Hit Me With Your Best Shot: 'Gone With the Wind' Part 2

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: 'Gone With the Wind' Part 2

This is our fourth entry in The Film Experience's long-running series Hit Me With Your Best Shot, in which the film blog masses choose their favorite shot from selected movies. 

With Part 1 of Gone With the Wind under our belts, it's time to talk Best Shot from the two-hour long second act.

Part 2 finds the Old South in ruins and the Yankees in control, but with Scarlett's help (and delusions), the action turns from a destitute plantation to an entrepreneurial enterprise to an all-out fantasy world (a la The Queen of Versailles) fortified with Rhett Butler's millions.

But mixed among these dramatic developments is some subtler imagery.

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: 'Gone With the Wind' Part 1

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: 'Gone With the Wind' Part 1

This is our third entry in The Film Experience's long-running series Hit Me With Your Best Shot, in which the film blog masses choose their favorite shot from selected movies. 

From the first frames of the 1939 epic Gone With the Wind, it's clear the action takes place in an alternate reality. It's a place where slaves are euphemistically billed as "House Servants," and delusions of grandeur run wild, with the Old South fetishized as a time when "the age of Chivalry took its last bow [...] the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave."

Let's call a spade a spade: Gone With the Wind is racist to its core.

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AFI Challenge: 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'

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So... we may have lied. The first movie we watched as part of our AFI Challenge was not Gone With the Wind. (That was pushed back to this weekend due to Netflix difficulties.) Instead, we watched The Day the Earth Stood Still, director Robert Wise's 1951 sci-fi classic.

Klaatu struggling to shine a light on the world

Back in the day the film won a Golden Globe for Best Film Promoting International Understanding (apparently this award was a thing between 1945 and 1963). The Globe win should come as no surprise to those who've watched the film; from very early on it's clear this is a message movie, and that message is peace.

The film wastes no time getting to the action: a mysterious man from another planet lands in Washington, D.C. in order, we soon learn, to give earthlings an ultimatum. As it turns out, the interstellar community has been monitoring their radio transmissions, and it's clear they've become a threat not only to themselves but to the universe beyond. The only course of action? Nonviolence.

You can imagine the typical American's reaction to this concept. It's a nonstarter, to say the least.

Despite its straightforward premise and beat-the-audience-over-the-head political message, The Day the Earth Stood Still succeeds as pure entertainment. Striking cinematography, a vibrant score, and solid performances from the leads, including child actor Billy Gray, conspire to make this one hell of a watchable movie.

CineMunch grade: B/B+

BONUS! Are you still using Firefox? (You should be. None of this Chrome business.) When you're done watching the movie, open a new Firefox tab and type "about:robots" in the address bar. Then look at the title of the tab. Cool, right?

Where to See AFI Classic Movies on the Big Screen: The Ultimate List

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Where to See AFI Classic Movies on the Big Screen: The Ultimate List

Let's say you committed yourself, in a moment of insanity, to watching all 400 nominated movies from the most recent AFI 100 Years... 100 Movies list. If you were foolish enough to do this, you'd want to do it right. (Read: watching grainy videos downloaded from Sockshare on your cell phone during your subway commute doesn't cut it.)

These are classics. They're meant to be experienced on the big screen, where they can be not only watched but also savored, not only seen but felt.

Well, if you happen to live in NYC-area and are as crazy as us, you're going to want to read on.

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The AFI Challenge: The List Is Up!

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As promised, we've compiled a master list of the 400 films we need to watch to complete The AFI Challenge. It's a living list that we'll update frequently, and as we go we'll be adding links to reviews and other relevant posts.

Here's to watching ever more motion pictures! Have you attempted anything similar to this? Let us know how it went in the comments below!

Conquering the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies Nominations List

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We're embarking on a new project here at CineMunch. With the realization that the third(!?) installment of the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films list is coming in less than three years*--and with it a few personal milestones of our own (the end of our 20sWHAT!?)--we've decided to buck up and take on the classic-movie challenge of all classic-movie challenges: watching all 400 nominated films from the AFI's 10th Anniversary list.

Call it Beach Body Insanity for the sedentary set.

We have our work cut out for us: 196 films as-yet-unseen by both of us, plus 64 more that only Nathan hasn't seen and 2 more (ha!) for Matt. All with a deadline of January 1, 2017. But we will persevere, because what is this life but an excuse to set arbitrary challenges for ourselves?

Of course this isn't entirely arbitrary. Yes, critics have perhaps rightly criticized the AFI's list for being too much of a popularity contest, and yes it's disappointing that every foreign film in the history of ever is by definition excluded. But we also know we have a long way to go in educating ourselves on movies from before our time (we tend to focus on what's here and what's now), and popularity contests have always helped reveal what makes a culture tick.

In any case, we encourage you to play along (stay tuned for the master list of films!), and we appreciate your words of encouragement, especially for the much-feared collection of Westerns (ugh) that await us.

First up is Gone With the Wind, a catch-up for Nathan, which we'll be watching for The Film Experience's brilliant series Hit Me With Your Best Shot. (We previously participated in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and L.A. Confidential.)

So there you have it. The declaration is public. The deadline set. Bring on the films.

*At least, everyone in the industry seems to agree that A) there will be another list and B) it will come out, like clockwork, in 2017. Let's hope that's the case.