The game continues!

Ok, so I am currently in 5th place after the second round of Boiled Dinner's Movie Madness competition. I took some chances with a few underdogs that did not pan out and I am wondering what I was thinking when I picked Annie Hall to win over Gone With The Wind. I think I was just hoping that another low seed would triumph but alas, I was wrong.

I am sill torn over Singin' in the Rain being taken by Psycho. It is hard to pick between two films that are so totally and fundamentally different in almost every way. Singin' is a film that is about the past. It comments on film history and the coming of the sound age but also holds all that is so great about the musicals of the 40's & 50's. It makes fun of itself and the genre it is a part of, but also takes every formula, staple, and stereotype very seriously, elevating itself above the typical musical at the time. Smart, smart, film that can be watched again and again.

Now Psycho is just one of the scariest movies ever made and it opened audiences to a genre of movie that had never seen before and is now one of the highest grossing genres in Hollywood. Hitchcock also created an iconography that has been used and copied do death, but not nearly as effectively or ingeniously. I wish I could have seen Psycho for the first time in 1960. I wouldn't have slept for days. (be sure to check out Peeping Tom (1959). It came out about 6 mo. before Psycho and is considered to be the first slasher film)

Why are the best films the ones with the simplest story lines which give a genius director like Alfred Hitchcock the chance to play with the depths of his characters and the tricks of his trade. There are lessons to be learned here, people. Take note.

I'm still torn.

Thanks to Kos and Boiled Dinner for making us think about film and giving us a chance to wonder why one film might be better the other. For challenging our ideas of what's good and why.

Damn fun and I can't wait to win...