Goodbye Godfather, Hello Dark Knight?

I never thought I'd see the day. Ever since I started using imdb so many moons ago, the top of the list had always housed The Godfather part 1. It was then followed by The Shawshank Redemption and The Godfather part 2. Today, I was randomly pondering whether The Dark Knight had gotten into the top 250 yet, not because I’d seen it and thought it was great (which I haven’t), but because there have been quite a few previews for it and with most films nowadays, as soon as they come out, they receive a surge of votes and end up in the top 250. This year this has been the case for Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Indy 4, Wall-E and many more. So, I went on imdb to check The Dark Knight’s position and my gosh, I saw something I’ve never seen before. The Godfather was not in the number one spot. The Dark Knight had topped imdb’s top 250.

The question is: Is this further evidence that imdb’s top 250 is not reliable and valid or Is The Dark Knight the greatest film of all time? At this time I cannot comment, I’m yet to see The Dark Knight, as mentioned previously, it isn’t in the running to be my favourite film due to my clown problem but it may still turn out be a great film. I’m yet to get over the shock of seeing The Godfather at number 2. Strange. What one needs to remember is that this is the initial reaction to the film, this may be the responses of all The Dark Knight fan boys who where going to give it 10 stars regardless of how good it was. Then again, Empire gave it five stars (out of five). Oooo, I feel so conflicted. There’s a strong chance that it will go down, like I said before, more than four other films from 2008 got into the top 250 when they came out, only two remain.

Coming out of Shawshank

I now know how Andy felt at the end of The Shawshank Redemption. I have left the prison that is full time education (well, for 3 months) and I got through the crap filled tunnel that is A-Levels. Yes I tells ya, I’m free. Okay, so maybe it’s not exactly the same as Shawshank, but I don’t think I could feel any better than I do right now.

See, I’m that happy, actually, that looks a bit scary. Anyhoo, I don’t know what to do with myself, my plan was to start looking for a job on Monday, but, my mother had other things in mind. You see, me being off from school means that there someone to make the house extra clean. That’s freedom for you. I’m sure when Andy got out he didn’t get to everything he wanted, come on, he was building a boat, now that’s hard work.

My last exam was on Thursday, Sociology. It was possibly the worst exam experience of this exam season, just when I thought it was going well. I’ve spent the last few days procrastination, actually, it’s probably not procrastinating when really have nothing to do. Let me rephrase that, I’ve spent the last few days enjoying my freedom. I’ve watched High Fidelity, Kiss Kiss bang Bang and Venus. I also watched Arrested Development and Oz, the prison show, not the musical. It turned out to be pretty good but some parts were just horrifying.

I’m meant to be going to see The Incredible Hulk today. If you, like me, can’t stand listening to the sounds of children laughing, gasping or making any other unnecessary noise during films, I strongly recommend seeing films on Sundays or before 12 on weekdays. I went to check the rating online (I say went like I got out of my seat) and, in turn, accidentally saw the Rotten Tomatoes fresh rating. It’s 64% fresh, that isn’t good. Despite this, I bet it’ll spend at least one day on imdb’s top 250. Empire gave it 3 stars, the same as Iron Man, let’s see whether it’s better or worse than it’s predecessor (by predecessor I mean the previous Marvel funded film, Iron Man). We’ll just have to wait and see.

Remember...Gap Adverts

So, back to my Iron Man adventure. We went to the cinema on Monday to see our free film. The whole time my brother was speaking to the staff, I was just thinking that they had no proof that we had free tickets and they’d send us home. They did not. One of the members of staff just told the others that they didn’t need to see our tickets. I was a bit of a Jedi mind tricks moment.

What happened on Sunday: As I mentioned previously we were running 10 minutes late for the 5pm show. What appears to have happened was, we went into the show that started one hour before the one we thought we were going to see so we missed an hour or so of the four pm show. I didn’t enjoy the second showing as much as the first mainly because I felt quite ill. I ate a large amount of sweet popcorn and Pespsi. That was not a good idea.

