A Gentleman's Domain

Prehistoric!

From more innocent times. Or maybe from more harmful times.
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Thursday Thirteen #89

Last week I listed thirteen movies I have never seen.  This week it's TV programs.   They are all pretty mainstream, and all are successful,  but I have never felt any inclination to watch them.  They neither interest nor attract, so I don't bother.

Thirteen TV Shows I Have Never Seen

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American Idol

CSI (any of them)

The Biggest Loser

Entourage

Oprah

Will And Grace

Numb3rs

Survivor

Grey's Anatomy

The View

Bones

Southland

Everybody Loves Raymond
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Thursday Thirteen #88

Either due to disinclination, lethargy or lack of opportunity, here are

Thirteen Movies I Have Never Seen

E.T.

Terminator

The Princess Diaries

Apocalypse Now

The Sound Of Music

The Passion Of The Christ

The Lion King

Reservoir Dogs

The Wizard of Oz

Gandhi

Toy Story

It's A Wonderful Life

Dances With Wolves

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Dutch talk show host loses it

This is Dutch talk show host Erik Hartman losing it during a live broadcast of his show "Boomerang" -- I should say, former talk show host because he was fired after this incident.  I have heard that this was faked, but I hope it wasn't. Make up your own minds. Either way, it's funny!
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Alpha Beta Meme

The delightful Urban Recluse, and if you’re not regular a visitor to her blog then you should be, tagged me for a meme the other day.  Very simple – just list 26 movies, one for each letter of the alphabet (no definite or indefinite articles allowed).  Here is my selection……

          Alphaville

          Borsalino

          Carry on Henry

          Deliverance

          Eye Of The Needle

          Five Graves To Cairo

          Greed

          Help!

          Ice Station Zebra

              Juliet Of The Spirits

          King And Country

          Love And Death

          Morgan, A Suitable Case For Treatment

          Nosferatu

          Oh!What A Lovely War

          Plan 9 From outer Space

          Quo Vadis

          Repulsion

          Singin’ In The Rain

          Time After Time

              Unbreakable

          Vertigo

          W.

          X, Y And Zee

          Young Frankenstein

          Zelig

I won’t tag anyone else but please have a go if you’d like to.  Please link back to me and let me know you’re taking part.
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Thursday Thirteen #69

Recently, BBC America came up with a slogan describing itself as “the birthplace of American TV” or something similar.  Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration of course, but they base their claim on the fact that there are currently four shows on prime time US TV that were originally from Britain, and that BBC America has shown them all.  Anyway, it got me thinking and before I knew it I had a subject for a TT.  So, abandoning my projected Thirteen Cakes I Like,  I now give you…

               13 American TV Shows Based On British Originals
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Tiers of Sadness

These days, or at least since the 1970s, we have been told that it is okay for people to cry – including men.  I think that was the start of all that New Man business.  Let it all out: don’t bottle up your feelings, all the people who are supposed to know what they are talking about have been telling us.  I wish that had never happened.  I happen to think that crying is one of the more grotesque human bodily functions – contorted faces making foul noises and leaking fluids from eyes, nostrils and mouth – in adults: in small children it is understandable, no matter how annoying.  And before you jump down my throat, yes, even in adults it is permissible.  Grief, for example, and genuine excesses of joy, and even when you laugh so much you segue into tears.  That is probably what crying is for.

But not for most of the myriad reasons that people have been disposed to cry for in public, and there does seem to be an awful lot of that about these days.  In reality shows they seem very prone to it.   You can’t switch on a reality show of any kind without watching some nonentity blubbering away.  Okay, yes, I understand that if you have undergone a huge struggle and won a million dollars, then the emotion might make you cry.  But I won’t accept it if you lose.  Two examples stick in my mind, both of them from Bravo shows.  A couple of weeks ago a contestant was eliminated from Project Runway.  Okay, like everyone else in the competition except the eventual winner, he will just pick up his normal life where he left off.  There is no penalty for not coming first.  Bravo TV executives don’t slaughter the firstborn of losing contestants, or take way their houses or make them bankrupt.  But one wimpy twit, in his bit to camera after being eliminated, was sobbing away like an overindulged child.  He wasn’t good enough to win, so they chucked him out, and he snivelled and sobbed, and carried on as though the world had ended – I recall that he was particularly devastated because some of the judges had made a few sharply critical remarks about his designs.  What a moron!   

