The Blog of Harald

“Film of the Book: Top 50 movie adaptations revealed”:http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1756384,00.html

I’ve marked the one’s I’ve seen (any version of) and/or read (12 books, 20 movies, including 10 “both”):

1. [BM] 1984
2. [BM] Alice in Wonderland
3. American Psycho
4. [M] Breakfast at Tiffany’s
5. Brighton Rock
6. [BM] Catch 22
7. [BM] Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
8. A Clockwork Orange
9. Close Range (inc Brokeback Mountain)
10. [BM] The Day of the Triffids
11. Devil in a Blue Dress
12. Different Seasons (inc The Shawshank Redemption)
13. [BM] Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Bladerunner)
14. Doctor Zhivago
15. [M] Empire of the Sun
16. [M] The English Patient
17. [M] Fight Club
18. The French Lieutenant’s Woman
19. [M] Get Shorty
20. The Godfather
21. [BM] Goldfinger
22. Goodfellas
23. [M] Heart of Darkness (aka Apocalypse Now)
24. [B] The Hound of the Baskervilles
25. [M] Jaws
26. [BM] The Jungle Book
27. A Kestrel for a Knave (aka Kes)
28. LA Confidential
29. Les Liaisons Dangereuses
30. Lolita
31. [B] Lord of the Flies
32. [M] The Maltese Falcon
33. [M] Oliver Twist
34. [BM] One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
35. Orlando
36. The Outsiders
37. Pride and Prejudice
38. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
39. [M] The Railway Children
40. Rebecca
41. The Remains of the Day
42. [M] Schindler’s Ark (aka Schindler’s List)
43. Sin City
44. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
45. The Talented Mr Ripley
46. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
47. Through a Glass Darkly
48. To Kill a Mockingbird
49. Trainspotting
50. The Vanishing
51. [BM] Watership Down

:: rogerebert.com :: Editor’s Notes :: 101 102 Movies You Must See Before…

bq. This isn’t like Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” series. It’s not my idea of The Best Movies Ever Made (that would be a different list, though there’s some overlap here), or that they were my favorites or the most important or influential films, but that they were the movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They’re the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat “movie-literate.”

Of course, I just love movie-list memes, so here’s the list with the ones I’ve seen marked. 34 out of 102; more catching up to do :-). I know Rob & CL have some of the movies I haven’t seen; I’ll have to borrow them sometime.

I was a little surprised by the smattering of movies I have and haven’t seen, both before and after the early 1980s (when I started going to movies regularly). Although, many of the “classics” are actually Andy Beaton’s fault, via the old rep theatres in Toronto :-).

