So Daniel Craig is the new bond.  Interesting.  I'll have to see him in action, but in the meantime, I think its time I brought the 007 franchise to my list.

But I can't pick just one.

So, instead, I'll make a "Best of" list....

I know, I know, I'm doing a terrible job of keeping up... but I've been busy fixing the layout of this blog.  :)   Well worth it so far, no?   This is the end of phase one.  In phase two, I'll be fixing the layout of the sidebar and reorganizing some of the bells and whistles.

I rediscovered Ghostbusters not too long ago.  I never really realized the quality of the writing before.  Almost every single line in the movie is either funny or just plain good.  The commercialization around this movie really made it cheesy, but if you go back to it years later, its actually a fantastically written movie.  The humor is often subtle and I don't think you pick up on half of it unless you see it a few times.

"Do you have any hobbies?"

"I collect spores, molds, and fungus."

The other thing I like is how genuinely New York the movie is.  So many of the extras couldn't get any more Gotham, from the unsuspecting Upper East Sider who walks into the corpse's cab, the Mayor, and all of the wiseass cops.

"You do your job, pencilneck, don't tell me how to do mine."

Nice cameo by local anchorman Roger Grimsby, too...  I remember Grimsby and Bill Beutel every night at dinner on Channel 7.  Little details that just make the whole thing a little more authentic...well, as authentic as you can get a movie about catching ghosts.

"What are you supposed to be, some kind of cosmonaut?"

"No, we're exterminators.  Somebody saw a cockroach up on 12."

"That's got to be some cockroach."

"Bite your head off."

This is also a movie that never should have had a sequal, and I think the cheesiness and commercialization of the franchise really detracted from the original.  But, you know, Ivan Reitman's got to put some food on the table...  which, if you've seen him lately, doesn't seem to have been an issue.  Same with Ackroyd.

I didn't do a movie post last week...totally forgot.

So, this week, I've got not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR movies for you.

And, in the spirit of Halloween, they all revolve around one man:

Dr. Hannibal Lecter

Silence of the Lambs is probably the best in this series of four, based on three books (three movies + one remake).  Its also my favorite, but the other movies are solid and stand up on their own, too.

We first got introduced to Dr. Lecter in Manhunter, then played by Brian Cox.  That's also the first time I got introduced to Iron Butterfly's In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida, which is scary as hell if you're in a dark room chased by a lunatic, being captured by low quality camerawork.  Manhunter has a kind of low-budget Halloween feel to it, but the script is good and the charactors give it some depth.  Not a bad adaptation, and in, fact, I like it better than I liked Red Dragon.  I think Tom Noonan was better cast than Ralph Fiennes to play Dolarhyde, although the Dolarhyde charactor gets explored much deeper in Red Dragon.

Still, Anthony Hopkins is Lecter, and he redefines movie psychopaths in Silence of the Lambs.  A lot of people get really freaked out by this movie, and to be honest, I find movies like Se7en to be more disturbing, but that doesn't mean it still isn't an excellent movie.  Silence is the movie that will actually be going on my Top 50 list...  these others are just gravy in a great series.  Or... chiante rather. 

We lose Jodie Foster after Silence, but Julianne Moore does a good job as a replacement in Hannibal.  In fact, I almost think its better that we see the tougher, more agressive Moore here since this is supposed to be Agent Starling later in her career.  Hannibal is a beautifully styled movie with a great score by Hans Zimmer.  This time, we catch up with Dr. Lecter in Europe, coaxed out of hiding by a melted Cabbage Patch Doll, played by Gary Oldman.  The dinner scene at the end is over the top, but the rest of the movie is an admirable follow up to the favorite.

Red Dragon finishes up the series with yet a new and fresh take, telling the story of Dr. Lector's capture and the first case that he helps out on.  Edward Norton does a fantastic job here, as always and the movie is pretty suspenceful throughout, especially when his family gets roped into this terror.  I think I like the original Manhunter a bit better, I still think, as sequels and prequels go, this one is pretty good....  its a solid and scary series all the way around.

You could have almost guessed this given my new arrival this weekend, no?

My dad really loved Steve McQueen and that's how I found Bullitt.  It was the Saturday afternoon movie on Channel 5 or something and he was watching it.  Steve McQueen was a very different action hero than I was used to.  Growing up on Sly and Ahhnold, and even catching a bit of Dirty Harry, you think of every action here as a bit larger than life.

Steve McQueen in Bullitt was just a regular guy doing a job.... and he played that perfectly. 

