Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn ....

Or do I? This weeks review is for the classic, Gone With The Wind. Made in 1939,in colour and winner of 8 Academy Awards. I'm glad I can say I have watched it, but I'm not sure if I would watch it again. I did like it though and I must say, I enjoyed the second half much more than the first. So what I am saying is that I enjoyed the last 6 hours of the movie the most.

Set in the American civil war, the movie follows Scarlett O'Hara (played by Vivien Leigh) and her ordeals. She is an interesting character and a more unlikeable, uncharming and annoying leading lady in a movie I haven't encountered since Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge. Well I find Nicole Kidman to be unlikeable and uncharming all the time, so that is unfair to Moulin Rouge. We have a charming leading man in Rhett Butler, played by Clark Gable. Actually, he may not be charming, but any man who wears a flash suit, a slicked back hair do, and one of those pencil thin cookie dusters on their top lip, automatically looks like he could charm the pants off any lady. Mental note: I must grow a pencil thin moustache.

I find a few things interesting about this move:- this is the first "classic" movie I have seen where nobody smokes. Even more strange considering smoking was cool when it was made, and the fact that apparently both Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable smoked 4 packs of cigarettes per day in real life. No wonder the kissing scenes were so lacklustre - they both probably felt like they were kissing a burnt out tree stump.
Another thing was that half the important characters in the movie got killed while trying to jump a fence on a horse. Civil War, Schmivel war, the most common cause of death in this movie was while show boating on a nag.
Lastly, the movie runs for just under 4 hours, yet Scarlett and Rhett get engaged, married, honeymoon, have a baby all in the same minute. 1 minute later and the baby is now 5 years old. Talk about glossing over the important parts of life!
I really liked how this movie had an intermission. At around 4 hours in length I actually used the half time intermission to stretch my legs.

Now for the things that annoyed me about this movie. The main one is the background music. It is as if the producers said - "Hey we paid for an orchestra to play the background music, so they are going to play the whole time, no matter what." Sometimes the musical score is so obviously inappropriate, it detracts from the movie. It sounds like the music they now play at the Academy Awards when they want to drown out a speech if it is going too long. Another thing that annoyed me - it is just too damn long. I'm sure they could cut at least an hour out of the movie, particularly in the first half. Originally I was going to say that Scarlett O'Hara is too unlikeable to be the main character but that is exactly the way she is meant to be and makes the movie more enjoyable as it goes on.


Ratings time -
Gone With The Wind : 6 I don't give a damns, 1 pencil moustache
Spaghetti and Mediterranean Meatballs : 7 balls of mince
Coffee and Tim Tams : 9 chocolate smudged fingers

The first rule of Fight Club....

is you do not talk about Fight Club. So that makes this review easy for me. I will talk about my home-made hamburger instead. It was nothing special actually. It was rather bland. The meat in it, the base of any good hamburger, was lacking in any distinct flavour. Funnily enough I could say the exact same thing about the movie. In fact, the hamburger was better than the movie. Quite a bit better.

This movie, was made in 1999, and was added to my list because it rates so well on IMDB (8.7). I just don't get how? I had no idea about the plot before I watched it, though I figured it would be about a group of men who form a "fight club" as an escape from their mundane lives. Partly right, though the movie doesn't go very far down that track to fully find what is going wrong in the men's lives to turn to this violent club.

* next paragraph contains spoilers *
The biggest problem I have with this movie is that it is a little bit of everything and a lot of nothing. I found the same with Pirates of the Caribbean. Is it meant to be funny? Is there meant to be a love story? Is it meant to make me think about my own life? Is it meant to take me on a journey? Well it didn't do any of that for me. It has a plot twist that, to me, was as easy to pick as a sunrise. I was sitting there thinking - "this storyline isn't very strong, what could happen that would be an attempt to boost it? Ahhh, Tyler Durdin and the narrator could be the same person!" So an hour and 30 minutes later in the movie when that humdinger is finally exposed, it was no surprise at all to me. But Edward Norton has already been in a movie where he had a split personality, Primal Fear. That movie did it much better and with a plot twist in the end that I never saw coming. If I wanted to watch a movie that was funny because somebody wore a fat suit, I would watch Mrs Doubtfire. If I wanted to watch a movie where men join a club to get away from their ordinary lives I would watch Old School. If I wanted to watch a movie for it's violence and semi nudity I would watch Sin City. All of those movies I have just mentioned, focussed on that one thing, and were all the better for it.

