Despite our resolve to watch 1-2 movies a month (a goal that is more than realistic and attainable), we have been making a decidedly less impressive pace, watching only our second movie of the year.  This is impractical for two reasons — we will never reach our goal at this rate and we pay for Netflix just for the purpose of attaining the movies we need to watch.  So, we definitely need to pick up the pace, and start watching two movies per month.   We may be busy, but no one is that busy.

Moving on, Mutiny on the Bounty left much to be desired.  Starring Clark Gable and Charles Laughton, the film promised to be incredible.  The movie was based on a book which was based on mutiny that happened in 1871.  Extensive research (Wikipedia) showed that the movie was generally historically accurate.  The movie, however, portrays Captain Bligh as a violent tyrant (in one scene, he orders a dead guy to be beaten).  In reality, this was not true.  From what I inferred during my research (Wikipedia), the men who revolted really just wanted to go back to Tahiti and hang out with all of the beautiful women they met there (and married in some cases) and live carefree feelgood island lives.  Who can blame them, right?  I think that it would be difficult for audiences to understand these subtleties, and the tyranny definitely made the mutiny seem justified.

In the end, the movie had an interesting story line and decent character development, but this was not enough to keep Madison and I awake.  I can only conjecture it was due to the conspicuous lack of any pirates.  What kind of movie about a bunch of sailors doesn’t also have pirates in it?  Seriously, it took us three days to watch the movie, because we kept falling asleep.  I conjecture that this movies success may have been boosted by many oppurtunities to show Clark Gable (and the rest of the sailors) without their shirts on, as well as some scantily clad Tahitian women.  The movie lacked the character development we had seen in It Happened One Night and Grand Hotel. It seemed almost to be intended to glorify sailing and mutiny, and seemed to me a step backward in the progression of awesomeness of these Best Pictures.

If highly suggest reading the wikipedia page about the mutiny, as it is highly entertaining — I think I may have enjoyed it more than the film.  After reading the historical recount of events, I read the page about the film, including this line “Free from the restraints of Naval discipline the mutineers proved incapable of self-government. Pitcairn degenerated into a true hell on earth of drunkenness, rape and ultimately murder. Apart from John Adams all the mutineers perished, most of them by violence.”  I chuckled at the innacuracy (clearly all of them are dead now) and the emotional, loaded language.  Oh, Wikipedia.

As a final note, there is a part of the movie when the men are just shouting sailor things to eachother, in one of the “yay, we are sailing” scenes (I guess these scenes were impressive at the time.  This was, after all, the first movie we have seen them in).  I re-watched the scene 3 times, and remain convinced that sound bytes from this are included in Yellow Submarine by the Beatles.  While I have neither confirmed nor denied this, I did find this out about the Beatles TV Cartoon first season:

You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me/Chains: In Africa, Ringo ask a medicine maker named Jack to help fix the Beatles’ flat tire, then he turned a worm into a snake, and it lusts for Ringo; After getting knocked out, Ringo dreams about himself as Captain Bligh from the movie “Mutiny On The Bounty”. Sing Along: Slow Down/Honey Don’t

While this does not indicate anything really, I chuckled at this concise recap.  I will continue to look into this matter, but we unfortunately returned the DVD without saving the sound clip.  I suppose this concludes my “review” of the film.  I will hopefully be writing again in a few weeks.

So, the Oscar Nominations are in.  You have no doubt seen them by now.  The Awards are set to take place on February 22nd.  I posted earlier about a list of potential nominees with one gripe — I have not seen any of the best picture nominees.  Totally lame, right?  I cannot believe I am missing out on all these great movies.  Even worse, this means that I will need to add to the list of movies we need to watch in less than a month!