I would have liked to see him last longer than he did... he was stricken with lung cancer and died at 50.  What kind of roles would he have taken? 

Bullitt also has a great cast.  Robert Vaughn, Jacqueline Bisset, Robert Duvall.

Oh... and there's a little car chase in it, too.  :)

By conventional standards, it isn't really much of  a car chase...   but this is really the first real movie car chase.   The Mustang vs. the Charger.  It was so much more realistic than the chases we see now.  They used live sound, and McQueen did a lot of his own driving--screwing up a few times in the process--all caught on film.  And the chase was McQueen's idea in the first place.

The interesting thing was that it also touched off another auto icon.  Had they not used the Charger in the movie, it would have never influenced the use of the Charger as the  "General Lee" in the Dukes of Hazzard. 

I saw this the other day and I thought it was just hilarious.  Its amazing how a few carefully collected clips and a little change of soundtrack can do.  Definitely worth watching.

In all seriousness, though, The Shining is one of my favorite movies.  First of all, it makes me feel so conflicted.  On one hand, you have the perfectly deconstructed and torn down psychopath, Jack Nicholson, flipping out and trying to kill his family.

On the other hand, boy do I hate Shelley Duvall in this movie.  I mean, I seriously think if he did clip her with that ax, the audience probably would have cheered.  Can an actress be more irratating??  Watching her flounce around in an attempt to run was just painful.  Well, I suppose if it was Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack wouldn't have been too much of a match for her, so they had to pick an easier target.

Anyhoo, Jack's whole unwinding is done at such a perfect pace.  Its never unbelievable and it never drags on either.  Plus, I like the fact that the ghoul factor is pretty low.  Its scary, but the only thing you really need to be scared of is the woman in the tub.  Other than that, its all just mood and suspence.  Fantastic score, set off by the early Berlioz on the trek up the hill.  I loved the scenes where the charactors from the past appear, and I think maybe the scariest thing in the movie is when he turns up in the picture at the end.

Best unintentional comedy moment:  Scatman Carrother's (the cook) apartment in Miami.  It looks like a scene from "The Ladies Man"...  huge sprawled out female nude painting behind the bed.  Totally 70's decor.  Look out Miami. 

I know what you're going to say. The fourth one? Absolutely.

Growing up in the 80's, the movies were all about two guys--Stallone and Schwarzenegger. Rocky/Rambo vs. The Terminator/Commando/Conan. The amount of money these two grossed in the 80's is staggering. Right smack in the middle of it, in 1985, Stallone reigned supreme. He had two out of the top three biggest hits, bringing in $277 million with Rambo II and Rocky IV. When I think of "Sly" these are the movies that come to mind.

So why not the earlier ones? Why not the first one? It won best picture. Well, you have to understand that I got exposed to these movies all at the same time, not as they came out. So, to me, Rocky was the champ. Watching him lose in the first one, even though the first one was a great movie, was kind of disappointing. Great writing, yeah. Nice story... stairs, running, whatever... not my fav. Oh, and is Adrian more annoying when she's completely social inept in the first one or when she's the nagging wife later on?

So now there's two. He gets another shot at the title. Well, I didn't really like that he lost in the first one, but I don't really like the fact that he has to beat Apollo in this one. Apollo's not a bad guy. He's Rocky's bud later on... he teaches him how to beat Mr. T. They're on the same side. So, if you've seen the later ones, it kind of takes a little bit of steam out of the early rivalry. Still, its nice to see Rocky become the champ here.

As for three, well, this one is kind of a joke. Its the parade of the 80's icons... Hulk Hogan. Mr. T. BTW... I can't believe they kill Mick in this one! Bold move. Funniest moment from watching III for the first time at Brian's house was Brian saying, "Rocky's Jewish?" when they're at Mick's funeral and he's got a yarmulkah on. His brother Jimmy, who I think is one of the funniest people I've ever met, returned with, "Yeah, that's why they call him the Italian Stallion."

No, for my taste, its four. At the height of the cold war (at least as far as I knew, anyway), you've got USA vs. USSR. The Italian Stallion from Philly against Mother Russia. Its just so dramatic its totally ridiculous, but its perfect. Dolph Londgren has about three lines and they're all classic.

"If he dies, he dies"

"I must break you."

"You will lose."

His coach is great, too...

"Whatever he hits, he destroys."

Londgren is just so larger than life, towering over Rocky, that its unreal. But Rocky's trained hard. He's chopped wood.. a lot of it. He's run in snow and lifted carts full of people. Plus, he's been listening to Vince DiCola's "War" throughout the whole movie, even though it never works for the Mets at Shea when they're down late.

