MOVIES AND PUZZLES

TITLE:  FRENCH HARBOR

MANUFACTURER:  MILTON BRADLEY
PIECES:  1000
MOVIE: JOHNNY BE GOOD

October 20th, 2016

If there's one thing I partake in more obsessively than putting together jigsaw puzzles, it's watching movies.  While I admit that it's impossible to dedicate your absolute undivided attention to a movie while also working on puzzle, I don't have too much of a problem being able to enjoy a movie or TV show while mostly looking down at my coffee table. Unfortunately, foreign film watching is not really a good idea, and some of the more quieter, visual aspects of a film are sometimes missed. Its preferable to getting distracted by the internet at least.

One thing I do enjoy about it, is the association with the puzzle and the movie.  I think it helps me remember both aspects better when I have the connection between the two.  Like when you hear a song and it brings you back to a particular time and place in your past.  Since I watch a ton of movies, it helps me retain memories of it when I have something else to look at that calls back to it.

This association helped when in late 2017 I decided to try to tag all the photos with a movie or movies I was watching when working on the puzzle.  Obviously I wasn't able to retain all that much the past years movies, but I did remember a surprising amount of movies and what I was working on while watching it.  Thankfully, I was also helped out a lot by the greatest store on the planet (aka Scarecrow Video).  One of their employees was nice enough to email me a complete list of my rentals going back to late 2014.  I was able to use this least to cross reference rentals with my photographs and was able to fill in the blanks.

I did not do a full transposing of all movies I rented to each puzzle though.  Part of the fun of this is the association I feel when thinking about the movie or puzzle, so I only wrote down movies where my memory is jogged when looking at the list.  Therefore, the information will be a little spotty for quite a while.




This puzzle has 3 things that pop up frequently with the puzzles I do:

1. sky - trees/fortress/town - boats - water

It's a very common format but it is a good one.  The layering of the distinct areas make it fairly easy put together. The masts coming up from the boats also help to break the sky up and make it easier (this had not that much sky so others will be better examples).

2. Missing pieces

Can't be too mad since I'm buying them for $1-$3 at Goodwill.  Always a little disappointing though.

3. 80's movies

I love the 80's and rent a lot of them, so they are going to pop up a lot.  This one's got Brat Packers Robert Downey Jr and Anthony Michael Hall.  I don't remember a whole lot about it, but I don't recall being very impressed.  But it's an 80's movie with RDJ so it couldn't have been too bad.