Casablanca @ MindSay

I finally watched Casablanca for the first time. I have had the dvd sitting on my shelf for a few months. What a great movie. A classic in it's entirety, I have recently starting getting some so called classics from Netflix and am surprised at how many of them do not live up to the hype. This movie really surprised me. What surprised me most is how much many of the lines are part of the pop culture of today. Like, 'Here's looking at you, kid." Or, "We'll always have Paris.", "Play it, Sam" (often misquoted as Play it again, Sam), "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." I have recently been getting a lot of Bogart's movies. I really think he was the quintessential actor of his day. Other than the quotes, it was one of the few old movies that wasn't hokey to me or overacted. The set design was great and the acting was great. The chemistry Bogart and Bergman had was incredible despite not even talking to each other except when on film.

    So if you are interested to know some of the other movies that I have not considered classics, they would be Raging Bull, Platoon, Animal House, and Scarface. Those are just a few that I have watched over the years and was not impressed with. I am sure I could think of more, but I really don't want to think much on the weekends. I think the above movies were highly overrated, especially Scarface. I don't know why that movie gets the notoriety it gets. It was long, boring, and dull. And had one of the most ridiculous roles ever from Al Pacino. Imagine a movie about Cubans with one Cuban in the whole movie. I mean I live in South Florida and we have a ton of Cubans. Not once have I ever heard anybody with an accent like the ones they have in that movie.

     With that off my chest I am going to go back to watching the extras on the Casablanca disc.

     Film critic Roger Ebert received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame June 23. Congrats and yay! Someone truly more deserving than Seacrest. Annette Bening, Steve Martin, Ray Romano and Charlize Theron are among the stars who will receive stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006.

     German film critics are protesting Paramount for implementing a worldwide embargo preventing reviewers from publishing their critiques of Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds until the film's global release date June 29. The critics called the embargo a "violation of basic constitutional rights." Is the movie that bad?! Tom Cruise hosted a special screening of the  War of the Worlds for hundreds of fans in Los Angeles June 20. Laurence Fishburne and Philip Seymour Hoffman are joining Cruise and Keri Russell for writer-director J.J. Abrams' upcoming Mission: Impossible 3. Two good additions.

     Frankly, my dear, I do give a damn: The line "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" from Gone With the Wind was named the American Film Institute's (AFI) number one quote on its "100 Years... 100 Quotes" list and special, which aired June 21 on CBS. Casablanca had the most entries at six, with "Here's looking at you, kid" at number five, the highest-ranked one from that particular movie.

     Paramount Pictures and Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's Plan B production company have entered a first-look agreement that gives Paramount an exclusive first bid at producing projects developed by Plan B over the next three years. Paramount Pictures Chairman and CEO Brad Grey is the third founding member of Plan B. Warner Bros' Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Plan B's first endeavor, hits theaters July 15.

     The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) invited 112 members of the film industry to become members. Members of AMPAS vote on who should be nominated for and win Oscars. Gael Garcia Bernal, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Sophie Okonedo, Clive Owen, Charlotte Rampling, Jean Reno, Stellan Skarsgard, Imelda Staunton and Ziyi Zhang are the foreign actors that got in. American actors Thomas Haden Church, Jennifer Coolidge, Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Paul Giamatti and Mykelti Williamson were extended invitations as well. Five directors got in: Alejandro Amenabar, Marc Forster, Oliver Hirschbiegel, Andy Tennant and Joel Zwick. Paramount CEO Brad Grey, Spider-Man producer Avi Arad, Robert Rodriguez's producer-wife Elizabeth Avellan, Crash creator Paul Haggis, The Motorcycle Diaries writer Jose Rivera and School of Rock writer and co-star Mike White were also invited to join AMPAS. On June 22, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted against granting a consortium of stunt performers their request for an Oscar in their field. Oscar-winning Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar received a Bunuel's Razor Award for the Best Spanish Film of 2004 for his latest hit, Bad Education. Again, congrats and yay!

     The Los Angeles trial for the case of a photographer accused of trying to extort money from Cameron Diaz via racy photos of her taken before she was famous started June 23. Diaz's Charlie's Angels co-star Lucy Liu will star opposite Cedric the Entertainer in Les Mayfield's action comedy The Cleaner. Liu plays an FBI agent posing as a waitress to Cedric's amnesiac janitor who thinks he's an undercover agent. Liu will also executive produce and star in the independent thriller Devil to Pay. Diaz's pop star boyfriend Justin Timberlake is in talks to join Christina Ricci and Samuel L. Jackson in the film Black Snake Moan. Ricci and Jackson are good, but I don't know about Timberlake - or the title for that matter.

     Fox and Marvel Enterprises are suing Sony and Revolution Studios over Sony's new comic book satire Zoom, starring Tim Allen, which will hit theaters around the same time as Fox's X3. Fox and Marvel claim that Zoom rips off elements of the X-Men.