Plus, its got James Brown!

I just love everything about this movie. Drago is definitely in my top villains list (that's one I definitely have to do... I love bad guys). I think one of the only downsides is that its a reminder of how badly Bridgitte Nielson has aged.... that and the stupid robot scenes with Paulie. (Why does Paulie even need to exist anyway?)

So, you might disagree, but for a kid who grew up in the 80's, Rocky IV is where its at.

Rocky IV

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Sorry for the late movie again... another busy week.

"When is a sidewalk fully dressed? When its Waring Hudsucker!"

"..when the president, chairman of the board and owner of 87% of the company stock drops 44 floors... ...then the company too has a problem. "


When I was a senior at Fordham, I worked with my friend MaryAnn and a Jesuit scholastic, Andrew Wawrzyn, to come up with a spiritual retreat for business students. I was on the spiritual retreat team that year, and very few of the business majors were taking advantage of the program. However, there was certainly a need for a little "refill" after recruiting was done in the fall. Many of our classmates complained that they found recruiting--figuring out who they needed to be to get hired--emotionally and spiritually draining. Therefore we targeted a weekend program specificially to them, but modeled on the Emmaus retreat format.

It turned out to be a great program. Our activities generated a lot of great reflection and conversation. However, we didn't want to make it too intense, so we needed something to do at the end of the overnight to relax, but something that tied into the theme.

We watched the Hudsucker Proxy.

The Hudsucker Proxy is a movie with a nice little message about dreams, perseverence and the pitfalls of greed in business. Tim Robbins is a bright eyed young man with a big idea (you know, for kids) and a lot of ambition. He stumbles into a scheme led by a perfectly cast (sure, sure) Paul Newman that puts him right at the top of a pubic company. The movie is very styled... very 50's, boomtown and big... hats, rotating job boards, fast talkers and a little bit of innocence. Jennifer Jason Leigh is entertaining as the undercover reporter trying to get the scoop on why an imbicile is now running a company.

In the end, Robbins gets the best of them all by turning his big idea into a big success, but not without learning what happens when you let money and greed go to your head. Its a charming story with a solid cast, amusing charactors and a nice pace.

The Hudsucker Proxy

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Its Wednesday, so you know what that means...    my movie selection two days late.  Sorry.

So last night, I went out with my new Zog Sports softball team.  I signed up as an individual, so now I have a whole new set of people I'm getting to know.  I asked someone what their top five movies would be to take to a desert island.  This is a little bit different than saying favorites.  I love Shawshank, but I couldn't watch it over and over and over again on my desert island.

One selection she had was pure brilliance:  Beverly Hills Cop.  And you know, it doesn't even matter which one.  Frankly, I don't even know which one was which.  There's one with Wallyworld and another with Bridgitte Nielson...  They're all kind of the same.  Same plot.  Crime gets committed.  Eddie Murphy is on vacation or accidently around or follows up a lead from across the country and isn't supposed to be there.    He pokes his nose where he doesn't belong.  The local cops haven't a clue and he's just nosey enough to figure it out.  He laughs a lot, flashes that big smile, and impersonates a lot of wacky charactors to get by underpaid rent a cops or receptionists or hostesses.  Judge Reinhold has a gun fetish... and his partner has an ulcer.  hmm.. did I forget anything?

But, the one thing they have in common...   no matter what time it is, or how many times I've seen them before, I'll stop to watch Beverly Hills Cop if I'm flipping through the channels.  That's what makes a desert island movie.  I seriously think I could wake up every morning on my desert island, watch a little Axel Foley, and not get tired of it.  Its not even that its that entertaining...   its just entertaining enough, simple enough...   Its kind of like the movie equivilent of Livan Hernandez.  The guy goes out and throws seven or eight innings every time and gives up three or four runs.   If you knew you had a pitcher who could throw eight and give up four runs, you'd take that every time.  Same with Beverly Hills Cop.  Solid, but unspectacular entertainment every time. 

Plus, how cool is that theme song?  Go ahead... hum it.  You know how it goes. 

So what's your desert island movie?

Wolfgang...

...Amadeus...

...Mozart.

I don't know which is more brilliant, the title charactor or the movie.  (Well, I know the answer to that, but still, the movie is pretty damned good.)  F. Murray Abraham narrates the movie as Salieri and we obviously get his perspective of the story, otherwise we'd probably see someone a little less childish than Tom "Pinto" Hulce playing Mozart. 