Whilst at the cinema I saw one of the most awesome adverts I have ever been privy to so I thought that I’d dedicate this blog to some of my favourite adverts. Indeed.

This is the advert that I saw at the cinema. It basically tells the tale of me, every time I start to revise, I mean, when I try to get my stuff done.



This advert was one of the most impressive adverts I had ever seen. I made me want to learn how to dance (it soon wore off).



Who does better adverts that Gap? It saddens me that I don’t see gap adverts anymore so here’s a tribute to some of my favourites.

Just one of those days...Until...

Today started off as one of those days, you know, you want to go back to sleep but you can’t, you want to eat but you’re strangely full, you want to work but you just have no motivation and, most importantly, you want to download your favourite podcast but it’s not in the feed yet. Or...maybe this is just me. After some computer time i finally hit the books and revised for my impending C4 (that’s core maths to the people smart enough not to choose maths A-Level) mock exam. My real exam is under 4 weeks away so technically I was revising for that too. Anyhoo, back to it being one of those days, I’ve been working in my kitchen as opposed to my bedroom for two reasons; 1) There is barely any natural light in my room which makes it a reasonably unpleasant place to work in, and 2) My desk is quite high; combine this with my being under average height and you get a reasonably uncomfortable work station. So I’m working in my kitchen, a communal area and naturally, I get interrupted by the family, over, and over, and over again. I completed 1 and a half modules, significantly less than I intended to. Now, let’s get to the interesting part of my day.

Around, four thirty my brother comes to the house, we’d planned to see Iron Man. He, of course did not check what time the film started and a quick internet search resulted in me dressing very quickly to get to the 5pm show. There’s no way I could have left my house in what I was wearing previously. I got up this morning and I had a strange desire to wear shorts, so I put on theses horridious (yeah, horridious-a hybrid of horrible and hideous) purple shorts and one of the baggiest t-shirts I own. This, is what I call, studying clothes.

Back to the cinema segment of this piece; I was ready at 4:50 giving us 10 minutes to get to the cinema. We got there at around 10 past 5. You’d expect us to see trailers when we got there right? Wrong. As we open the doors I see Tony Stark being rescued by the military. You don’t need to have seen the film to know that a whole load happened before that moment. We still watch the film (because, you know, it’s our fault) and it turned out to relatively awesome, I’ll speak about the film and express some mad Robert Downey Jr love later. As I got home I went straight to the computer to watch the 10 minutes of the film I missed (don’t get me wrong, I don’t condone watching films online). It turns out, we missed around half an hour of the film, 38 minutes and 21seconds to be exact. That means it was not our fault. My brother has gone to complain and hopefully get us some free tickets as compensation. Yeah Boi.

He just got back, apparently we’ve got free tickets for a screening tomorrow. Unfortunately, my brother appears to have no proof of this so I’ll just see what happens.

Okay, back to what I saw of Iron Man (and the RDJ love). Iron man is what I call a great start to a story that will (yeah, I said will) be even better. It’s an origins story and we all know that origins stories can be, well, crap (Hulk anyone?). It was a film that relied heavily on the performances and the interactions between the various characters. Luckily, the acting and chemistry was fantabulous (hybrid of fantastic and fabulous). There were some great moments between Robert “Cooler than nitro” Downey Jr and Jeff “The Dude” Bridges, between “Cool Hand” Robert Downey Jr and Gwyneth “kinda growing on me” paltrow and between Robert “Got the cool” Downey Jr and Terrence “I’ve only seen you in Iron Man and Crash” Howard. I’m sensing a theme here, oh Yeah, Robert Downey Jr was Awesome (in the Bill and Ted sense). There were many Downey Jr-isms present and that added a drop of, I don’t know, liquid perfection to the film. Iron Man was not necessarily faultless in terms of story and progression, but what I can say is that the next instalment will be exceptional. Can I get a Yeah Boi?

On a final note, if you actually read this and trust me, at least in the movie sense, you’ll watch iron man and If you do, WATCH THE BIT AFTER THE CREDITS. Yeah boi, fan boys, Nick Fury is coming.