I made a big effort in my 20s to catch up on classics, both written and filmed. I was in graduate school, with lots of work that I needed to avoid, so I tried to make up for my wasted undergraduate years by sitting in dark theaters, hiding from my advisors.
But try as you might, you still end up with holes in the ol' cultural baggage, and for me it's the really old foundation films: "Birth of a Nation", "All Quiet On The Western Front", "Battleship Potemkin", "The Grapes of Wrath", "The Magnificent Ambersons"... I've never seen any of them.
I've never seen "Rear Window" (much to my shame) and, now that I think of it, I've never watched "Shane" from start to finish.

With all that great Michael Bay stuff available, who has time?

Alan Brooks

A with an Underwood
AbD in Procrastination
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I bought a copy of that a couple years ago. I enjoyed it in a sort of intellectual way. Totally agree that, for a suspense film it just doesn't have much edge.
Eventually they'll give it to Bay or Verbinski to remake as 'The Shouting Match'.
Alan Brooks

A with an Underwood
"Conversation II: Tea & Uzis"
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"Steven J. Weller"


D'oh!
Getting mixed up with the theme song, of course.

Martin B

There was no cannabilism in the book. It was put in the movie for shock value.
W : )

During my graduate-school-self-improvement period I started taking French lessons from an older French woman I met in a café (this is after my advisors had figured out my movie-theater hiding place, so I decamped to the coffee shops).
Anyway, my French teacher told me I'd never really know film until I knew the French classics, so she made me a list and we went and watched a series of older French films and then spent our lesson-time discussing them.

I can't remember the whole list of films, but it included a great set of classics:
* Trip to the Moon, A (Voyage dans la lune, Le) (1902) (something like... 15 minutes long)
* 400 Blows, The (Quatre cents coups, Les) (1959) * Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
* Les Enfants du paradis (1945?)
* Le Retour de Martin Guerre
* La Cage Aux Folles
* La Belle et la Bête
* Jules et Jim
* Diva
* Un Homme at une Femme
* Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
* La Règle du jeu (1939)
* À bout de souffle (1960)
* Les Diaboliques (1955)
* La Grande illusion (1937)
* Le Salaire de la Peur (1953)
* Zero de conduite (1933)
* And God Created Woman (1956)
* Contempt
Since then, I'd add these to the list of must-see French films (sorry for the mish-mash of English and French titles):
* M. Hulot's Holiday
* Mon Oncle
* La Belle Noiseuse (1991)
* Trois Couleurs (the entire trilogy) (1993)
* Cyrano de Bergerac (1990)
* Delicatessen (1991)
* Belle de Jour
* Jean de Florette / Manon des Sources
* Gazon Maudit
* Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
* Z (1969)
* Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (2001)
* Betty Blue (1986)
* Camille Claudel (1989)
* City of Lost Children (1995)
* Danton (1982)
* Au revoir les enfants (1987)
* La Femme Nikita (1990)
* Un Coeur in Hiver
* Small Change
* Ridicule (1996)
* Queen Margot
* The Piano Teacher
* The Lacemaker
Actually... The more I look through my DVD collection, the more I realize that I adore French film (or at least I adore Bardot, Sophie Marceau, Isabelle Adjani, Isabelle Hupert and Emanuelle Beart). It's probably only Eric Rohmer that I reliably dislike and even there, I have some of his stuff in the library.
Anyway, I'm sure I have huge holes in my French film experience, but at least I'm ignorant of the holes.
Alan Brooks

A with an Underwood

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