Most of the composers of the past are pretty dead to us as charactors.  What Amadeus did was to bring Mozart alive in our pop culture minds...  to tell his struggling artist & tortured soul story.  It put a fresh face and a story (and a laugh) on a body of music centuries old.  Its really hard to imagine that all that music tying dozens and dozens of instruments together into melodies even little kids know all came from one man.  How much of the story is true to life?  Who knows...  but even a fictional retelling loosely based on fact gets us closer to his life than stale old engravings on a CD cover. 

I wonder what Mozart would listen to today.  I wonder what his Pandora radio station would sound like.

Almost lose.  Stop.  Look back.  Reexamine.  Appreciate.  Save or renew.

That's Eternal Sunshine.  Oh yeah, there's a big of intrusive memory zapping, too.  What lengths we'll go through to forget people we want to remember.

In ESSM, Jim Carrey has to bring every single item that reminds him of his ex into an office to help get rid of her memories.  What does that bag look like for you?  Do you keep anything you should probably get rid of?  When I had my wallet stolen, I had a ten year old Winterfresh gum wrapper in it.  What's your item?  In the spirit of forgetting, and maybe, in turn, appreciating, that's the topic of today's call for comments back.  Name the item you keep from a past love that you should probably get rid of. 

Jim's bag is full of stuff.  Drawings, a snow globe...   and his head is full of stuff, too.  We know that because we get to walk through it and it results in a visually creative, fun, and thoughtful take on how much love depends on our own screwed up heads.  He's great in this movie and I really think he does a great job in most of his pseudo-straight man roles... he's a good actor.

I sweat Kate Winslet in this movie, too.  I've always loved crazy chics with Crayola hair, especially when they have a sensitive, vulnerable side they only show to a select few... always made me feel special. 

The movie is made by Focus Features which also did Lost in Translation.  Its the "specialty" unit of Universal... both movies are indeed very special.

The year was 1994.  I was a sophomore at Regis.   

I had recently been introduced to the Mecca that was the local all-girls high schools.  When you go to an all-guys high school, getting an "in" to your sister school was like finding the Holy Grail.

So there I was, with some newly minted friends from Marymount and the older Regis guys they hung out with, and they couldn't wait to see Pulp Fiction.  I was largely unaware of what I was going to see.  In fact, I remember being largely unaware of a lot of cool pop cultural stuff at the time, aside from what I heard on Z100 or from my Brooklyn friends.  I remember in freshmen year being told who the Ramones were by this girl Veronica I met at a Regis dance.  The Ramones!   What a sheltered life. 

Anyway, Pulp Fiction was, by far, the coolest thing I'd ever seen on the screen.  It was edgy, creative, and totally unlike anything else.  I must have easily seen it ten times in the movie theater... also because it played FOREVER.  You could always find it playing somewhere in the city. 

Pulp Fiction marked the resurrection of John Travolta's career as well.  He'd just come off the second sequal of "Look Who's Talking"... (yes, they made THREE of those movies) and hadn't done much since... well, since the early 80's. 

Another first.... it was also the first time was saw all this mix and matching with storylines that were out of order and tied back into each other.  When I saw that the diner scene tied back into itself, I was really wowed.

All the characters...   well, they're all just so fantastic and how many lines from this movie just got repeated over and over again?   "Check out the big brain on ______."   From Pumpkin and Honeybunny to Jules to the Wolf, the casting is kind of like watching art. 

And its got a Christopher Walken monologue...  This scene is just hilarious.  "And I hid the watch..."

There isn't one thing I would have done differently with this movie.  I love every character.  Every scene is art.  Every line is so carefully constructed.  It was part of growing up for me.  I owned the soundtrack, too...  great soundtrack.  Everyone my age had it. 

I think of this list like the Hall of Fame, but some of the movies are like Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb.  They're just on another level that would be a list of like 5 or 10 or something and not make for much interesting comparison.  Pulp Fiction is on that list, Shawshank, and few others.  Truly greay.

So its a couple of days late and I posted Shawshank last week, so now I've got to come up with something to top it or even on par, right?

Nope.

Not even going to try.

This is a pure Charlie's favorite.  I won't vouch for any kind of quality.  No Oscar caliber performances here.

What do you get when you combine Rammstein, hot chics, fast cars and a bald guy?

No, its not my blog...

Its Vin Diesel in "XXX".