Out of curiousity, I wanted to see what films were nominated the most, so I put together this little histogram:

Now, just going be this alone, it seems to tell me that I have not seen the three most awesome movies of the year:  Benjamin Button, Slumdog Millionaire, and Milk — not to mention I never saw any of the Best Picture nominees.  Out of the 29 different movies nominated for awards (excluding the shorts, foreign films, and documentaries), I decided to go through the list and figure out how many I have actually seen.  Here it goes:

• The Dark Night
• Doubt
• Tropic Thunder
• In Bruges

Now, only having seen 4 out of the 29 movies is bad.  What is worse, is that 2 of them don’t seem as though they will actually win anything.  Tropic Thunder’s Robert Downey Jr. is nominated for Best Supporting actor, a category expected to be won by the late Heath Ledger.  Plus, this movie was a parody.  And In Bruges is nominated for Best Original Screenplay.  I have to admit, I’m not completely sure who is favored in this category, and I cannot really judge whether I think In Bruges will win, because I haven’t seen the other films.  But I don’t really expect this movie, which was very much a dark comedy, to take this award home.  Judging from the graphic above, I hear Milk was pretty good.

So, I guess that all I can do is to wait and see what happens.  In the meantime, I guess I should watch some more movies…

For reference:

BEST PICTURE
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

BEST ACTOR
Richard Jenkins, The Visitor
Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn, Milk
Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Josh Brolin, Milk
Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road

BEST ACTRESS
Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie, Changeling
Melissa Leo, Frozen River
Meryl Streep, Doubt
Kate Winslet, Revolutionary Road

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Amy Adams, Doubt
Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis, Doubt
Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler

BEST DIRECTOR
David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon
Gus Van Sant, Milk
Stephen Daldry, The Reader
Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Frozen
Happy-Go-Lucky
In Bruges
Milk
Wall-E

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
John Patrick Shanley, Doubt
Peter Morgan, Frost/Nixon
David Hare, The Reader
Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
Bolt
Kung Fu Panda
Wall-E

BEST ART DIRECTION
Changeling
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
The Duchess
Revolutionary Road

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Changeling
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Australia
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Duchess
Milk
Revolutionary Road

BEST DOCUMENTARY
The Betrayal
Encounters at the End of the World
The Garden
Man on Wire
Trouble the Water

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
The Conscience of Nhem En
The Final Inch
Smile Pinki
The Witness – From the Balcony of Room 306

BEST FILM EDITING
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Frost/Nixon
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire

BEST FOREIGN FILM
The Baader Meinhof Complex, Germany
The Class, France
Departures, Japan
Revanche, Austria
Waltz with Bashir, Israel

ACHIEVEMENT IN MAKEUP
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Hellboy II: The Golden Army

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Defiance
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E

BEST SONG
Down to Earth, WALL-E
Jai Ho, Slumdog Millionaire
O Saya, Slumdog Millionaire

BEST ANIMATED SHORT
La Maison en Petits Cubes
Lavatory – Lovestory
Oktapodi
Presto
This Way Up

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT
Auf der Strecke (On the Line)
Manon on the Asphalt
New Boy
The Pig
Spielzeugland (Toyland)

BEST SOUND EDITING
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E
Wanted

BEST SOUND MIXING
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E
Wanted

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Iron Man

I was getting my daily dose of Digg, when I found this article.  It looks like the Academy Awards are scheduled for Sunday, February 22, and will be hosted by Hugh Jackman.  The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences will go through with their annual spewing of the nominees this thursday morning, and MovieRetriever.com seems to think they know who will be chosen.

Naturally, my first reaction upon seeing this article was “Oh crap.  This just means that we will soon be one more movie behind on our long list.”  At least I remembered to put the Netflix envelope in the mail today, and we will hopefully be enjoying the next movie on the list very shortly — which will likely be next weekend, since Madison and I seem to have schedules that only involve work and sleep during the week.  Oh, and of course she is in D.C. until late tomorrow night at the inauguration.  Lucky her!  You can see pictures and read of her adventures here.

To get back on topic, I read through their predictions to a little bit of dismay.  Look at their predicted list of Best Picture winners:

• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• The Dark Knight
• Frost/Nixon
• Milk
• Slumdog Millionaire

Now, the problem here is that the only movie on this list that Madison and I have seen is The Dark Night.  And while the Dark Night was an excellent movie, I do not predict that this comic book adaptation will take home this coveted award.  Which means that we will most definitely be adding another movie to the list shortly.

