Hello from the other side of chemo! It’s been a little over a week since my very last treatment, and I’ve been celebrating ever since. Of course, it’s just one phase that has ended. I still have a lumpectomy and radiation to look forward to (gah!), but in the meantime I’m happy to be almost all done with this cancer business.

One thing I had to stop doing when I started chemo, since I had to avoid crowds and germs while my immune system was more fragile, was venturing out to movie theaters. Roll up to the top of this blog, will you? You’ll note that it says: Cynthia Hawkins, Girl on Film. Mostly because I typed it in as a joke and now I can’t figure out how to undo it, but also because many people know me as a film connoisseur.

And few things along my journey have been quite as depressing as reaching the start of Oscar season without having seen any of the nominated films because this told me, unequivocally, that no matter how hard I’ve tried to keep things normal since diagnosis, things haven’t been normal at all. So, this past Saturday, Joe and I stood in our room having this conversation:

Me: “Ah man, I’d love to go see The Grand Budapest Hotel.”

Joe: “Then go. You can do what you want now.”

I can do what I want now! (Not exactly, but I’m sticking to it.) So off to the movies I went while Joe stayed home to babysit the girls. No worries. I usually go it alone. That’s how much I love movies. And then on Sunday, my friend George Gaytan, who is a wonderful classical guitarist, invited us to the Hotel Contessa on the Riverwalk where he played “Here Comes the Sun” and gave me a bag full of movie books.

As I contemplated my weekend return to the movies, in a sense, I remembered how several posts back I told you how I altered my guided meditations to be film-infused and that I should record one of my own. Well, I did. For you. And for movie lovers everywhere. You’re welcome.

Previous “Box of Monsters” blog posts:

Day 1

Day 3

Day 5

Day 7

Day 11

Day 14

Day 18

Day 21

Day 28

Day 35

Day 43

Day 51

Day 58

Day 72

Day 74

Day 89

Day 113

+Read more

Last Halloween, I’d asked a few Nervous Breakdown contributors to share their favorite terrifying movie scenes, and D. R. Haney was among them with his contribution from Rouben Mamoulian’s 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I, on the other hand, had picked the tunnel scene from Willy Wonka, which I explain so you understand why I like collaborating with Duke. My brain grows three sizes bigger by association. He’s like a cinematic moral compass for which true north is James Dean. And this year for Halloween, Duke and I decided to discuss the classic tale that produced another old-school Hollywood icon.

Read the rest here.

New at The Nervous Breakdown:

It all began when Joe Daly found himself thinking of Brion James.  You know, the bug-eyed replicant in Blade Runnerwho gets kind of nervous when he takes tests.  This led to Daly’s stellar list of the ten greatest character actors of all time, which led me to add five of my own in commentary – including Chris Cooper, John Hawkes, Mark Strong, Clancy Brown, and Brian Cox, in case you’re curious.  It would seem, though, that neither of us found ourselves thinking of women in these sorts of roles.  At first I reasoned, “It’s because there aren’t any!  All the good supporting character-centered roles are written for men!”  Then I had a vision of Joan Cusack in Say Anything pausing in the chaos of her young single-mom-hood to remember how she used to be fun.  Then I couldn’t stop thinking of great female character actors in more substantial roles than this little blip in the Cameron Crowe classic.  So, without further ado, here are ten great female character actors for your consideration …. read the rest here.

New Years Resolution: update blog in a timely manner … starting right after I post this news of a piece that ran almost a month ago.  But if you love film and you love to write and you love writers in film, this one may have been worth the wait.   Thanks to Ryan Rivas for including my Ten Lessons of Fictional Writers in Film on the Burrow Press Blog in December.  The following is only the first lesson.  Check out the rest here and have a look around Burrow Press while you’re at it.

Funny Farm

In Funny Farm, Chevy Chase plays a writer who moves to the middle of nowhere in order to jumpstart work on his manuscript in solitude.  When he’s finally done, he rents a hotel room, chills champagne, hands his wife his manuscript, and sits with his hands folded together in anticipation—watching intently, reading her facial expressions as the pages turn, leaning to check whether or not her laughter erupts in just the right places.  Lesson?  Don’t do that.

You can now get your ebook copy of Writing Off Script: Writers on the Influence of Cinema right here.  A very special thanks to Simon Smithson at Calavera Books, each of the phenomenal contributors and interviewees, book cover designer Steven Seighman, and book trailer producer Vernon Lott for all of their hard work and support.  I’m thrilled to share the result of their efforts with you and to see just how much we can raise to help replace the Joplin High School JET-14 students’ studio equipment, field cameras, and supplies that had been destroyed in the May 22 tornado.  So go buy it!  I promise it’ll be $4.99 well spent.

Everyone’s writing about Charlie Sheen.  I didn’t want to write about Charlie Sheen.  So I wrote about Emilio’s brother instead.  You know, that one-dimensional guy who barely registers in films like Red Dawn and Young Guns.  But this is a good thing, you see, because I don’t think I could watch Charlie Sheen in anything anymore, but Emilio’s brother is a-okay:  READ IT HERE.

… that I’m late in posting here.  First, I offer a few alternatives to the late-summer, early-fall movie slump that plagues us each year in Watch This, Not That.  Then, after seeing Inception no less than three times (so far), I’ve finally figured it out: there is no figuring it out.  Also, I call Christopher Nolan a smart-ass cheat, and I mean that endearingly.  Lastly, for now, I explain why my grandfather crush on Robert Duvall should be yours in a review of his latest film Get Low.