So now for the ratings. I base my ratings on a few things and it generally changes throughout the movie. I started with a 6 for this movie because I thought it had potential, potential to really make me think and soar to an 8 or 9. It continually let me down. A rating of 5 means I wouldn't watch it again. I ended up giving it a rating of 3, which means that even if it was on TV and the only other show on at the time was re-runs of Lassie, I would be cheering her home instead.

My ratings -
Fight Club : 3 punches to the face (which I would prefer over watching this again - at least it would be over quicker)
Home made Hamburger - 5 meat patties
Pure Blonde Beer - 8 green bottles

Here's looking at you kid...

So here goes my first review of my movie list and the first film I chose is the classic, Casablanca. I wanted this to be a special occasion so I settled in with a bowl of home made fried rice and a glass of Jacobs Creek Semillon Chardonnay.
The first comment I would like to make is that Casablanca is a classic movie (rated 8.8 on IMDB) and was made over 60 years ago. Yet after seeing it I realise that I had no idea what it was about or didn't know at any time what was about to happen. I read a lot and watch a lot of TV so I am not sure how that is possible. I am grateful for it nonetheless.

So, they just don't make movies like this anymore. No, not just the black and white aspect but the character based script, the mundane sets, the poor effects (well it was made in 1942), the melodramatic acting, the dramatic orchestral score that forewarned you of what drama was about to occur, the lack of billings gate language. If they did make a movie like this today it would be shot down in flames as being too cheesy. In fact the Cancer Council would probably have it banned. Talk about global warming - I now know what caused it - the amount of cancer sticks Bogey puffed through during this movie!

I liked it. Maybe it is the nostalgia that black and white film creates, maybe it was the likable character, Rick, played by Humphrey Bogart (a massive name in movies yet the first time I had seen him). Maybe because it was a romantic drama that didn't overdo the sentimentality. Maybe because it was the first romantic movie I have seen that didn't star Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan or Hugh Grant. One thing that did surprise me is that it actually made me laugh out loud, something that a lot of so called comedies don't do - Scary Movie, Beavis and Butthead immediateley spring to mind.
The plot kept moving at a steady pace and I was always guessing what the characters past were and what the future held for them. And classic lines, sure I didn't know what the plot was beforehand, but I certainly knew all the lines that come from it - "Here's looking at you kid", "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.", and "Play it once, Sam. For old times' sake." (not "Play it again Sam" like everyone seems to think is said).

I'll leave you with one last thought about the ending ... the french policeman, Captain Renault says earlier in the film about Rick - "Well, Rick is the kind of man that... well, if I were a woman, and I were not around, I should be in love with Rick.". The last scene is the same Captain Renault and Rick walking off together with Rick saying to him - "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship". No wonder he let the girl go, he is a flaming homosexual.

My ratings -
Casablanca : 6 lit cigarettes, 1 unlit
Fried Rice: 7 spoons of MSG
Wine: 7 party wine goblets

2009 New Years Resolution

I'm not a big one for new years resolutions so I thought I'd give myself a fun one this year. I have a list of 40 movies that I have never seen yet are considered "classics" or "cult classics". I went through the top 100 rated movies on imdb.com and found ones that I felt I should watch. Some of the movies I am looking forward to viewing, some of them I don't want to see, yet I will try to watch them all. So in no particular order, here is my list -

• Casablanca
• Gone with the wind
• Breakfast at Tiffany's
• Scarface
• Goodfellas
• The Godfather 1 & 2 & 3
  
• Silence of the Lambs
• Rambo 1,2,3
• Jaws
  
• Alien (all of them)
• Revenge of the Nerds
• Schindlers List
• The Usual Suspects
• Fight Club
• Psycho
• Citizen Kane
• It's a wonderful life
• Apocalypse Now
• Taxi Driver
• Lawrence of Arabia
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• The Maltese Falcon
• Raging Bull
• Singing in the rain
• Some like it hot
• 2001: a space odyssey
• Fargo
• Ben-Hur
• The Deer Hunter
• Life of Brian
• Trainspotting
• Casino
• The Exorcist
• A Streetcar Named Desire
• The Philadelphia Story
• The Man who shot liberty valance
• Great Expectations

My resolution starts with Casablanca and I will write a review of each movie. My goal is to watch one of these movies per week, but ultimately to have watched them all by the end of the year.