As a sidebar, I was happy to see certain predicted nominations, specifically for actors and actresses from Doubt.  Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams are all slated to be nominated in their respective categories for this film.  I went to see this one on New Years Day with Madison and her family, and must say that it was an excellent film.  Meryl Streep was especially amazing in it, and I am happy to see her slated for a nomination.  This was definitely a good film, and worth checking out if you are going to the movies, which is an activity that I would highly recommend in this lame weather we are having right now (winter == lame).  I hope to post again soon with another movie review!

Hooray! We finally watched another movie on the list. Unfortunately, however, this one comes out of order. It turns out Netflix decided to alert us that the DVD was unavailable when it was time to ship. Perhaps by now the DVD will be back in and they can send it to us. If not, I think Madison has found the DVD at a local library so we can borrow it from there. We did not intend to ever go out of order, but we figured for the sake of progress after procrastinating for two months, we should just go ahead.

So, on Friday night, after a delicious smorgasbord of homemade tuna and salmon nigiri, we sat down with a bottle of chardonnay to watch It Happened One Night. The movie carried with it much promise. A little rudimentary research about it on Google revealed that it is referred to as one of the greatest romantic comedies ever. Wikipedia also revealed some other interesting information, including that this was one of the last films shot before the 1930 production code of censorship and the like went into effect.

Immediately we noticed a difference between this movie and ones previous – an ornate DVD label, a visually appealing DVD menu, and clear picture. Clearly, this movie has been digitally remastered to some extent. This would clearly make watching it a little easier on the eyes. On a side note, we really enjoyed a DVD menu without an endless loop of background music. Silence during the menu is something I wish we saw more of – its nice to have quiet when the movie is over, especially if you are not nearby to the remote to shut the television off.

So, the film began, and immediately I was captivated. Clark Gable would be fun to watch, and although we were not familiar with the works of Claudette Colbert, we assumed that she would be awesome as well. As a quick summary of the movie, Colbert plays a socialite running away from home in Florida to marry some d-bag that her controlling father doesn’t like. Gable is a rogue journalist who happens to be on the same bus to New York. He plans to use her as a story in the paper, but just as quickly as you may expect, they start to fall for each other.

The movie was excellent. After it was over, Madison and I discussed at length the movie. One conclusion that we both made, was that this was the first movie that really felt like a movie that we may see on TV today. The character interaction was seamless and natural. There did not appear to be awkward pauses in the dialog – it seemed as though the interaction the characters were having was genuine and not contrived and forced as previous movies had seemed. The characters were also more believable as real people.

The character development was also excellent. Gable and Colbert’s characters grew together throughout the movie. You saw Colbert soften up from the self-confident, almost arrogant reporter he started out as, and Colbert mature from a runaway girl angry at her father to an intelligent young woman.

I was captivated from the beginning of the movie, and enjoyed the entire thing. Gable’s character, Peter Warne, was very likeable and hilarious. This was the first movie where the humor, mostly Gable’s, was something that I laughed at because it was funny. We had laughed in previous movies, but mostly because the jokes were corny and contrived. From the aspiring opera singer and thief that picks them up on the side of the road, to the angry bus driver, to the annoying guy whom Gable tries to present himself as a mobster to, the array of characters they meet along their journey is equally amusing.

If we had been rating these movies as we went along, I suppose this one would be rated as one of the best. I suppose we should be doing something to rate the movies, to make this blog somewhat more useful. I guess that is something we can discuss while we arrange to watch the next movie. Given our busy schedules, I don’t know when that will be, but I will be looking forward to it.

In the meantime, if you are looking for a good romantic comedy to watch, pick up this DVD. It is well worth it.

(by Madison)

Experience

Definitely one of the best experiences so far. On vacation in the Outer Banks this summer with my family, everyone had a night to cook dinner and choose the after dinner activity. After our delicious dinner, Raymond and I chose watching our next Best Picture winner for our activity. To make it extra special, we set up our projector and huge screen outside by the pool. We all sat around on lounge chairs, in the hot tub, and in the pool watching Grand Hotel.  I did not fall asleep, but my parents did.

