Friday, September 28, 2012

Everybody comes to Rick's

A college student named Lawrence Dai watched the movie Julie & Julia every day for a year, and wrote a blog about it:

The Lawrence / Julie & Julia Project
His inspiration seems to have been seeing Julie & Julia, where the real person Julie Powell (played by Amy Adams in the movie) cooked her way through Julia Childs' Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in a year, and wrote a blog about it.

So he decided he was going to watch that movie every day, for a year, and write a blog about that.

It's kind of similar but not so much, because Julie Powell didn't cook the same dish every day for a year -- she moved through the series of recipes, cooking all the different foods....

Lawrence Dai, on the other hand, is -- or rather was -- watching the same movie over and over again.  Each day for a year.

The cooking blog-challenge was cooking something new each day.
The movie-watching challenge was -- finding something new to say about the same film, each day.

The film-watching and blogging amounts to a
R-E-A-L T-H-O-R-O-U-G-H
study, of this one movie.

Sometimes I read from Lawrence Dai's blog & it's very funny -- it makes you laugh (However -- curse words -- college-student humor - the easily-offended might want to avoid)...and I also get sort of an uneasy, iff-y, "nibbly" feeling around the edges of my mind where I ask myself if

I

might want to watch the same movie every day for a year and --
(surprise! -- original idea!) --
...Write blog posts about it - !

And sometimes I try to imagine, What movie would I choose, in the whole world, if I was going to watch it every day for a year?
And various movies float into my consciousness, perhaps none with the steady regularity of --
Casablanca.

-------------------
I have often speculated on why you don't return to America.  Did you abscond with the church funds?  Did you run off with a senator's wife?  I like to think you killed a man.  It's the romantic in me.

It was a combination of all three.

And what in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?

My health.  I came to Casablanca for the waters.

Waters?  What waters?  We're in the desert.

I was misinformed.

-------------------------------
-------------------------------
No one can state, "I was misinformed" in as much of a conversation-closing style as Humphrey Bogart.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NARRATOR (V.O.)


With the coming of the Second World
War, many eyes in imprisoned Europe
turned hopefully, or desperately,
toward the freedom of the Americas.
Lisbon became the great embarkation
point. But not everybody could get
to Lisbon directly, and so, a

tortuous, roundabout refugee trail
sprang up. Paris to Marseilles, across
the Mediterranean to Oran, then by
train, or auto, or foot, across the
rim of Africa to Casablanca in French
Morocco.

Here, the fortunate ones,
through money, or influence, or luck,
might obtain exit visas and scurry
to Lisbon, and from Lisbon to the
New World. But the others wait in
Casablanca -- and wait -- and wait --
and wait.

[The narrator's voice fades away...]

---------------------------- Instead of "wait -- and wait -- and wait," it would be "watch -- and watch -- and watch"...365 days of "Casablanca"-and-Comment.  I could do that.
But I probably don't need to.

-30-


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