Metropolis

Metropolis.

In Pop Culture?

You know when you sit down in a Century owned movie theater? With your big crate of popcorn and junior mints and "small" soda the size of your entire torso? And their logo appears with that dramatic music? Well, that sounds like every movie theater logo, but Century's (I'm 99% sure this is Century Theaters I'm thinking of) starts with a bunch of vintage movie posters that layer on top of each other. One is of a blonde woman looking up, and another is of an Indiana Jones looking guy, but the one that gets the most screen-time, with the big once over of the entire poster, is Metropolis.

Sitting in that theater, I always wondered what that strange movie was that had that C-3PO looking robot on it. Metropolis? What is this mysterious movie?

I forget exactly when I put it together; that that strange movie poster from the theater logo was of the 1927 German silent film epic about a very grim future.

So, why is this movie important enough to be referenced almost every time I sit down to watch a movie in the theater (almost all the theaters in my hometown are Century, which is why I'm 99% sure this logo is Century's)? Scratch that, why is this movie important enough to get referenced in Star Wars?

Yes. After a little bit of research, it appears that it is no coincidence that the robot from Metropolis looks like C3PO (or rather, that C3PO looks like robot from Metropolis). Apparently, Mr. George Lucas (a USC alum, thank you very much) modeled his famed golden robot off of the famed golden robot in Metropolis.

So, is this movie really worth all this referencing? Is it really great enough to be a classic? Should I give a damn?

In Case You Haven't Seen Metropolis, Here's A Quick Summary:

The movie takes place in the future. Way in the future. Like, this was made in 1927 and we haven't even gotten to the future it depicts yet (we passed up the "future" of 1984 eons ago). It's a dystopian future (observation: I can not think of a single movie or book that depicts the future in a good light. How depressed are we?). In this dystopia, there are 10 hours on the clock and workers work 10 hour shifts. Their lives are controlled by Joh Frederson, the ruler of Metropolis, who keeps his innocent son completely in the dark about the goings on in the underbelly of the city that keep Metropolis running. Until one day...

The son spends a day in the life of a worker after stumbling upon a machinery accident when he was looking for his brothers. At the end of his stumbled upon day as a worker, he stumbles upon an underground meeting, lead by the preacher Maria, who tells the workers that there must be communication between the hand (the workers) and the brain (Joh Frederson) via the heart (cut to the son).

Then, this is where the robot comes in. A mad scientist dude shows Joh the meeting through a weirdo cave up above the whole scene. Joh tells the mad scientist dude to model his recently made robot after Maria, the preacher. Then, he tells the robot version to tell the workers to revolt.

Stop.

What? Maybe it's just me, but I got very confused with this aspect of the plot. Why does he want the workers to revolt and destroy the machines? I think it's said that he wants a reason to use violence against the workers, but really, this is an incredibly stupid plan on his part. There really isn't any man-power on his side. Everyone in his power are potentially revolting workers. There are only, like, two guys shown on his side vs. HUNDREDS!!!

The number of extras in this movie shocked and awed me. There are literally HUNDREDS of people in some scenes. I mean, I thought The General used a lot of people, but Metropolis wins in the "Awesome Masses" category.

So, because there were so many people used to make such an impact with what the film was saying (which was very communist, anti-industrial revolution, you know the drill), I think I can excuse the very awkward plot error. Maybe he was just delusional in his plan? We'll use that as his excuse.

And Maria was a woman.

Yes! Maria was a woman! I was very happy to watch a film where the key of the movie, the preacher, the robot was played by a woman! And not just any woman, but a brilliant actress who I thought was amazing in the role, Ms. Brigette Helm. Yes! She was awesome! And the role didn't have to be a woman. Sure, there was a slightly awkward love story between the son and Maria tossed in there, but the story could have been written with a man as the revolutionary, in my opinion (if you give a damn). But it was so much better as a woman! And I may have to look up and rent more Brigette Helm movies, where she hopefully plays a robot because her spinning and turning and movement was so robotic and crazy and awesome. I never for a second was confused if she was being the robot or if she was being Maria.

Now, I'm done with the feminist part of this post.

The Conclusion?

I liked Metropolis. Honestly, I did not expect to. First of all, I was very turned off by the idea of a 2 hour long silent movie. Second of all... I really don't know. I didn't really know much about it, so I don't know why I assumed I wouldn't like it.

But I did like it. I was fascinated the entire time and it didn't even feel like 2 hours and there was barely any need for dialogue. I mean, some silent movies there's a lot of talking, and you can see their mouths moving and they show the whole conversation, but they only give you one line of what they're saying on the card. This annoys me. I try to lip-read. I want to know what they're saying! But, even though there was a lot of speaking during the preaching bits, the rest really didn't need sound at all. It wasn't at all a silent movie wishing that it were born in the talkies. And although I was tempted to lip-read sometimes (which, I realized halfway through couldn't possibly work because they were speaking German, which I don't know), I really didn't feel like I was missing out on anything. The title cards were used exactly as needed; not too many, and not too few.

So I would have to agree, Metropolis is a deserving classic.

COMING SOON: Nosferatu and Dracula vs... Twilight? Ew...