The Movie

This was the first movie we watched with actors I recognized: Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, John Barrymore and brother Lionel. It is set in a “grand” hotel in Berlin and it begins and ends with this quote by one of the guests at the hotel: “Grand Hotel. People come and go. Nothing ever happens.” The statement, however, is ironic because everything is happening at the hotel. The purpose of the movie was for the hotel guests to all have different stories that somehow end up converging with each other throughout the movie. The web of stories include romance of course, theft, and death among a dramatic dancer (Garbo), a Baron (J. Barrymore), a doctor, a dying man, (L. Barrymore), and others.

One problem I had with the movie is that I got confused with who was who, but that was probably just my fault for not paying close attention to names. Some of the men looked similar and the women looked very similar. There are interesting twists throughout while still giving way to the classic protagonist/antagonist struggle.

The movie appropriately ends with the opening quote by the drunk doctor who notices none of these hotel shenanigans.

(By Madison)

Experience

This was another movie we watched in my room on my tiny TV on an August evening. Unlike the others, I think I actually stayed awake through this one!

The Movie

I thought this movie ranked up there with All Quiet… in terms of deepness in plot and character development. Cimarron is adapted from a book by Edna Ferber written in 1929 and was apparently a big budget film despite the depression. It’s about a man who claims a plot of land in the newly opened Oklahoma territory and moves his young wife and baby out there with him (their slave boy stowed himself in the back of the wagon because he wanted to move with them).The family quickly becomes the most prominent family in their new town where they own and publish the town gazette and the man (Yancey) is a sort of town head or lawyer as well. The movie follows years and years of their life in the town and their successes despite disputes with other town members and, of course, Indians. I was not expecting any huge plot twists so I was shocked when Yancey learns of a new frontier and tells his wife he must go. I’ll have to stop there so as not to spoil the rest of the movie. The development of Yancey’s wife’s character from this point on was my favorite part of the movie.

I found the film to be incredibly true to history. At the time, I was working on a research project about World’s Fairs and how influential they were in the US at first, and at one point in the movie the ladies mentioned the fashion from Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and I just loved that. Other than that, I think it accurately portrayed the sentiments of possibility and opportunity (sadly even racism) felt in America in that decade and beyond.

Raymond’s Inputs

Yay! Thank you Madison for writing! It looks like we are all caught up now and can continue our quest!

I wanted to add to this review because I also particularly enjoyed this movie. The character development, plot twists, and historical relevance all contributed to a great experience.

The issue I wanted to add a bit more about was the racism as portrayed in the film. First off, the character of the slave boy is portrayed as simple minded, outspoken, always singing gospel songs — it is not exactly a favorable portrayal, and is very stereotypical. The boy is even the subject of some mistreatment and ridicule in the movie itself, so the film combines an unfavorable portrayal of the boy with an actual depiction of racism.

In the film’s defense, Yancey — the protagonist — is something that must have been rare at the time. Yancey is shown as genuinely caring for the boy, is respectful to the Indians and even embraces a marriage between one of the characters in the movie and an Indian, in spite of the rest of the town looking down upon the marriage. Yancey is also sympathetic to a woman with the reputation of being a prostitute, and the local outlaws. Despite his wife disagreeing with him, he states that its no fault of the individuals that they are in their condition — he blames it solely on the social order of the time.

I could not help but think this was rather progressive, and was not really something I expected from the movie. While the portrayals of the minority characters were rather stereotypical, the dialogue in the film seemed to push the idea that everyone should be treated with respect, regardless of the circumstances they are in.

It was a very interesting movie, and I would highly recommend it next time you are in on a rainy night and looking for something to watch.

Prequel

Its hard to believe that Madison never saw All Quiet on the Western Front.  This movie would not be hard to find, but still we decided to join Netflix to help support us in our journey.  This way, we would not be searching around for hard-to-get movies, or waiting for people to return them to libraries so we could check them out.  We signed up for the 2 DVDs per month plan, and unfortunately haven’t even been using that much.  We also haven’t watched a single thing online either.  We need to start approaching this quest more seriously if we ever plan to finish.  It has been a busy few months tho, with Madison working at Comcast, me starting grad school, the holidays, and the whole house thing.

