http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034583/I'm not trying to go crazy here. I'm pretty bad at keeping any sort of blog going so this is mainly for my own benefit; so that I can keep a record of the movies we watch as we carry on. We'll see how long I can keep it up though :) And hopefully I can make it a little entertaining at least.
CASAAAABLANCAAAAA. Pretty much one of the most famous movies every made. It's hard sometimes to watch older movies now that we are all used to the fast-paced, simple-plot, multiple moving camera angled film of today. They seem boring or forced or too dramatic to people who just aren't used to it. Sometimes they are too dated to enjoy. I'm not saying that every movie in black and white with ladies that throw their hands to their foreheads dramatically is an absolute masterpiece. This one is though.
The plot was completely engaging and the characters were fantastic. We watched it on a huge old clunky tube TV with it's convex screen and it's oldschool 4:3 aspect ratio but that just seemed to add to the authenticity of the film. Completely deserving (in my humble opinion) of it's "all-time classic" reputation the movie held my interest from start to finish even though I'd found myself reciting lines I had never actually heard in context. I knew how it would end and it didn't dampen the experience at all for me.
After it finished, my friend and I looked at each other with the same thought in our heads: "We must watch more". Within a half an hour discussion we had covered a multitude of genres and actors and styles of movies which we wanted to find the time to enjoy and thus the plan was formed to, at least once a week, watch an "old movie"; whether it be an all time classic like Casablanca, or a formative film of a certain genre that paved the way that type of movie would be made, or a lesser known slice of life film that may not be on everyone's top 100 movies of all time.
With a father that can name 100 must see movies in the span of 25 minutes and the only working internet connection between the two of us I took the honour of starting the list and with this honour I also started this blog. I don't know if anyone is ever going to read it but I figure it will be a good exercise for me and by the end of it (if we ever get there) it's going to be one hell of a good movie list.
After going through a few possible follow ups Amanda declared her wish to watch an old-school adventure genre film. I went home and consulted my father and after an hour long conversation in which he named movie after movie and I told him to wait because I had no pen or paper I remembered a film he had mentioned ages ago. The perfect film to follow Casablanca? Maybe.. maybe not. But it is another Bogart film and it fits the adventure genre so it'll absolutely do.
Now to go find The African Queen.
- moose
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/user/927153/lists/view.php?id=909413146_134951
