Sunday 12 June 2011

#100

A road bump in my journey that i certainly didn't anticipate was how long it was going to take to get access to some of the films in the countdown. My primary idea was to rent them from my online rental company, but having had this next title on my queue for a good month before it finally arrives at my doorstep, i may need to come up with a different strategy.

Anyway without further ado the #100 on my countdown is....

Breathless (A bout de Souffle) (1960)

Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Stars: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Henri-Jacques Huet

Regarded as Godard's masterpiece and the film that could arguably have started what we now know as 'The French New Wave' or 'nouvelle vague', this is a classic film to start of my countdown.

When a young french thief kills a policeman, he goes on the run to Paris where he meets up with an old American girlfriend in which he tries to entice her to move to Italy with him before the authorities close in on him.

Even though i am watching this film decades after it was made i still find some comfort in the all too familiar dizzying cuts and edits that we find in regularity on TV adverts and pop videos. A real 'in the face' film at the time, Godard created techniques that would have been shunned by Hollywood on its release but instead works in the complete opposite. A film with no real plot and intention of where it is going to end up but i found myself glued to the screen with some impressive sequences and dialogue. My particular favourite is the scene where the two main characters are holed up in the bedroom with Belmondo's character trying to seduce his ex-girlfriend. A discussion ensues that seems to go on for the better part of the film which done incorrectly would of sent me to sleep, instead i find myself gripped to the quickfire interchange of the two and by the time he finally gets what he wanted, you wish they would of carried on for longer.

A fine film that does justice at being my entry into this countdown, a film that has introduced me to another fine director's work.

Englishozzy

Tuesday 17 May 2011

The beginning...

OK it begins. My very first blog to the outside world, and my very first serious piece of writing (in some sort of coherent text) ever.

The reason i have finally decided to do something like this actually originated from a Forum i subscribe to (http://forum.reelsociety.com/). Going back a good four or five years ago i stumbled upon a website, linked from IMDB, that offered a fantasy draft game but with a difference. Instead of plying your trade in a some sort of sport, this offered up a game using the results of films at the American box-office to create a brand new way of playing fantasy drafts.

Always being a fan of the silver screen i immediately signed up and to cut a long story short fell in love with the game. Unfortunately due to the GFC, this website could no longer function with the amount of people signed up  and roughly late 2008 i found myself desperately searching the Internet for a similar concept.

Luckily for me, i wasn't the only person left with a hole in my day usually taken up with going over tracking and film news, and to my pleasure a band of people from the original website quickly started up a forum introducing the game again only on a smaller scale. Over the years a core of people has formed at this forum from all over the world and where most of us don't know each other from Adam, i still feel that we all have a connection through the game itself.

Now, you are properly wondering where i am going with this but trust me, i am getting there. Going back to the forum, there is always something to talk about and just recently one of the boys from the site suggested creating our own Top 100 films of all time list. Each of us posting our films with a countdown starting with #100 on day 1 going all the way to our #1 film of all time. This has been going on for a couple of months and we finally finished the other day. During this time it has made me realise how many 'top films' i haven't seen yet, this is where this blog comes in.

Over the coming year i will be watching 100 films from a collective list made up of the Fantasy Moguls countdown and various other high profile lists including IMDB.com, Empire magazine and Total Film magazine. Now to carry out such a huge project i have decided to document my reviews, thoughts on each film as i go in this blog. Don't ask me why i have decided to do it in a blog, considering i am not the most confident person in writing but even if i can achieve i follower that has recognised this i will be pleased.

So without further ado... look out for my next entry which will be #100 in my countdown.

Englishozzy