Watch the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

We actually watched a few of the movies on the list last month – not as many as we used to do in the past, but some good ones. One of the things I’ve decided to do over the next few weeks is intersperse movies from the list made in the early 60s with our Mad Men DVDs from Netflix. See – it’s like a theme!

So one we both finally watched all the way through and not just the clips of (!) was The Hustler with Paul Newman. And boy – did we only know the pool playing clips. I can’t believe he had to do The Color of Money to win his Oscar for playing Fast Eddie because the performance is so much better in The Hustler (and I’m sort of having a hard time believing that version of Eddie in The Color of Money now). I know he lost to Maximilian Schell in Judgement at Nuremberg that year for Best Actor…so you can’t really argue the whole thing…but it’s just a shame.

If you haven’t seen The Hustler, this is so not about pool. Piper Laurie is amazing as Sarah – she plays hard and vulnerable at the same time – watching her go up against George C. Scott is simply amazing. Not to mention, this is the era of super-hot Paul Newman.

I’ve been watching movies, but nothing off of this list to speak of for nearly three months – just one or two here and there!

Sometimes I watch something and I think, “that must be on the list!” and it’s not. We watched Buster Keaton’s The Navigator the other night and it was fantastic. Okay, outside of the grossly uncomfortable moments of things that are just out-and-out racist today, but still the story was fun and the physical comedy was unbelievable. Not the Buster Keaton on the list (we have watched The General).

We did watch The Quiet Earth which was a New Zealand flick about a man that believes he’s the last man on Earth. He finds out he isn’t – but it’s almost more powerful as a film where he’s all alone. As he begins to crack and break, it’s amazing. No swells of orchestra music, no cheesy breaks of cats jumping out from behind things to scare him (they’re all gone as well), no hokey flashbacks with huge special effects. It’s just a person ALONE. And even when he does find another person, it’s still a nerve-wracking movie.

It’s better than the I Am Legends and Omega Mans (which I enjoyed), as it’s really about being at the end of things. The real end. No vampires, no zombies, nothing.

But not from the list…however, I am up to 471! The last one we watched was The Deer Hunter – a movie that I’d seen bits and pieces of, but not watched through the entire time. I do remember the controversy over the Russian Roulette scenes. Apparently, all of us impressionable kiddies were going to find that sort of thing terribly glamorous and set up our own at-home versions of Russian Roulette. I think the folks that end up focusing on that kind of miss the bigger picture.

On the vanity front, I really want to know what kind of moisturizer Meryl Streep uses – while she definitely looks older now, she has aged really well.

See what I mean?

Hey – I’m back on the big group goal. Glad to have company again. :)

I was flipping through movies and realized that I hadn’t really seen all of Evil Dead. Or if I had, I didn’t really remember it and since I had it available – why not? Maybe the issue is that we all skipped to parts of Army of Darkness instead?

Sam Rami’s humor is evident throughout. Even in the bad FX, you can tell he’s having a great time (remember back in the day when they had to do stop animation because CGI hadn’t been invented yet?). He’s given you barely any story – kids go to spooky cabin in the woods where they discover ancient texts on raising evil spirits. Kids are eventually possessed one by one and only our intrepid hero, Ash, is left to defend himself before dawn can come. I won’t even get into what the trees are able to do to people.

But the point is that this is a solid little horror show. You have just enough background, just enough legend and you care about the characters. You feel sorry for the ones that have to be sacrificed and you want at least one of them to make it out alive. At the same time, you laugh! It doesn’t seem right, but this is Sam Rami.

I will say the most jarring part of this is realizing that this Bruce Campbell is the same Bruce Campbell that’s now in Burn Notice – not that the career transition doesn’t seem natural enough. But you’re really not supposed to regularly see your guys at 20-something one day and then watch them at 50-something on their USA show the next.

Not a huge amount watched since I last posted – but we’ve been watching from a lot of different lists lately. Today, we watched The Harder They Come and found out 2 minutes in that we needed the subtitles to understand Jamaican English with any regularity. Otherwise, it was a really good little movie. There were a few holes (for as hard as he pursued his wife, she just sort of got dropped and came back in to forward things without questioning anything ever), but the soundtrack and a lot of future young-petty-thief-gets-stupid-smart plot lines are very recognizable in the story.

And today, ordering toast was finally put into context. Funny, how you can know those scenes and never see the movie, you know?

