(Cue Ride of the Valkyries….wait for it, wait for it…)
Today, I finally watched The Godfather.
I had to cue Ride of the Valkyries because that’s the song my personal soundtrack plays whenever I’ve decided to conquer something I’ve been putting off for mostly irrational reasons. It plays a lot, because I’m a procrastinator and a journalist.
I put off watching The Godfather because I despise movies that last longer than 1 hour and 45 minutes; this has been recently compounded by the myriad of comedies that push the two-hour mark (Curse you, Seth Rogen). Please note this time limit does not include war movies or movies with Matt Damon, Bruce Willis or Tom Cruise shooting a gun and crashing large vehicles into buildings or other large vehicles. Oh, or musicals. I’m still a prissy girl, after all (I love you, Moulin Rouge).
Thirty minutes into the 175 minutes of The Godfather, I realized that I really didn’t need to watch all of it because I’d already seen and heard the entire movie through conversational quotes and subtle and not-so-subtle references in other movies and shows. But I dutifully watched and enjoyed, because my poor ex-film-student boyfriend was rightfully embarrassed that his otherwise quick-witted girlfriend never really understood anyone’s conversational references to fishes, cannoli, horse heads and mattresses.
It was a good movie. Now I can tell people, without posturing, “It’s business, it’s not personal,” over and over again, like Tom Hanks to Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail. Or I could acquire a fear of dropped oranges, like Robert DeNiro in Analyze This.
I hear I have to watch two more to truly be up to speed in day-to-day movie-quoting conversations.
If not, it’s all-out war. We go to the mattresses.
SodBlogger’s Note: Special thanks to blogger Erik Hagen, whose use of the blogword “sod” inspired the headlines of my first two posts. Also, a nod to Ethan, who thinks women can’t enjoy the movies that men do. Furthermore, thank you to the four glasses of wine that started this blog, because without you, I wouldn’t have Googled “Cry of the Belfries” when looking for the correct spelling of my soundtrack’s triumph song. And finally, thank you to my boyfriend, who bit his lip after I said “Wait, is that Al Pacino?” during this scene:
