The Recent Past---2000 to 2009

by Maggie Sefton


I’m still here in the Northern Neck of Virginia, one and a half hours from the D.C. Metro Madness and a block  away from the Potomac River.  The summer temperatures have been hot, hot, HOT.  Just like most of the East Coast.  This week, however, I am seeing the temps start to moderate. 

Back in Colorado, the last week of July and the first week of August are called the Monsoon Season, which means rainstorms practically every day.  Those Monsoon rains are essential to our weather systems out West.  Summers in July can be hot and dry, so the Monsoon is always welcome.  Back East, however, hot and dry Julys are not the norm.  So, this year has been a big surprise.  Rainstorms have not appeared regularly.

Summer is also the time of the year that the most popular new movies are released.  Summertime movie attendance skyrockets.  So during these last weeks of Summer and early Fall, while I’m finishing the 15th Kelly Flynn Knitting Mystery, I thought I would include a list of the Most Popular movies (based on attendance figures) for the last several decades.  Yes, decades.  I Googled them all.  I’m going to start with our last complete decade, 2000 through 2009.  Here they are-----
Slumdog Millionaire (the hands-down winner), followed by Gladiator, Avatar, and Black Hawk Down.  Right behind them is my favorite Tarantino movie, Kill Bill, Volume one.  Yes, I have very eclectic tastes.  :)  Farther down that top list was what I consider the very best Woody Allen movie he ever made.  No, not Annie Hall, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  The movie was Match Point, one of the best Suspense movies you will ever see.  Check it out.  You won't regret it.