Wednesday, August 5, 2015

My favorite movie

by Jorn Lier Horst, Norway


I often spend late summer evenings with a good movie. As a writer, and playwright, I sometimes get asked what is my favorite book or favorite movie. My favorite book vary slightly from time to time, but when it comes to film, I usually mentions Frank Darabont's masterpiece "The Shawshank Redemption", based on a Stephen King short storie. It is an epic prison movie about friendship, desperation, hope and human relations. It is a lingering drama that grabs you right away, and slightly moves something in you as a human beeing. The production is almost perfect in every aspect, but I really like how the subdued acting brings an additional human depth to the film.

Stephen King is also behind another of my favorites. "Stand by me" is based on an autobiographical novel which was originally called "The Body". The year is 1959, in a sleepy little town four twelve year old boys packs down their sleeping bags and heading out into the woods. They are looking for a body - a boy of their own age are reported missing and have probably been struck by the train.
The trip is perilous and fatiguing, and brings out the deepest of them all. Only mutual trust and humor keeps them together when it gets tough. It will be their first encounter with death, but it is the trip that alters the five boys and sends them out on the road that forms a life. As already said, the film is based on a story by Stephen King, but despite that the writer is named Stephen King, there is no horror movie, but a film that is characterized by the nostalgia that often settles over childhood memories.

Do you have a movie recommendation for lazy summer evenings?

Jorn

9 comments:

  1. Jorn, The Shawshank Redemption would be high up my list also. I've seen it two or three times. It's good to have as a companion on a long plane ride!
    Another Stephen King story converted to a movie that I really like is Hearts in Atlantis with Anthony Hopkins. He was brilliant in it. More memorable than as Hannibal Lecter.

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  2. Fried Green Tomatoes At the Whistle Stop Cafe! And, it has to be said, Wallace And Gromit, The Curse Of The Were Rabbit. The kids laugh at some bits, the more adult humour goes right over their heads. And the Cat's Meow, Gosford Park, Black Narcissus....etc etc

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  3. Thank you both for giving me a list of movies for an uplifting summer evening. I can use them considering my "Deerhunter" mood at the moment.:)

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  4. I watched The Magus about a dozen times when I was at university - as much as I love John Fowles, I suspect it was more for Candice Bergen. Jeff you'd enjoy that one. Then any Kurasawa movie, particularly The Seven Samurai and Ran, almost any Fellini movie (Amarcord), Hitchcock, The Gods Must be Crazy, and any weird movie.

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  5. I am a fellow movie addict, Jorn, but I fear--though your two choices are also favorites of mine--that my list might be a little too tame for you. These I know by heart and still watch with pleasure: Cinema Paradiso, Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), Life is Beautiful, Gosford Park, Woody Allen's Manhattan, Out of Africa. Fellini's Roma. I have watched two films so often with the same people that we can recite the dialog by heart: Casablanca (with my friend Doris) and Blazing Saddles (with my brothers. It's the only thing the three of them agree on!)

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  6. All of the above are good choices. How about The Princess Bride?

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  7. All excellent choices (do the people that hang out here have class, or what?) A less well-known movie that I love is the 1998 "Sliding Doors." I'm not a big Gwyneth Paltrow fan, but I love this movie that examines how the smallest of changes in our lives can end up having massive effects down the line, for good and ill. I can think of NUMEROUS such situations in my own life, where seemingly minor things ended up having HUGE ramifications for me. One such, seemingly very trivial, five or six years ago introduced me to the writings of Timothy Hallinan, and through him to all of you!

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    Replies
    1. Your trip down memory lane, EvKa, reminded me of "Back to the Future" where events can be changed via time travel.

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  8. I couldn't agree more about Shawshank. It's in my list of favorite movies.

    Just rewatched Three Days of the Condor, a great thriller. A more contemporary legal thriller is by the BBC, The Escape Artist, thrilling.

    Also, contemporary movies The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything are very good.

    Inside Man is an excellent bank robbery movie with many twists.

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