14 Movies on my to-see list

I get Esquire magazine and i have to say that i really like it.  The Sports Guy has a rule that he judges how good a magazine is by how long it takes him to read and i have to say that i end up reading Esquire longer than any other mag i get.  I probably spend a good hour to 90 minutes on it every month.

This month’s issue has an area where it has 75 movies that every man should watch.  I have seen most of them (Godfather, Sling Blade, The Good The Bad The Ugly) but there were 14 in there that i haven’t yet seen.   I wrote the list down and what Esquire said about them. I couldn’t be more excited to crack into them.  Here’s the list:

  1. In The Heat of the Night. Never before has a man been in more wrong places at the wrong time.
  2. Save The Tiger. The nominations for 1973 Best Actor: Brando, Nicholson, Redford, Pacino, and Lemmon. Lemmon got it.
  3. Runaway Train.  Existential action flicks are tough to pull off.  But this is the way to do it: just get 2 escaped cons, a chick, an evil warden, and in a helicopter chase in Alaska.
  4. Rosemary’s Baby.  You learn there ate bad people in the world
  5. Shakes The Clown. A reviewer called it “the Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies.” Faint praise. For every man or woman who ever hugged a toilet all night long
  6. Dirty Harry. Sometimes a man has gotta break the rules and hunt the bastard down himself, even if it’s only a metaphor for the next sales call
  7. Straw Dogs. Three words: Sam. Peckinpah. Revenge.
  8. Giant. The history of Texas in the 20th century, as seen through the anguished lonesome eyes of James Dean
  9. Down By Law. Weirdest prison escape movie ever
  10. The Verdict. Watch the foray scene, in which Paul Newman is silhouetted against a barroom window, playing pinball: the man is acting with his shoulders.
  11. The Warriors. Bloodthirsty mimes, clown-faced baseballers, ad bare-chested men in leather vests. Kind of makes you miss pre-giulliani NYC
  12. Stalag 17. Because it inspired a sitcom. With Nazi’s
  13. The Misfits. Two drunks and a blonde walk into a Reno bar, get hammered, and embark on a scheme to wrangle mustangs. Starting Clark Gable (who died before it was released), Marilyn Monroe (died 18 months later) and Montgomery Cliff (who died within 4 years)
  14. HUD. “nobody gets out of life alive”
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I'll Miss Paul Newman

One my favorite actors, Paul Newman, passed away last week.  I love many of his movies, such as The Sting, The Hustler, and Cool Hand Luke.  He was a total stud.

Another reason i loved him was for his charity work.  My cousin Matt has worked for the past two years at Newman’s Hole In The Wall Gang summer camps for sick children.  Their motto is “Shameless exploitation for the common good.”  It’s a great cause and a great camp

In a book about him, the author Lawrence Quirk quotes Newman: “I’d like to be remembered as a guy who tried — tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being. Someone who isn’t complacent, who doesn’t cop out.”

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