sally's experiment

my friend sally sent me this interesting and challenging experiment on facebook.

rules are actually very simple: one needs to come up with a list of fifteen movies that they have seen that always stuck with them. one has to list the first fifteen movies that come to mind. simple, eh? not until you actually do it!

here's the list that i came up with given the time constraint...

1. In The Mood for Love
2. Love Story
3. Titanic
4. Out of Africa
5. Slumdog Millionaire
6. Mamma Mia
7. L.A. Confidential
8. Remains of The Day
9. Farinelli
10. Raise The Red Lantern
11. Romeo Loves Juliet (Rene Requiestas' version)
12. Gone With The Wind
13. Schindler's List
14. It's a Wonderful Life
15. I Confess

it was actually very funny. after reading sally's rules, i immediately thought of "17 again" and "miss march", which we rented last night. hahaha! i fought off the urge to put them in my list and came up with the "final" 15 just before the 15th minute.

after i posted the list... a slew of favorite movies whose titles i initially forgot started to flood my thoughts! ("casablanca", "it happened one night", "y tu mama tambien", "the fifth element", etc)

christine reminded me of "the sound of music". mr. d, listed "the sixth sense". my friend malou said she liked the italian film "malena" and i immediately recalled my other favorites "cinema paradiso" and "como agua para chocolate".

the latter actually brought back memories of a funny incident that occured more than 15 years ago - i think i was in sophomore year in college then.

my friend anselmo and i were in a hurry to catch the invitational screening (i got the tickets from my uncle) of "como agua para chocolate" at the shangri-la cinema that time.

having read the book upon which the movie was based, i was naturally excited to watch the film adaptation. but, typical of me, we were late going to the venue. 5 minutes before the screening time, anselmo and i were still a block away from the theater. we decided to get off the jeepney we were riding on and ran along the remaining stretch of shaw boulevard.

when we got to the corner where we need to cross a street to get to the venue, we found ourselves stuck with the "red" pedestrian crossing light. this was manila. people don't pretty much obey traffic rules. we saw other people illegally crossing so we decided to go along. that's when a couple of cops saw us and ran after us.

we got cited for jaywalking. the cops took us to their makeshift station on a little corner and tried to extort money from us. i was a student on a tight allowance. and so was anselmo. we didn't have anything more than 20 bucks between us!

we pleaded with them. we told them we needed to go because we had to catch this rare movie screening. they wouldn't listen to us. i don't remember now if they took whatever cash we got but what i still remember was how they made us sing the national anthem in the middle of shaw boulevard. it was so embarrasing!

they finally let us go after we were done with our impromptu outdoor performace. we ran to the mall, leaped through the escalators going up the 5th floor where the cinema was located. luckily, the screening has not started yet. this was the philippines. nothing really starts on time. there were still cocktails being served and we helped ourselves to some leftover sandwiches (i wanted to write hors d'veours - but i am not sure about the spelling.)

we made it to the screening all right, and the movie was all worth it.

aaah, the lengths i had to go through just so i can watch movies!

now, tell me, what's your 15?

postscript... i made an unforgivable offense. i completely forgot to include in my fifteen my "all-time" favorite "10 things i hate about you" - i don't know what it means.... so bad of me :(