the desert island five and smoking

I'm slacking in the proper post about the Matts' show even though I have my photos, and also on the BFA show, instead I bring you topics of cinema.

I was asked last night, during a serious-minded discussion about film, what my desert island five films were. I blame High Fidelity for this cultural obsession with narrowing everything down to five, I mean if you're really passionate about something, say film, how the hell do you narrow all the amazing things you seen over the years into five? and this question is really case in point. What's being asked is what films do you consider your all time favourites, the best, but what does that mean? The best what? Favourite what? It's a question asked in the middle of a serious discussion about film films, how well is it going to go over to say Revenge of the Nerds and still have people listen to you? I hedged, The films that I would want to have with me if I were stuck on a deserted island and could only have 5 films ever for the rest of my life are frankly not the same films I think are the greatest pieces of cinema ever made; they're the escapist, the funny, the movies. I mean if I'm stuck on a desert isle I probably don't want to be watching films about death and existenial crises no matter how brilliant they are, it's just not a desert isley kind of topic.

As for my real desert isle five (not demured so I don't look like a cinema philistine) they're all comedies by the way, it's probably the only category I could narrow down into 5 on the fly or at all even. I've watched all of these films a minimum of 20 times and never got sick of them so I think that's a good sign I could be trapped with only them on Tiki Tiki.
1. Ghostbusters
2. The Ref
3. The Life of Brian
4. Office Space
5. Revenge of the Nerds

In other cinema news .... oh dear, in imdb linking those movies, it has just come to my attention that someone is planning to do a remake of Revenge of the Nerds to be released next year. For the love of all that's good in the world, can we fucking stop making shitty remakes of movies? Also shitty big screen versions of shitty 70s tv shows that were only thought to be good in our memories becuase we were kids and hadn't developed actual taste yet? Seriously!

OK back to cinema that doesn't make me want to gouge my eyes out, I'm just back from seeing thank you for smoking which is easily one of the funniest and wittiest comedies that I've seen in years. It's one of those movies where practically every line is highly quotable and perfectly written and delivered. I miss those types of movies, maybe this will start a mini trend of smart comedy. Instead of 30 biracial buddy cop movies or neo-teen sex comedies or Will Ferrell vehicles where he plays the same dense kind of drunken slapstick punchline (and don't get me wrong Old School is great and Elf is probably the best film he'll ever do, but let's be honest for every one really funny film he or Vince Vaughn or even Ben Stiller these days makes there are 7 that suck) there can be 30 really well-written dark comedies that don't revolve around seeing someone hairy running naked. I also consider this movie ground-breaking in that the presence of Katie Holmes did not bother me, and she actually appeared to be holding her own, for the most part. I've always liked Aaron Eckhart, he always puts in a good performance and he's nothing short of perfect in this role.