She's All That

Last night I was watching the film The Aviator, a 2004 film directed by Martin Scorsese, about the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes (played by Leonardo DiCaprio). In the film Howard Hughes, who made his money from his family's tool manufacturing company, travels to Hollywood in the 1920s, where he indulges his principal interests of movies, aviation and women. His main interest becomes designing, building and piloting revolutionary test flights, and performing daring aviation feats, as well as his romances with some of the most glamorous women of the age, including Jean Harlow (Gwen Stefani), Katherine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale). However, before long his personal eccentricities, such as his obsession with cleanliness, and extreme perfectionism, start to take their toll. The film covers Hughes' life from the 1920s to the 1940s, before his notorious final years, which were reportedly spent sealed up in a Las Vegas penthouse. The film is always entertaining, using pretty much every cinematic technique under the sun, including altering the film stock to indicate the changing time periods. Despite being nearly three hours long, the film is very fast paced.

I was also watching She's All That, a 1999 film directed by Robert Iscove. It's a comedy set around a Los Angeles High School. When the senior class president and Most Popular Guy in School (Freddie Prinze Jr.) is dumped by his girlfriend during Spring Break, he makes a bet with his friends that he can turn any girl in the school into the Prom Queen. His selected target is an unpopular art student (Rachael Leigh Cook). It's a fun film that I have seen a few times before, mainly because I do have a bit of a crush on Rachael Leigh Cook.

I also was listening to the first episode of an eight part reading of the book The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson on the radio, which was good. I've not read the book, but I have seen the first of the films that was based on it, and that was really good.

It was a very quiet day at work today. There was hardly anyone in the office at all. Mostly it was as dull as ever. I stopped off on my way home and bought a bottle of Coke and a copy of Total Film magazine, which included a feature of "The Top Twenty Maddest Directors". The top ten were:
1. Werner Herzog
2. Stanley Kubrick
3. William Friedkin
4. Francis Ford Coppola
5. Tim Burton
6. Ken Russell
7. David Lynch
8. Roman Polanski
9. Terry Gilliam
10. David O. Russell