"XXX" is just gratuitous entertainment.  Things go fast, things blow up, and there's cool music from Queens of the Stone Age, Orbital, and  Drowning Pool.  Did I mention things blowing up?  Its also got fantastic lines like, "I like anything fast enough to do something stupid in."

Truly an award winning performance from Vin Diesel--he actually got nominated for Best Male Performance at the MTV Movie Awards. 

At 5.5 stars, its got one of the lowest movie ratings I've seen on IMDB.... but to be honest, how could you dislike this movie if you went to go see it?  You knew it had Vin Diesel in it.  What did you expect?  Where there not enough things exploding?  Should the music have been louder? 

This ain't no Shawshank, folks.  Its the guy who did Riddick.

Its 3:49PM on Tuesday, which means its time for my regular Monday movie post. 

Sorry, its been busy around here...

Aren't all of you supposed to be on vacation, so I can go, too??  Instead we've got all these great deals to work on.  Damn you!

Anyway, I asked someone over the weekend what my movie should be this week... without even saying what movies I had seen or liked or giving her a choice.  Her response was exactly why I agreed to post it, because its something we've all seen and I've never met anyone that didn't think it was a great movie.

"Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'."

Now you know... and everyone knows.  Its just a fantastic movie all the way around.  Its a difficult, but beautiful story of friendship in the harshest of circumstances, and an interesting commentary of the world "out there" versus the world "in here" and what it means to be innocent.  Shawshank Redemption may very well be the best movie of my generation...  and Morgan Freeman is definitely one of the top 5 actors of my generation.  What's amazing was that Shawshank went a complete 0-fer in the Oscars, because it was up against Forrest Gump, which cleaned up, and Pulp Fiction. 

I've only seen the movie twice.  Its not the kind of movie to see over and over again... its just too much to take.  Either way, its truly a great piece of work.  Tim Robbins also does a great job, but I think his charactor gives him a little wind at his back.  His charactor is just in the right situation to really result in a great performance, whereas I think Freeman does a little more to get Red there, but now I'm being picky. 

Robert Redford will show up again on this list, and both Dan Ackroyd and Mary McDonnell have already appeared.  Same, too, with Ben Kingsley.  Perhaps I should just have made this a Top 25 Actors list.

Sneakers is about a quirky cast of characters that gets paid to break into things so that no one else can break into them.   Then, when one of them gets discovered to have a not so clean record, they need to break into a place to break their friend out of trouble. 

There are a lot of characters in here...  maybe too many, but its a bit like Ocean's Eleven, where none of the characters really get developed to deeply, but you just kind of have fun watching them play the game with each other.  In addition to the aforementioned repeaters, those making their first and perhaps only (although that's subject to change) appearance on my list are Sidney Portier and the late River Phoenix, who both do a great job as well.

In any case, in addition to being a fun, quirky, and geeky movie, it sounds fantastic.  James Horner's soundtrack is worth a purchase, and listening to Branford Marsalis play the sax is worth the price of admission.  The soundtrack seamlessly sets off the movie and you probably only realize how good it was if you listen to it separately afterwards.

It was really hot yesterday.

I was in a new place.

I didn't have a Mustang Convertible.

I still haven't closed on my apartment yet, and it seems like whatever can go wrong with this close will go wrong.

Reminds me of U-Turn, with Sean Penn, and that's my movie this week.  Directed by Oliver Stone, U-Turn takes Murphy's Law to new heights (or depths).  Fingers cut off by a loanshark, car broken down, Sean Penn finds himself in a one horse town in the Arizona desert.  If that's not bad enough, he gets mixed up with the most backwards, twisted collection of characters I think I've seen in any movie not named House of 1000 Corpses.  Billy Bob Thorton plays a car mechanic that gets dirtier more ornery with every piece he rips off of Penn's 64 1/2 Mustang.  Jennifer Lopez gives new definition to the phrase, "Don't get involved with a crazy hot chic who may or may not be having an inappropriate relationship with her father in Arizona after a loanshark cuts off two of your fingers."   Ok, so that's not an often-used phrase, I'll admit, but it should be, because its just a bad idea.

Things in U-Turn just get from bad, to worse, to ugly, to whatever's much worse than bad, worse, and ugly combined.   Great movie... not so great for the whole family to watch.

So, I should be closing this week *hopefully* and moving to Brooklyn this weekend.  It has me thinking a lot about neighborhoods and New York, and whenever I think about that, I always think of this scene in 25th Hour where Edward Norton is in the bathroom of his father's bar.  He goes off into this rant, cursing out all the different New York neighborhoods and accompanying inhabitants.  When he got to Bensonhurst, I was pretty sure I knew some of those guys and exactly where they were when they filmed it. 

