaw Bros I think got an almost Bruce look-alike, not real good but they tried all manner of tricks like crudely super-imposing a photo of Bruce Lees face over the double a few times, lots of purposely off-angles, etc. However. On this footage is the last time Bruce filmed something for the screen, a fight up a tower where on each floor waiting a fighter of some different style (specifically, weapons, karate and out of nowhere, Kareem Abdul Jabbar. While his moves were laughable, the sheer difference in their size (5 foot vs 7 foot something if I recall) made it an interesting scene for the time (1970-someting). Point of order this is before wire-fu and CGI became the path to martial arts; these guys got there on their own steam and agility:

11. The classic ending of Return of the Dragon where Bruce Lee and a very young Chuck Norris have at-it. Classic scene:

12. These last two go together, just because I like them visually. The first is the rather comic work of Quicksilver in XMen First Class: Days of Future Past. Made more comical to me by the fact that this is the 70s, Quicksilver is a kid and acts like one, and the whole thing is set to Time in a Bottle, Jim Croce, which is has on his Walkman as this is going on:

 

13. And final for now, a similar scene from XMen: Apocalypse, Quicksilver rescues everyone from Xaviers mansion, literally in an instant as it is blowing up, to the tune of "Sweet Dreams" from the Eurythmics...very cool.

Scenes like this I think of as "visually tasty"

So there ya have it, my first "Cool" movie. I had to name the file something. I would post it for others but would have the copyright police on my ass in a heat-beat so, sorry. Still if you have the means, I whole heartedly suggest you try this; its amazing how much easier it is to enjoy. Probably would drive normal folks nuts but it works too. The more the merrier. That works on all kinds of levels if you think on it.

Peace,
Jeff