This post is long overdue, as we watched this movie forever ago, but I still want to document it.  Otherwise this whole thing is just going to fall apart.

Experience

This is another movie we watched at my parent’s house, not too long after we watched The Broadway Melody. All Quiet on the Western Front is a classic, and a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed watching again.  Unfortunately for Madison, she fell asleep watching it, and we ended up finishing it the next morning.  To her defense, it is a long movie.

The Movie

The movie itself is amazing.  Its based on a book by Erich Maria Remarque.  It is a story about kids in a school in Germany who are swept up with patriotic spirit and inspired to leave school and join the military during World War I.  After training they are deployed into the trenches, where they become demoralized.  There are food shortages, rats, disease, rain, and they are always being shelled and rarely seeing combat.  One of the soldiers ends up hiding with a dying enemy soldier in a trench, where he comes to the realization that their enemy is just like them, and no one wants to be there.

The movie captures the horrifying realities of war, and is a stark contrast to the first movie on our list, Wings.  War for these kids was not about the glory and honor that it was made out to be — it was about suffering, demoralization, and carnage.

I do not think my summary of this movie can do the film justice, so I will just leave it at this:  This movie is a must-see to all of you who (like Madison) have never seen the film.  So far, it has been the first dark and depressing movie on the list, and definitely the best.  We home for many more movies like this to come!

Experience

The Broadway Melody .  It was a movie that neither Madison nor I had seen, and the first movie we got through our new Netflix subscription. We watched it at Madison’s house over the summer, while we drank a bottle of wine.  We had to watch it in her room too, because that was the only place with air conditioning.

The movie

Oh the movie.  The movie was everything I think of when I think of old movies:  hammy acting, simple story lines, and a play within a movie. With a title like The Broadway Melody, it would be hard to expect anything more than that.

Apparently the movie was filmed in Technicolor (perhaps this had something to do with it winning the award) but the Technicolor version was lost somehow, and only the black and white one survived.

Perhaps this storyline was somewhat original at the time, but here it goes — prepare to not be unimpressed:  A sister act moves from a small town to the big city to hit it big on Broadway!  Woooow!

Hahah, as I am writing this, I decided to ask my Gods (Wikipedia) about the movie to get some of the character names, and what to I find, but a hilarious quote that confirms everything we thought about the movie:  “weak, cliché-ridden, and overly melodramatic.”  Hahahaha!  The multitude of authors (this is Wikipedia afterall) goes on to say that even at the time the movie was released, it was considered as such.  So there you have it.  Its a feel good movie that reminds me of 42nd Street.  Only not as cool.  Hahaha, and the title song “The Broadway Melody” is repeated throughout, and not nearly as catchy as anything from 42nd Street.

And for the record, if you can’t get enough, MGM released three ’sequels’ — all with the same title.

So, since the movie was kind of lame, I have decided to summarize it from the point of view of one of the main characters, Hank.

“Look at me!  I can sing!  Its the Broadway melodyyyyyyyy!‘!! I’m such a big shot”

“A new sister act is in town!  They are good too!  Lets put them in the show, because I fell in love with the older one at first sight”

“Wow, I’m bored with the older one.  And her little sister is WAAAAY hotter than she is, I am in love with her now!”

“Dammit, the little sister won’t date me because she cares about her older sister?  What kind of crap is this?  And why is she dating that douchebag?  Its obvious she really does not like him.”

“Yay, everyone finally came around!  I’m going to marry Queenie, the hotter, younger, more talented little sister!  Yaaaaay!”

Oh shoot, I think I just spoiled the movie for you.  But I guess thats okay, because I don’t think anyone would watch it for the storyline.

