I was inspired to do this meme by entrenous88 -- it's a list of the films featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die by Steven Jay Schneider
( Read more... )
I am very surpirised to see that you have NOT seen Moulin Rouge dear! I think that perhaps someday (when your work settles down) we should do a "movie night" I think you'd like that movie!
Sorry to disappoint you, toots, but I actually got Moulin Rouge from Netflix several months ago... and didn't like it. I managed to get through the first half before I gave up. There are some things I liked (Ewan MacGregor, stunning costumes and sets), but I found the juxtaposition of modern music in a period setting to be jarring, I hated the frenetic editing of some of the numbers, the pacing was uneven, and I didn't care about the characters (of course, I knew going in that Kidman's character was going to die, so I may not have allowed myself to care about her, if you know what I mean).
We should still do a movie night, though - there's still a whole bunch of films we coul see together!
I've seen other people post this but this is the first time I actually looked at the list of films. I've seen some of the ones you've haven't but overall so few that it hardly seems worth doing it, myself.
My only question is how can you not have seen A Christmas Story? I think it's on about a hundred times during the month of December, every year, LOL.
Xmas flicksponders_lifeAugust 22 2006, 13:45:44 UTC
My only question is how can you not have seen A Christmas Story? I know, I know! So many movies, so little time... My favorite Christmas movies are Miracle on 34th Street and the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim as Scrooge.
Re: Xmas flickswesleysgirlAugust 22 2006, 17:21:17 UTC
I think we've seen A Christmas Story about fifty times, just because it's on so often. There's one channel that plays it for 24 hours straight, over and over again. And it's cute and funny. Not brilliant or anything.
I absolutely adore Cary Grant, and Rebecca is on my very very long list of films to see.
I have to admit I saw most of those obscure and difficult-to-watch films when I was a film student; I would never have seen some if I'd had a choice (like Ingmar Bergman's Persona. Oy, what a drag that one was!). But some were fabulous, and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to see them (like Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon -- abstract/surreal, but totally absorbing).
You liked Up in Smoke? I'll have to consider seeing it, then...
Some movies are so classic that you can almost get away with never having actually seen them, other people are all too willing to tell you everything about said movie. I've never seen "Psycho" either, but I've seen so many parodies of it, and short clips and read so many discussions on the subject that if aliens landed and demanded I explain the movie to them, I probably could. But I'm sure I'm missing something by not seeing the original.
I'm sure I'm missing something by not seeing the original. We both are! There's no substitute for seeing the original. When I was a film student, the shower scene in Psycho was used as an example of excellence in film editing; no amount of reading about it can convey the impact of the composition of each shot, the creepy music, and the speed of the edits (it's something like an average of a shot per second or every other second, if I remember correctly -- which was quite unusual at the time. Hitchcock was brilliant.). You have to see and hear it to really "get" it.
But to me it's an isolated scene -- since I haven't seen the entire film (just that scene and a few other clips), I don't fully appreciate that scene's context in the film as a whole, even though I'm familiar with the plot and characters.
I'd love to see you try to explain it to aliens, though! *grin*
Ooooh, yay -- I love seeing which movies people have viewed. And you know, I wasn't a fan of Moulin Rouge either. Parts of it were fun, but most of it was that kind of jerky cuts Baz Luhrmann adores.
::nods:: I give props to Baz Luhrmann for trying to push the envelope of movie musicals, but the results annoyed me more than they delighted me.. IMHO, the makers of Rent did a much better job at translating a classic tragedy into a modern film musical.
But thanks for starting the meme (at least, you're the first one on my flist who did it:)! It kick-started many happy memories of when and where I saw certain films... for example I saw Shanghai Express at the Castro Theater in San Francisco -- a lovingly restored, art-deco jewel of a theater, with a white Wurlitzer organ that rose from below the stage, and then a guy in a white tux came out and played the organ before the movie. Man, that was worth shelling out $7 for when I saw it in 1994!
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We should still do a movie night, though - there's still a whole bunch of films we coul see together!
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My only question is how can you not have seen A Christmas Story? I think it's on about a hundred times during the month of December, every year, LOL.
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I know, I know! So many movies, so little time... My favorite Christmas movies are Miracle on 34th Street and the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim as Scrooge.
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Honestly dear, I'm impressed with how many of them you've seen, some of them are quite obscure and make very difficult watching.
And Up In Smoke is on the list probably because it's both hilariously funny, and it captures a particular time and mood.
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I have to admit I saw most of those obscure and difficult-to-watch films when I was a film student; I would never have seen some if I'd had a choice (like Ingmar Bergman's Persona. Oy, what a drag that one was!). But some were fabulous, and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to see them (like Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon -- abstract/surreal, but totally absorbing).
You liked Up in Smoke? I'll have to consider seeing it, then...
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We both are! There's no substitute for seeing the original. When I was a film student, the shower scene in Psycho was used as an example of excellence in film editing; no amount of reading about it can convey the impact of the composition of each shot, the creepy music, and the speed of the edits (it's something like an average of a shot per second or every other second, if I remember correctly -- which was quite unusual at the time. Hitchcock was brilliant.). You have to see and hear it to really "get" it.
But to me it's an isolated scene -- since I haven't seen the entire film (just that scene and a few other clips), I don't fully appreciate that scene's context in the film as a whole, even though I'm familiar with the plot and characters.
I'd love to see you try to explain it to aliens, though! *grin*
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But thanks for starting the meme (at least, you're the first one on my flist who did it:)! It kick-started many happy memories of when and where I saw certain films... for example I saw Shanghai Express at the Castro Theater in San Francisco -- a lovingly restored, art-deco jewel of a theater, with a white Wurlitzer organ that rose from below the stage, and then a guy in a white tux came out and played the organ before the movie. Man, that was worth shelling out $7 for when I saw it in 1994!
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