I can also remember a contestant in one of the past seasons of Top Chef who was eliminated about three quarters of the way through the competition.  A few apposite comments would have been appropriate, and maybe a word of congratulation for those who were left in the contest.  But nooooooooo…..   This puffed up thirty-something turned on the waterworks and blubbed his way through a self-centred bit of drivel where he told us how devastated he was, how he couldn’t bear being eliminated, and how basically his life was ruined, until he dissolved, it seemed, into a blob of tears and mucus.  I wanted to hit him.  It’s just a TV show, you arse!

Let’s put this into a little perspective.  A week or so ago I was watching a documentary about the Holocaust.  A woman, remarkably self-contained considering what she was telling us, described how she had endured two years in Auschwitz, experiencing suffering that is beyond the ability of most of us even to understand, and had survived the war, even though all the other members of her family and most of her friends had been killed.  As she told us this, her eyes watered, and she swept away a tear or two with her handkerchief.  That is crying that is totally understandable, and one wouldn’t have batted an eyelid of she had cried even more for she was feeling grief that is almost insupportable. As one watched one understood, one sympathised, one wished her nothing but good.  There are levels of  sadness, and hers was the deepest.  That is the sort of thing that the safety-valve of crying is intended for – not for spoiled, selfish, grotesque idiots who throw aside all control and make disgusting, self-indulgent spectacles of themselves.  On a sadness scale of one to ten, being kicked off a reality show comes in at about minus eight.

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They've Got A Little List....

Quite recently, darling Urban Recluse posted the American Film Institute’s list of the top 100 films, and she then selected twenty of them broken into four categories.    Apparently the list must only include films made in the USA, though just glancing through it I saw at least five that were made in Britain and elsewhere, so I have strayed from that condition in my last paragraph.  Anyway, here are my picks from the list in the categories set out by Urban Recluse….

My five favourite films:  Very hard to choose and I’ll probably come back later and change one or two of them!
      Lawrence of Arabia
      Some Like It Hot
      Singin’ In The Rain
      All Quiet on the Western Front
      2001: A Space Odyssey

Five films I have seen but didn’t like: There were a few and here are 5 of them:
      Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
      Star Wars
      Forrest Gump (one of the worst films I have ever seen)
      Patton
      Yankee Doodle Dandy

Five films I have not seen but would like to:
      Bringing Up Baby
      Fantasia
      Taxi Driver
      The Manchurian Candidate
      The Birth of a Nation

Five films I have not seen and have no wish to see:
      Dances With Wolves
      It’s a Wonderful Life
      The Wizard of Oz
      E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
      Pulp Fiction

Five films I like a lot that are not on the list (ignoring the AFI criteria!)
      The Wrong Arm of the Law   (Peter Sellers at his best)
      Le Salaire de la Peur  (After a slow start, the most suspenseful film I’ve ever seen)
      Ten Rillington Place  (Not to all tastes but a fascinating true story)
      À la folie… pas du tout  (Audrey Tautou and a tale where all is not what it seems)
      The Island of Dr. Moreau   (the 1977 version.  Family connections)
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Anyone else fancy having a go?

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...and the rest of them.

Last week I posted the list of the top 100 films according to the IMDB and marked how many I had seen.  It came to about half.  The list actually contains 250 movies, so here are the remaining 150.  I have marked in bold the ones I have seen.