Five Easy Pieces – which was a lot more involved than I ever knew. In fact, it has very little to do with the difficulty of ordering wheat toast. Well, I suppose not so much in the philosophical sense, but in reality, there’s only difficulty in ordering toast in the one scene.

Philosophically, we all have issues ordering toast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wtfNE4z6a8

So I don’t have to deal with the other ‘How-To’ non-entry. It’s a shame – I know there weren’t people as prolific with entries, but it was nice sharing the goal with over 60 folks.

But I found out that my PM to the non-how-to individual putting down the goal has not only branded me an asshat, but has resulted in a public question for a new goal as well.

Since I’d like to concentrate on this goal, the cheese now stands alone. Well, I hope other folks find this goal and want to join in and not consider me a jerk for moving my goal away from the negativity.

I really do respect the book that’s brought me to a ton of amazing movies I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. I know it’s not for everyone, but not every goal on 43T is for everyone. I don’t begrudge anyone for trying things not for me. In fact, I think it’s what makes us rather interesting (although you lot that are jumping out of planes – why?!?).

And now, back to the movies!

Note, I used to be a part of the group goal when I wrote this entry. I’ve since moved my goal, but this entry stands.

From a person who fully admits they never watched all 1001 movies – in fact, it’s a rant on why they won’t ever watch the movies. /sigh

Well, to anyone stopping by this goal, since this person is “featured” as the how-to, I’m sorry. Let me address their “issues” for now.

1. They kept on changing the list – There are now 3 versions of the book. I personally picked the second edition because that’s the one I read. I know, I read the book first. I even own a copy of it.

2. ‘THE LIST’ cares lass about artistic merit than it does political agenda or popular opinion – These books are put together by about 60 editors that come from various artistic backgrounds. I’m not even sure what they’re talking about. I looked at their original entries which were all 2 years old and they had 100 films checked off. 10% is pretty much what most folks would have watched coming in off the street.

In the last two months, I’ve watched movies from the list like:

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
The Wild Bunch
Jules et Jim
Sleuth
Belle de Jour
Ran

Take from that what political, non-artistic, unpopular agenda you will.

3. Frankly, I am resentful that I have to write this much to warn people of the charlotism of this list. This is the part that really bothers me – well, that they meant “charlatanism” firstly and that I’m pretty sure the robots never meant for a how-to to be used to discourage individuals from pursuing a goal.

This is actually a pretty hard goal to achieve. About 140 aren’t available on DVD right now. Which means that individuals with a “how to do this” that completed it replacing this will be hard to come by.

I guess I’m saying that folks that don’t want to complete goals for whatever reason should give up on them. Not attack those that still want to complete them. Hey, you don’t like the list – fine! There are thousands more out there to go after if you don’t like this one.

Just don’t be a jerk and do a “how to” that rains on the parade of those who are actually making an effort towards their goals. I mean, how would this user feel if I went and wrote a how-to on all of their goals that basically put down all of their goals explaining why they were awful?

The Netflix Membership is now open…my first 3 movies that the library doesn’t own are on their way:

1. Kippur
2. Fat Girl
3. Five Easy Pieces

We have an XBox, so we’ve also been enjoying the on-demand service as well. Mostly for the first season of Sliders, though. We’re all classy like that. :)

If you’re in the US and you have Turner Classic Movies on your cable (TCM), this is an AWESOME month to watch a ton of movies.

This is Oscar Month, so you can watch all sorts of movies that are on the list. Just over this weekend, from the 1001 list, you could watch (all times Eastern):

FRIDAY:

8 AM – Forbidden Planet
2 PM – Only Angels Have Wings
9:45 PM – Dr. Strangelove

SATURDAY:

12 PM – Gunga Din
4 PM – Lawrence of Arabia
8 PM – Casablanca
11:30 PM – The Great Escape

SUNDAY:

2:30 AM – Das Boot
7:15 AM – Shadow of a Doubt
9:15 AM – Poltergeist
1:30 PM – Gigi
3:30 PM – The Quiet Man
5:45 PM – Roman Holiday
10:15 PM – Moonstruck

Honestly, the month goes on and on – it’s a great deal, especially for some harder to find things as the month goes on – heck, A Nous la Liberte (Freedom for Us) is playing at 5:45 AM on Monday. A 1931 film my library doesn’t have on DVD. Guess what’s getting DVRd? :)