“*2001: A Space Odyssey*” (1968) Stanley Kubrick
“The 400 Blows” (1959) Francois Truffaut
“8 1/2” (1963) Federico Fellini
“Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (1972) Werner Herzog
“*Alien*” (1979) Ridley Scott
“All About Eve” (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
“*Annie Hall*” (1977) Woody Allen
“*Apocalypse Now*” (1979) Francis Ford Coppola*
“*Bambi*” (1942) Disney
“The Battleship Potemkin” (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
“The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946) William Wyler
“The Big Red One” (1980) Samuel Fuller
“The Bicycle Thief” (1949) Vittorio De Sica
“The Big Sleep” (1946) Howard Hawks
“*Blade Runner*” (1982) Ridley Scott
“Blowup” (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
“*Blue Velvet*” (1986) David Lynch
“Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) Arthur Penn
“Breathless” (1959) Jean-Luc Godard
“Bringing Up Baby” (1938) Howard Hawks
“Carrie” (1975) Brian DePalma
“*Casablanca*” (1942) Michael Curtiz
“Un Chien Andalou” (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
“Children of Paradise” / “Les Enfants du Paradis” (1945) Marcel Carne
“Chinatown” (1974) Roman Polanski
“Citizen Kane” (1941) Orson Welles
“A Clockwork Orange” (1971) Stanley Kubrick
“The Crying Game” (1992) Neil Jordan
“*The Day the Earth Stood Still*” (1951) Robert Wise
“Days of Heaven” (1978) Terence Malick
“Dirty Harry” (1971) Don Siegel
“The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (1972) Luis Bunuel
“Do the Right Thing” (1989 Spike Lee
“La Dolce Vita” (1960) Federico Fellini
“Double Indemnity” (1944) Billy Wilder
“*Dr. Strangelove*” (1964) Stanley Kubrick
“*Duck Soup*” (1933) Leo McCarey
“*E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial*” (1982) Steven Spielberg
“Easy Rider” (1969) Dennis Hopper
“*The Empire Strikes Back*” (1980) Irvin Kershner
“The Exorcist” (1973) William Friedkin
“*Fargo*” (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
“*Fight Club*” (1999) David Fincher
“Frankenstein” (1931) James Whale
“The General” (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
“The Godfather,” “The Godfather, Part II” (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
“*Gone With the Wind*” (1939) Victor Fleming
“GoodFellas” (1990) Martin Scorsese
“*The Graduate*” (1967) Mike Nichols
“Halloween” (1978) John Carpenter
“A Hard Day’s Night” (1964) Richard Lester
“Intolerance” (1916) D.W. Griffith
“It’s a Gift” (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
“*It’s a Wonderful Life*” (1946) Frank Capra
“*Jaws*” (1975) Steven Spielberg
“The Lady Eve” (1941) Preston Sturges
“*Lawrence of Arabia*” (1962) David Lean
“M” (1931) Fritz Lang
“*Mad Max 2” / “The Road Warrior*” (1981) George Miller
“*The Maltese Falcon*” (1941) John Huston
“The Manchurian Candidate” (1962) John Frankenheimer
“Metropolis” (1926) Fritz Lang
“*Modern Times*” (1936) Charles Chaplin
“*Monty Python and the Holy Grail*” (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
“Nashville” (1975) Robert Altman
“The Night of the Hunter” (1955) Charles Laughton
“Night of the Living Dead” (1968) George Romero
“North by Northwest” (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
“Nosferatu” (1922) F.W. Murnau
“On the Waterfront” (1954) Elia Kazan
“Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) Sergio Leone
“Out of the Past” (1947) Jacques Tournier
“Persona” (1966) Ingmar Bergman
“Pink Flamingos” (1972) John Waters
“Psycho” (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
“*Pulp Fiction*” (1994) Quentin Tarantino
“Rashomon” (1950) Akira Kurosawa
“Rear Window” (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
“*Rebel Without a Cause*” (1955) Nicholas Ray
“Red River” (1948) Howard Hawks
“Repulsion” (1965) Roman Polanski
“The Rules of the Game” (1939) Jean Renoir
“Scarface” (1932) Howard Hawks
“The Scarlet Empress” (1934) Josef von Sternberg
“*Schindler’s List*” (1993) Steven Spielberg
“The Searchers” (1956) John Ford
“*The Seven Samurai*” (1954) Akira Kurosawa
“*Singin’ in the Rain*” (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
“*Some Like It Hot*” (1959) Billy Wilder
“A Star Is Born” (1954) George Cukor
“A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951) Elia Kazan
“Sunset Boulevard” (1950) Billy Wilder
“Taxi Driver” (1976) Martin Scorsese
“The Third Man” (1949) Carol Reed
“Tokyo Story” (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
“Touch of Evil” (1958) Orson Welles
“*The Treasure of the Sierra Madre*” (1948) John Huston
“Trouble in Paradise” (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
“Vertigo” (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
“*West Side Story*” (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
“*The Wild Bunch*” (1969) Sam Peckinpah
“*The Wizard of Oz*” (1939) Victor Fleming

Someone sent me a link to this video:

Incredible Machines – Google Video

It’s a series of short videos of Rube Goldberg type machines; apparently they were submissions to an advertising contest. Some of the mechanisms are pretty cool!

“Anita”:http://the_nita.livejournal.com/ sent me this:

Academie Duello presents – Modern uses for Historical Swordplay

Will you be ready?

I remembered to set the clocks forward.

I completely failed to reactivate the alarm before bed last night.

Getting out of the house this morning was merely fast, not frenzied, only because the boy (who has to be at school earlier than the girl) was sick today, so I got a half-hour back.