101.    Strangers on a Train (1951)
102.    Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
103.    Batman Begins (2005)
104.    Ladri di biciclette (1948)
105.    Salaire de la peur, Le (1953)
106.    High Noon (1952)
107.    Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)
108.     Ran (1985)
109.    The Big Sleep (1946)
110.    Notorious (1946)
111.    Back to the Future (1985)
112.    The Wizard of Oz (1939)
113.    Oldboy (2003)
114.    Fargo (1996)
115.    Unforgiven (1992)
116.    Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
117.    Donnie Darko (2001)
118.    Mononoke-hime (1997)
119.    Cool Hand Luke (1967)
120.    Ratatouille (2007)
121.    Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
122.    Yojimbo (1961)
123.    Per qualche dollaro in più (1965)
124.    The Green Mile (1999)
125.    Million Dollar Baby (2004)
126.    The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
127.    Notti di Cabiria, Le (1957)
128.    Into the Wild (2007)
129.    Gladiator (2000)
130.    Battaglia di Algeri, La (1966)
131.    Die Hard (1988)
132.    Annie Hall (1977)
133.    The Deer Hunter (1978)
134.    Ben-Hur (1959)
135.    It Happened One Night (1934)
136.    The Sixth Sense (1999)
137.    Platoon (1986)
138.    The General (1927)
139.    Life of Brian (1979)
140.    Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
141.    The Killing (1956)
142.    Smultronstället (1957)
143.    Diaboliques, Les (1955)
144.    Amores perros (2000)
145.    Finding Nemo (2003)
146.    The Incredibles (2004)
147.    V for Vendetta (2005)
148.    Heat (1995)
149.    The Wild Bunch (1969)
150.    Children of Men (2006)
151.    Brief Encounter (1945)
152.    Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
153.    8½ (1963)
154.    The Princess Bride (1987)
155.    The Graduate (1967)
156.    Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
157.    The Night of the Hunter (1955)
158.    The Big Lebowski (1998)
159.    Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)
160.    Juno (2007)
161.    Crash (2004/I)
162.    Stand by Me (1986)
163.    Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
164.    Gandhi (1982)
165.    Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
166.    The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
167.    Snatch. (2000)
168.    Harvey (1950)
169.    Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
170.    Kill Bill: Vol. 2
171.    The African Queen (1951)
172.    The Thing (1982)
173.    The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
174.    Trainspotting (1996)
175.    Gone with the Wind (1939)
176.    The Gold Rush (1925)
177.    Wo hu cang long (2000)
178.    Groundhog Day (1993)
179.    Belle et la bête, La (1946)
180.    Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
181.    Scarface (1983)
182.    The Conversation (1974)
183.    Patton (1970)
184.    American Gangster (2007)
185.    Duck Soup (1933)
186.    Toy Story (1995)
187.    Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)
188.    The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
189.    Twelve Monkeys (1995)
190.    Cabinet des Dr. Caligari., Das (1920)
191.    The Terminator (1984)
192.    Sleuth (1972)
193.    Umberto D. (1952)
194.    The Hustler (1961)
195.    Stalker (1979)
196.    The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
197.    Glory (1989)
198.    Ed Wood (1994)
199.    King Kong (1933)
200.    Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
201.    The Lion King (1994)
202.    The Exorcist (1973)
203.    Hotaru no haka (1988)
204.    Spartacus (1960)
205.    Grindhouse (2007)
206.    Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
207.    The Lost Weekend (1945)
208.    All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
209.    The Lady Vanishes (1938)
210.    The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
211.    Magnolia (1999)
212.    Stalag 17 (1953)
213.    In the Heat of the Night (1967)
214.    Lola rennt (1998)
215.    The Philadelphia Story (1940)
216.    Frankenstein (1931)
217.    Big Fish (2003)
218.    Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
219.    Out of the Past (1947)
220.    Casino (1995)
221.    Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
222.    Rosemary's Baby (1968)
223.    Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
224.    Mystic River (2003)
225.    Du rififi chez les hommes (1955)
226.    Toy Story 2 (1999)
227.    Once (2006)
228.    3:10 to Yuma (2007)
229.    Hot Fuzz (2007)
230.    A Christmas Story (1983)
231.    Mou gaan dou (2002)
232.    Ikiru (1952)
233.    Dial M for Murder (1954)
234.    Manhattan (1979)
235.    Rope (1948)
236.    A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
237.    Young Frankenstein (1974)
238.    The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
239.    Roman Holiday (1953)
240.    Quatre cents coups, Les (1959)
241.    His Girl Friday (1940)
242.    The Searchers (1956)
243.    Shaun of the Dead (2004)
244.    Ying xiong (2002)
245.    In Cold Blood (1967)
246.    Samouraï, Le (1967)
247.    Strada, La (1954)
248.    Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
249.    The Kid (1921)
250.    Harold and Maude (1971)

I was wondering when 112 and 175 would show up!  Well, out of that lot, I’ve seen 64.   I still think the list is pretty contrived.  I mean to say,  is Kill Bill a better film than Gone With The Wind  and  All Quiet On the Western Front?    Well there it is.  How many have you seen?