25th Hour is a really powerful movie, and the situation effectively packs a lifetime into a single day--Edward Norton's last day as a free man before he goes off to jain for a seven year sentence.

What would you do?  How would you spend it?  Who would you want to be with?

The supporting cast is great, too.  Robert Scoble... eerrr..  Phillip Seymor Hoffman couldn't be more uncomfortable tagging along the last day of a ride that left without him some years ago.  He and Barry Pepper play Norton's childhood friends whose paths all diverged pretty significantly, making the juxtaposition of their presence on this contrived last day all the more emotional and complicated.  Anna Paquin, as Hoffman's underage and oversexed student, Brian Cox as Norton's Dad, and Rosario Dawson as the girlfriend that might have turned Norton in round out a really perfect cast.  This film is a must see for Edward Nortan fans, New Yorkers, and just about anyone else.

Since it was Memorial Day weekend, which is way I kinda forgot to post this on Monday, I tried to think of a movie that could somehow tie into the holiday theme.  I scanned my list for anything with war...  nope...  beaches?  Boats perhaps?  Well, actually, beaches and boats I have.

My Memorial Day Weekend 50 Favorite Movies Pick:

Castaway

I saw this in the theater and from the moment the plane goes down and he wakes up on the island, to about the moment he gets saved, I've never seen a theater full of people so engaged, so intently focused on a movie in my life.  No one made any noise.  No shifting, no whispering.  They just sat still, in silence, while Tom Hanks lived and learned, alone, on this island in the middle of nowhere.  It was one of the quiet movie experiences, between both the audience and the movie, that I've ever seen.  It was just exhausting to watch, really.   We'd seen Philadelphia and  Forrest Gump, and while those were good acting roles for Hanks, they were also solid, well written stories.  Castaway... well, was there even a script for this movie?  I mean, it must have been all directions, because he hardly has any lines throughout his time on the island.  Now that's great acting, when you can move an audience just by being alone, quiet, in the middle of nowhere.  We've seen this story before with a boatload of people, or two or three people, but just one guy...  it could have been a real flop if it wasn't done right, but its perfect.  Hanks is perfectly cast and really pushes the envelope on his acting skills.  Oh, and the Wilson the soccerball did a phenomenal job as well.  This is one of those movies that I probably won't watch again, only because its so intense, but its easily one that deserves to be on this list because of its quality.

I wasn't going to post this one so soon, because its so new, but I watched it tonight and couldn't resist. 

I'm not a particularly good traveler, so when I think of what it would be like to stay in Japan, I picture myself as out of place as Bill Murray.  In fact, if you had to cast anyone as an out of place character, from the less than scientific Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters to the perpetually stuck Phil Connors in Groundhog Day, Bill Murray would be your guy.  Its almost as if the casting agent says, "I don't want someone to actually do any acting.  I just want the whole movie to happen to this guy, and we'll just watch it happening to him." 

And that's what Lost in Translation does... it happens to Bill Murray.  He doesn't ask for it.  He doesn't try to meet Scarlett Johansson.  He doesn't really even want to be on talk shows or have his name up in lights.  But yet, its not like he has a clear idea of what else he wants to be doing either.  I think I'd like my life to happen to me a little more once in a while... instead of me needing to push and nudge and make things happen.  Why doesn't Scarlett Johansson just randomly show up in my life, you know?  Maybe she blogs and uses Technorati or PubSub to find herself...  you never know. 

Anyway, the soundtrack of this movie is perfect, but I'm not sure it would stand alone just to be listened to.  Its more of a score and fits perfectly with the movie.  There are some great music scenes, like Murray's karaoke rendition of "More Than This".  In fact, the whole movie is just very well put together.  I'm glad Sofia Coppola can write and direct, because she sure as hell can't act her way out of a paper cup.  (As far as I remember, there were only two Godfather movies, right?)

Like a lot of the movies that will be on my list, though, nothing much happens in this movie.  There's really no plot.  Its just a few days in the lives of two mismatched, but perfectly matched, Americans in Japan.  Nothing really changes in their lives at the end, or does everything change?  What does he whisper in her ear at the end?  On one hand, the idealistic part of me hopes he doesn't cheapen the whole experience by telling her to look him up in the states or something, but, on the other hand, I sure wouldn't mind Giovanni Riobisi's character get kicked to the curb in a hurry.  Anyone care to comment on what they think he said?