The General

So, it has been a week since I last posted. The bad news? I've only watched one movie off of my list. The good news? It was the amazing 1927 Buster Keaton flick The General.

Now, I have never seen a Buster Keaton film before which is really just sad because I wrote a paper about him my Junior year of high school (Okay, it wasn't all about him, I don't want to seem like a completely terrible student. It was a paper about film's transition to sound and how it somewhat spared Hollywood from the Great Depression, but I did talk about Buster Keaton for an entire paragraph and how his sound films bombed because people didn't like his voice.). Well, The General was a good ol' silent film, that's for sure, and a prime example of Buster Keaton's work according to every Top 100 Films list I've read (and just a prime example of what a movie should be, in my opinion, if you give a damn).

In Case You Haven't Seen The General, Here's A Quick Summary:

Buster Keaton stars in The General as a character who has a name that doesn't matter because we all know it's Buster Keaton (but, if you're going to demand his character's name, it was Johnny Gray). The film right off the bat introduces that he has two loves of his life, his train (called "The General") and a girl (called Annabelle Lee). Chaos erupts in Buster's life when the Civil War breaks out and he is banned from joining the army because he is too valuable as a train engineer. This breaks the girl's heart (she likes, I mean really likes a man in uniform), which breaks Buster's heart. Then, his train gets taken by Union soldiers and Buster goes to chase after them to get his train back, unaware that the other love of his life (the girl) is also on the train.

Then laughter, romance and action (not romantic action, train-chasing action) ensues.

My Thoughts (If You Give A Damn)

The film is categorized as a comedy. Buster Keaton is a comedian, that is true, and there are certainly funny parts to the movie, but this film isn't just a comedy. No, I would also categorize it as an action film. What? Buster Keaton? An action hero? Yes! I think so at least. I went into this film knowing nothing but the title, really, and the genre. With that in mind, I expected a film more akin to Duck Soup than The Great Train Robbery. But no, this movie is filled with train chases, spies, and a mission to save the (two) love(s) of his life. Sure, there were comedic scenes in between the train chases, like when Buster Keaton has to stop for wood to fuel the train. All the logs he throws onto the car either tumble over the other side or comedically fall back towards him, forcing him to duck and cover in a hilarious, slipping and falling, slapstick sort of way. However, even though I found myself laughing the entire time through these and other hilarious scenes, I still sat at the edge of my seat because I knew the bad guys were just around the bend.

And Now For the Bit About Pop Culture

Now, I've given you my thoughts. I've given you a quick idea of the premise of the movie. The whole point of this blog apparently is to try and see how the film's influence on current pop culture has influenced my viewing of the original, classic film.

Admittedly, this is a little more difficult for a 1927 silent comedy (as famous as this one is). I can't think of any parodies or references to The General made on Saturday Night Live or other shows. But, perhaps it's one of those things that has been out there that I've seen, but just didn't get because I didn't see the film or know what movie was being referenced. (Perhaps I shall follow up on this if I run into any jokes on television about Buster Keaton and/or his filmic masterpiece, The General.

I will also be able to chat about the film if it ever comes up in conversation or during one of my film classes. This is perhaps the main reason I decided to put this 1927 flick on the list; it was mostly to try and familiarize myself with silent films (which I have seen very few of), which is something that comes in handy more in a film history class and analyzing other films than it does in a conversation with a regular person (unless, that regular person happens to be a film student who has also gone out of their way to track down and watch silent movies), or in being able to laugh at parodies and appreciate references in pop culture today.

A theory has popped into my head...

Perhaps The General is left to the world of filmic appreciation and not referenced in modern day pop culture as much because a lot of referencing and parodying of film is done through quoting lines. For example, the whole title of this blog is based on a line, which is a lot more difficult to do for a silent film since they don't really have lines. Silent films in that way are a completely different world and although they have influenced current films by creating a base for the form of art and entertainment, how they tell stories really are different, and more difficult to "relate to" I guess using our modern way of filmic storytelling.

That's something I'm going to think about and look out for as I wander around this world surrounded by popular culture. I may end up proving myself wrong... we shall see.

COMING SOON: Thoughts about all two hours and four minutes of Metropolis.

The Movie List

So, after much deliberation, I have finally narrowed the list of movies for this summer from seemingly millions down to just 65. I feel like I can watch 5 movies a week (one each "work" day) for the majority of the weeks of the summer. It's much more doable than my original plan of 100 movies, that's for sure. Perhaps 5 movies a week is still asking a lot, but it's the summer. What else am I going to be doing?

Most of the list is mostly based on Yahoo Movie's 100 Movies To See Before You Die: All Time Greats. I chose this list because not only did it include a lot of prestigious award winning films, but it also had a lot of foreign films (an entire pool of films I have barely stuck a toe in), and films like Animal House which didn't appear on more respected film lists such as AFI's Top 100, but I still think is culturally important. I, of course, had to narrow it down from those 100 films listed on Yahoo Movie's website (it did help that I had seen a considerable few already, like Animal House), and I threw in some of my own that I have repeatedly run into in conversation in film school and various other places. I could keep editing this list forever, but it's time to stop making lists and start watching movies!

