Saturday, January 21, 2006

100 Films -- Days 14 to through 16

Thursday night I watched The Philidelphia Story. I really like Jimmy Stewart, I like Cary Grant and even Katherine Hepburn, but this was my least-favorite movie on the list so far. It's a nice little screwball comedy, but it didn't do much for me.

Because I'm taking on this challenge, you can probably assume that I love movies. It should be no suprise, then, that I enjoy "movies about movies", or even movie-making scenes in unrelated movies -- a classic example is the brawl that spills over onto the Warner backlot in Blazing Saddles, or even the chase scene in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. I have a few of these "movies about movies" on my list: 8 1/2, The Bad and the Beautiful, and the film we watched Friday night, Sunset Boulevard.

This is a well-deserved classic; great dialogue, great cinematography. It is both a love letter and hate mail to the Hollywood system. The casting really is perfect, considering the histories of Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim. It's a timeless, compelling story and beautiful to watch.

This evening we saw Amadeus. Finally, a movie that Mrs. Kaiju has seen and I haven't! This is another one that I somehow missed seeing, despite it winning all the major awards of 1984. A great film about jealousy and beauty; I found it interesting that it was more about Salieri than Mozart himself.

Still one day behind. I'll try to catch up tomorrow.

1 comment:

Dawg said...

I love Sunset Boulevard, Steve. It's been awhile since I've seen it, but what stood out for me was the macabre dialouge - maybe I'll rent it again and try and post some quotes. This is a great project - good work.