{"id":2562,"date":"2009-12-03T07:35:48","date_gmt":"2009-12-03T12:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=2562"},"modified":"2009-12-03T07:35:48","modified_gmt":"2009-12-03T12:35:48","slug":"on-seventeen-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=2562","title":{"rendered":"On Seventeen Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the spirit of Dayton Ward<\/a> and Entertainment Weekly<\/i><\/a>, I’m going to offer up a list of seventeen movies I can watch again and again. And again. And so on and so forth.<\/p>\n

These are in no particular order. Some may duplicate those from the article at EW<\/i>. So be it.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A Hard Day’s Night<\/i><\/li>\n
  2. Contact<\/i><\/li>\n
  3. The Lord of the Rings<\/i> trilogy. It’s a single movie.<\/li>\n
  4. Monty Python and the Holy Grail<\/i><\/li>\n
  5. King Arthur<\/i>, the Clive Owen movie.<\/li>\n
  6. The Natural<\/i><\/li>\n
  7. The Shawshank Redemption<\/i><\/li>\n
  8. Dave<\/i><\/li>\n
  9. V For Vendetta<\/i><\/li>\n
  10. Good Night and Good Luck<\/i><\/li>\n
  11. The Bride of Frankenstein<\/i><\/li>\n
  12. The Rocketeer<\/i><\/li>\n
  13. The Hunt for Red October<\/i><\/li>\n
  14. The Princess Bride<\/i><\/li>\n
  15. Alien 3<\/i><\/li>\n
  16. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade<\/i><\/li>\n
  17. Grosse Pointe Blank<\/i><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Some random commentary.<\/p>\n

    You can tell some of my interests. There’s an Arthurian vibe, with King Arthur<\/i> (#5), Monty Python<\/i> (#4), and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade<\/i> (#16). Oh, and The Natural<\/i> (#6).<\/p>\n

    (I don’t often remember my dreams, but I remember dreaming about Malamud’s book The Natural<\/i> last night. That’s super-freaky.)<\/p>\n

    Definitely into politics. See Contact<\/i> (to some extent), Dave<\/i>, Good Night and Good Luck<\/i> and V for Vendetta<\/i>.<\/p>\n

    I had to flip a coin for Grosse Pointe Blank<\/i>. The other option was Say Anything…<\/i>. (If you watch these together, and squint your eyes just<\/i> right, they can almost<\/i> go together as a single story. Which is why I want to see War Inc<\/i>.)<\/p>\n

    A Hard Day’s Night<\/i> was never not a choice.<\/p>\n

    Why King Arthur<\/i> and Alien 3<\/i>, since neither movie is highly regarded?<\/p>\n

    King Arthur<\/i> is, I think, a pretty sharp movie that accomplishes what it set out to do, only the Disney marketing machine didn’t know what to do with it. (Much like The Rocketeer<\/i> a decade earlier.) A better promotional campaign would have done King Arthur<\/i> wonders. I like the acting, the story is compelling, there are some fantastic visuals. The weakest part of the movie, honestly, is Keira Knightley.<\/p>\n

    Alien 3<\/i>. It’s a David Fincher movie, so it’s naturally visually interesting. He has a fantastic cast. And the story is utterly bleak. I don’t think Hollywood had ever made a movie this<\/i> nihilistic before. Everyone<\/i> you care about dies. People who are like “I don’t like that they killed Newt and Hicks!” are missing the point, because that is<\/i> the point — the universe doesn’t care about you, and it will<\/b> fuck you over every chance it gets.<\/p>\n

    The Bride of Frankenstein<\/i> is traditional Halloween viewing, much as Santa Claus Conquers the Martians<\/i> is traditional Christmas viewing.<\/p>\n

    I could seriously<\/i> skip work and watch any<\/i> or all<\/i> of these movies today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The American Humanist Association is putting up ads on subway trains and buses that wish people a good, but godless, Christmas. This, frankly, is awesome, and I wholeheartedly approve. Which reminds me; this atheist is doing his Christmas cards this weekend…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[4106,364,230,176,4108],"class_list":["post-2562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memes","tag-film","tag-indiana-jones","tag-king-arthur","tag-monty-python","tag-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}