So, here is the finalized list, organized in groups of five (for each week). Each group is generally from the same time period and usually has mostly movies of the same genre or topic. However, sometimes it was difficult to achieve this for all of the groups of five, so some of them are a little funky (as you can see from the first grouping).

#1. 1927: The General (Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton)
#2. 1927: Metropolis (Fritz Lang)
#3. 1922: Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau)
#4. 1931: Dracula (Tod Browning)
#5. 1931: Frankenstein (James Whale)

#6. 1939: Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming)
#7. 1939: Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch)
#8. 1939: The Bicycle Thief (Vittorio De Sica)
#9. 1939: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra)
#10. 1949: The Third Man (Carol Reed)

#11. 1933: She Done Him Wrong (Lowell Sherman)
#12. 1940: His Girl Friday (George Cukor)
#13. 1949: Adam's Rib (George Cukor)
#14. 1950: All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
#15. 1952: The African Queen (John Huston)

#16. 1954: Dial M for Murder (Alfred Hitchcock)
#17. 1954: Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock)
#18. 1958: Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
#19. 1959: North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock)
#20. 1960: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock)

#21. 1955: Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray)
#22. 1956: Baby Doll (Elia Kazan)
#23. 1966: Blow Up (Michelangelo Antononi)
#24. 1967: Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn)
#25. 1969: Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger)

#26. 1952: High Noon (Fred Zinnemann)
#27. 1956: The Searchers (John Ford)
#28. 1969: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill)
#29. 1962: Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean)
#30. 1957: The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean)

#31. 1959: The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut)
#32. 1964: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick)
#33. 1972: A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick)
#34. 1975: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman)
#35. 1973: Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse)

#36. 1972, 1974: The Godfather-- Part I and Part II (Francis Ford Coppola)
#37. 1974: The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola)
#38. 1979: Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola)
#39. 1979: Alien (Ridley Scott)
#40. 1982: Blade Runner (Ridley Scott)

#41. 1983: Zelig (Woody Allen)
#42. 1979: The Jerk (Carl Reiner)
#43. 1986: Ferris Bueller's Day Off (John Hughes)
#44. 1987: The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner)
#45. 1999: Office Space (Mike Judge)

#46. 1986: The Fly (David Cronenberg)
#47. 1986: Labyrinth (Jim Henson)
#48. 1987: Little Shop of Horrors (Frank Oz)
#49. 1988: Beetlejuice (Tim Burton)
#50. 1990: Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton)

#51. 1980: Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese)
#52. 1990: Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese)
#53. 1989: Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)
#54. 1989: Sex, Lies, and Videotape (Steven Soderbergh)
#55. 1991: The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme)

#56. 1994: The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont)
#57. 1999: The Green Mile (Frank Darabont)
#58. 1993: Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg)
#59. 1998: Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg)
#60. 1997: Life is Beautiful (Roberto Benigni)

#61. 2000:Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee)
#62. 2001: Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly)
#63. 1994: Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino)
#64. 2003, 2004: Kill Bill-- Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (Quentin Tarantino)
#65. 2006: The Departed (Martin Scorsese)

Well, that's the list. I'm certainly excited to finally get around to seeing these films and writing about them. Hopefully I'll actually follow through!

COMING SOON: Week #1-- Silent Films and Scary Movies. First up: Buster Keaton's The General.

The First Post

Ah... the first blog post....

I suppose I should begin by explaining the somewhat odd title of the blog. It has two meanings:

#1) The title comes from the famous romantic and dramatic Civil War film Gone with the Wind. It won Best Picture in the year 1939 along with 8 other Oscar wins and 5 more nominations. It shows up on almost every "Greatest Movies of all Time" or "Top 100 Films" or "Best Movies Ever" list and is considered a classic in every regard. Adjusted for inflation, Gone with the Wind still beats out all other films in the Box Office (yes, even including Avatar).

And I have never seen the film.

I have seen Carol Burnett's parody "Went with the Wind". I have even purchased a t-shirt with one beaver saying to another beaver "Frankly I don't give a Dam". But I have never seen the actual movie.

You would think that as a USC film production student, I would have seen every single classic film in existence at least twice, right? But no, there are still a lot of major films that I have not seen... yet.

So, since I'm home from college for the summer and have nothing but free time, I thought I would make a list of classic movies (65 to be exact) and blog about each one.

#2) The other reason I chose the name "Frankly My Dear (Lila) I Don't Give A Damn" is because I feel that's exactly what people will say to themselves if and when they stumble across yet another blogger blogging about movies on a movie blog. Frankly, why should you give a damn what classic movies I have and have not seen and what I think about them?

I don't know, really. I just thought writing a blog might actually give me the motivation to watch all 65 movies this summer; just in case someone out there is reading this blog (other than my boyfriend and my parents) I want to show that I can see something through to the end. I don't want to end up like this sad, yet honest blog I stumbled across: mynewyearsresolution.blogspot.com.

So, that's the basic idea behind this blog. Movies. Thoughts. Reviews. Giving a damn.

COMING SOON: The list of films for this summer. (hopefully, unless this becomes yet another single post blogspot blog). We shall soon see...