After talking with many people about cultures and society I realized that when it comes to films I am embarrassingly not familiar with many of the classics. In order to motivate myself to study efficiently for my Norwegian style exams coming up I have set myself an attainable goal. I will study for as long as I can and reward myself with taking time to watch a movie; not just any movie.
At 19 years old I have just come to the obvious conclusion that there are more than only funny love stories in the world of film. Like many women I inevitably love romantic comedies and until now I did not understand why anyone would watch something else. Then after viewing movies (many old ones) with genres such as action, drama, crime, and yes even thriller I am fully aware why people love so many different films. As a result of watching such classic movies I have already noticed allusions from my past that I never understood. For example in the show "The Modern Family", uncle Cameron references Casablanca which I never grasped (but laughed anyway). In my favorite movie The Holiday (predictably a love story) Miles quotes Casablanca which I never got the full effect of until now.
Seeing movies with a plot set in Europe has also changed my view of many situations such as World War II. For example seeing The Pianist and The Reader has given me a different perspective on the war than I've ever thought about. It also makes history become more realistic to me because I've now actually been to some of the places where these battles and catastrophes have taken place.
My current goal is to go through the Internet Movie Database and just go down the list of the top 250 movies of all time. Now obviously I will never have time to watch all of them and as expected I have heard of but never seen most of them. Going down the list I just have one exception, I will not watch a movie categorized as horror. Stepping outside of romantic comedy is like experiencing another whole part of the world. However I am not ready (nor do I see myself ever being ready) to experience the horror bit of it.
Living in Norway has challenged me to learn all that I can, experience all that I can, and be all that I can. Setting a goal to watch movies is a lame example but like Wesley Gibson asked in the final scene of Wanted ... "What have you done lately?"
(and ok if you've seen "Wanted" you know that he actually adds another word in there that I left out, but the question remains...)
I love old movies and I Casablanca is one of my all time favorites. Did you like it when you watched it?
ReplyDeleteOkay, number one gets four stars out of five...number two here we come!
ReplyDeleteHave you seen "the shawshank redemption" ?
ReplyDeleteIt is with out a doubt my favourite movie :)
And btw, Sounds like a good plan to watch movies :)
How is your studying going?
if you still need to watch some when you get back i'm totally game :)
ReplyDeleteYou might want to have your friends help you make up a movie watching list. The problem with the best of list is sometimes the movies that get attention are not that great and sometimes they are great.
ReplyDeleteI'm totally with you as to horror films with one tiny exception. I love 3 of M. Night Shyamalan's films and I bet they're classifed as horror. They're not like classic horror films though. They've got a lot of cool and redeeming qualities. If you haven't watched any, the three are The Sixth Sense, Aliens and The Village. You could start with Aliens (the easiest to watch) and watch it with us when you get back:)