OK class – today let’s talk about movies – sorry, films for the Brits among you. I was watching TV this morning while pounding away on the treadmill – well, strolling along the treadmill – well alright standing on the treadmill - when they started discussing the top ten films of all time. Their list contained the usual suspects – Casablanca [yawn], Citizen Kane [yawn], Gone with the Wind [please!] and the Wizard of Oz [well alright that one was good and it has given me years of pleasure doing my “I’ll get you my pretty and your little dog too! He he he he he he he” impressions].

Actually I think we only remember most movies by their ‘catch phrases’ – let’s have a quiz – identify the movie and who said it for a chance to win a cruise around the world or at least a mention in my blog:

1. Hasta la Vista Baby [sounds of gunfire and breaking furniture]
2. Play it again Sam [sounds of clinking glasses]
3. Rosebud [whispered]
4. Stella [ vastly over-acted using loud Noo Yoik accent ]
5. Frankly Scarlet I don’t give a damn [furrowed brow and tons of Brylcream]
6. Do you feel lucky punk? [waving very phallic looking magnum around]
7. Is that an African or a European Swallow? [sounds of coconuts clacking]
8. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a little chianti [sounds of slurping]
9. Have you ever wondered if there was more to life, other than being really, really, ridiculously good looking? [posing]
10. Carpe Diem [for intellectuals]
11. I’m going to Greece. It’s going to be sex for breakfast, sex for lunch and sex for tea. [leaning out the window]

I’ve got a million of ‘em. Another interest of mine is art history and it’s surprising how many movies include references either direct or indirect to works of art. The da Vinci Code for example [and *I* thought Tom Hanks was very good despite the critics who said he was crap and had a funny hair-do]. The only mystery with the da Vinci Code as far as I’m concerned was the scene when the curator of the Louvre spent all that time getting naked and then drawing a large square and a circle around his body in his own blood. Since he was in the Louvre already why didn’t he just run over and point at the Vitruvian Man hanging on the wall just down the corridor on the left? If *I* had a gaping gunshot wound in my stomach I wouldn’t exactly be thinking of arranging myself artfully on the floor to demonstrate how erudite I was before passing on to that great museum in the sky. Personally I would be shrieking at the top of my lungs for Le Medics and bugger the Illuminati. But I digress. How many ‘art’ references can you come up with in movies you’ve seen? I’ll start you off – there’s a scene in the movie MASH where the characters momentarily arrange themselves into the tableau from the Last Supper – have you seen that one?

If you don’t want to strain your brain with that last one – how about the most famous scenes from movies – the absolute iconic defining moment in a classic film i.e. the shower scene in Psycho and that close-up on Janet’s eye [she said she got eye-strain from doing that without blinking for hours]. What about the panoramic shot of the lone horseman [or maybe it was a camel] coming across the horizon in Lawrence of Arabia? The chariot race in Ben Hur? Moses Parting the Red Sea? The look on Nicolas Cages face when he spies Cher outside the Met in Moonstruck?

Well come on come on then – get the old thinking caps on. I’ll be waiting here with the popcorn and the Coke [diet of course].