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A Lot Of FIlms -- or is it?

I was checking in at  Lillasyster’s Life  just now and I saw that she had posted the top 100 films as ordained by IMDB and had marked the ones she has seen. Well, I never hesitate to steal borrow ideas from fellow bloggers, so I have done the same.  The ones that I have seen are in bold.

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1.    The Godfather (1972)
2.    The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
3.    The Godfather: Part II (1974)
4.    Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Il (1966)
5.    Pulp Fiction (1994)
6.    Schindler's List (1993)
7.    One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
8.    Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
9.    Casablanca (1942)
10.    Shichinin no samurai (1954)
11.    Star Wars (1977)
12.    The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
13.    12 Angry Men (1957)
14.    Rear Window (1954)
15.    Goodfellas (1990)
16.    Cidade de Deus (2002)
17.    Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
18.    The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
19.    C'era una volta il West (1968)
20.    The Usual Suspects (1995)
21.    Psycho (1960)
22.    Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
23.    Fight Club (1999)
24.    Citizen Kane (1941)
25.    The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
26.    North by Northwest (1959)
27.    Memento (2000)
28.    The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
29.    Sunset Blvd. (1950)
30.    It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
31.    The Matrix (1999)
32.    Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
33.    There Will Be Blood (2007)
34.    Se7en (1995)
35.    Apocalypse Now (1979)
36.    Taxi Driver (1976)
37.    American Beauty (1999)
38.    Léon (1994)
39.    Vertigo (1958)
40.    Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, Le (2001)
41.    American History X (1998)
42.    The Departed (2006)
43.    No Country for Old Men (2007)
44.    Paths of Glory (1957)
45.    M (1931)
46.    To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
47.    Chinatown (1974)
48.    The Third Man (1949)
49.    Leben der Anderen, Das (2006)
50.    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
51.    A Clockwork Orange (1971)
52.    Alien (1979)
53.    The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
54.    Laberinto del fauno, El (2006)
55.    The Shining (1980)
56.    Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001)
57.    The Pianist (2002)
58.    Double Indemnity (1944)
59.    Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
60.    Forrest Gump (1994)
61.    Saving Private Ryan (1998)
62.    The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
63.    L.A. Confidential (1997)
64.    Das Boot (1981)
65.    Requiem for a Dream (2000)
66.    Reservoir Dogs (1992)
67.    Untergang, Der (2004)
68.    Aliens (1986)
69.    The Maltese Falcon (1941)
70.    Raging Bull (1980)
71.    Metropolis (1927)
72.    Rashômon (1950)
73.    Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
74.    Modern Times (1936)
75.    Hotel Rwanda (2004)
76.    Singin' in the Rain (1952)
77.    Sin City (2005)
78.    2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
79.    Rebecca (1940)
80.    Sjunde inseglet, Det (1957)
81.    All About Eve (1950)
82.    Some Like It Hot (1959)
83.    City Lights (1931)
84.    Amadeus (1984)
85.    On the Waterfront (1954)
86.    Vita è bella, La (1997)
87.    The Great Escape (1963)
88.    Touch of Evil (1958)
89.    The Prestige (2006)
90.    The Elephant Man (1980)
91.    Jaws (1975)
92.    Full Metal Jacket (1987)
93.    The Sting (1973)
94.    Nuovo cinema Paradiso (1988)
95.    Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
96.    The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
97.    The Apartment (1960)
98.    Braveheart (1995)
99.    The Great Dictator (1940)
100.    Blade Runner (1982)

I’ve seen 58 out of 100.  Just over half of them.  When you think that for the last 25 or so years I have had the option of  videos and later DVDs, in addition to seeing them in a cinema, it does look as though I have been a bit lazy.  It’s a strange list.  I am wondering how many of the people who voted for these films, to create this list, were more than just a few years past puberty.  For instance, the three LOTR films, which were little more than cartoons with real actors, are way up there, ahead of such infinitely better films as 2001, Amadeus, and Lawrence of Arabia.   Anyway, if you'd like to jump in,  please feel free to use this list and show us how many of these you’ve seen.  Please link back to here and let me know you're having a go.

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