Saturday, June 19, 2010

Arabian Nights...Like Arabian Days

Still going with THIS LIST
in hopes of marking something off of THIS LIST.

And so, last night (and part of this morning) I watched Lawrence of Arabia.
If I'm completely honest, it was too long for me to love it.
I really did enjoy pieces of it...and the storyline, as a whole, was very interesting...but with a running time of 3 hours and 47 minutes, I'm pretty sure I had lost interest before it even started.

What is interesting about this movie:
It is reportedly the longest film not to have any dialog spoken by a woman

(which I read on IMDb while looking up Peter O'Toole during the movie to see what else I might have seen him in...typically I would hit 'pause' while searching, but I could not bear the thought of making this movie last any longer.)

I read this about an hour in to the movie and I hadn't even noticed that there had been no women in the film. Then I began to watch for it...and was so curious as to how the movie did not seem to be any worse sans female roles. I was also curious as to whether or not I would ever have noticed this without having read it first. My guess: nope.

Interesting, but not enough to ever watch it again...or recommend it to others.
Sorry AFI...I would not put this movie in my Top 100.

6 comments:

Julie Hibbard said...

I wonder what the criteria is for the top 100 movies? Who is the judge of that? I totally agree with you on this one. I remember watching it FOR DAYS...
Maybe there was an editor's strike going on at the time of its making or something. Seems like at least an hour of desert scenes could have been left on the editing floor without too much being lost.
Cross that one off your list for good.

TSHarrison said...

i'm looking forward to crossing it off my list too...

Lisa Marie said...

I tackled a lot of AFI movies in high school, and I HATED this one. Snoozefest!!

Lisa Marie said...

I do like the title of this post though :)

Allie said...

2 things:
1 - now the "Arabian Nights" song is in my head...and will probably stay all day (funny)
2 - I lost 3 hours of my life to that movie too. Horrid.

Mama Oasis said...

all I remember of this movie is somebody saying something that sounded like, "Ahhhh Lorrrannnce"