I wonder what this movie would have been like if it happened in real life.  I guess Madison is happy she doesn’t have a hot little sister…

This is a long delayed blog entry.  Back at the beginning of the summer, Madison, Alicia, and I watched Sunrise:  A Song of Two Humans.  We found the movie on VHS at Drexel’s Library, and had to watch it at my parent’s house because we did not have access to a VHS player anywhere else.

To spice up the event, we busted out a bottle of tequila and some fruit mixers.  Once we had the cold drinks ready to go, we sat down on the couch and started watching the olympics.  Track and field was on, and all three of us had trouble turning it off.  When we finally got bored it was time for the movie.

Sunrise, the second movie on our list, won the 1927-1928 award for Most Artistic Quality of Production.  This, like the award for Most Outstanding Production given to Wings, was only presented during the first year of the Academy Awards and is regarded as the equivalent of best picture.

This time, Madison and I knew what we were getting into, watching another full-length silent film.  Alicia thought it was strange and took a while to get used to it.  Madison and I settled right in.  She did fall asleep toward the end, but I managed to survive this one.

The story was a lot more bizarre than the first.  A man and his wife live a simple life in the countryside, but a sexy visitor from the city shakes things up the husband starts having an affair with her.

Lets just say 1927 silent film sex scenes are bizarre to say the least.  The husband could use some lessons in romance and treating women better.  The scene was pretty funny though.

So, being the she-devil that she is, a tramp from the city, convinces the husband to kill his wife so he can be with her.  He decided this is a good idea.  He will convince her to go on a boat-ride with him and he will drown her!  PERFECT PLAN!  Kill your wife and run off with the hot girl!

As soon as he decides to kill his wife, his demeanor changes, and he starts to move around eratically and avoid eye contact — he looked a lot like Frankenstein.

I don’t want to spoil the movie, but it is really not a suprise that he decides not to kill his wife.  Instead, after an awkward attempt at killing her which he bails out on, he takes her to the city.  They have a wonderful time filled with taking pictures with eachother, going to a carnival, dancing, and getting into a lot more humorous situations — such as chasing a pig around the fair.

Then, at the end of the day, it starts storming and they have to take the boat back accross the lake (drunk) and run into trouble. Here, I will not spoil the ending, as it was not something I expected at all.
Overall, the movie was far more entertaining than Wings. Wings was too much of a feel good pro-America war movie to fully entertain me — Sunrise on the other hand, was darker with a more interesting story line.

There were obvious fable-like morals being broadcast throughout the movie, the kind of simplicity and moral fortitude you would expect from something filmed in 1927.  Overall it was a better movie than Wings, but I am glad that from here on out there will be sound!

Wings is a silent film from 1927 that won the Academy Award for Most Outstanding Production, an award that existed only that year, prior to the existence of Best Picture.  The storyline is trite:  It is a story of a woman, Mary, who loves a man that is in love with another woman, a city girl who had interests only in money.  Mary and he were neighbors as children and always very close.  She always had a crush on him, but he never did on her.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that in the end, that Mary would win the man over and they would be together.  The plot also takes some highly unlikely and laughable twists to make this happen.

We laughed as we watched the movie, and marveled at the simplicity of its story line.  The acting was what is to be expected from an old silent film — exaggerated and simple.  The dogfight scenes in the movie are particularly impressive, especially when you take into consideration that there wasn’t the technology back then to simulate the footage.  These scenes are the only time we ever felt as though we were watching something epic.  And epic they were.  They alone make the movie worth watching.

Watching a silent film was also an experience.  I will admit that we both fell asleep at different times throughout the film.  The predictable series of events did not exactly arouse our interest and curiosity.  And it was late.

Overall, we enjoyed the experience.  Watching a full-length silent film was a unique experience and catching a glimpse into 1927 pop culture was even more exciting. The film had a very “pro-american” bias to it, with lines such as “Swift and straight as arrows of vengeance came the two Americans…” dominating the commentary during fight scenes.

Here are a couple quotes from the movie, so you can get an idea of how epic the dialog was.  We still quote these on occasion:

“D’you know what you can do when you see a shooting star?  You can kiss the girl you love.”

“She has bubbles even in ‘er eyes – she wins – “