So, the weblog speech I mentioned recently will be on the last Friday of the month for a group of students at a local technical school. My friend works there as a multi media teacher and sets up these hyper media lectures and my job will be to give an introductory lecture in English (apparently they have a lot of exchange/foreign students there) about what weblogs are and what they're good for. I've done it once before, so it should be fun. And this time I'm preparing a powerpoint presentation, so I don't have to rely on a dodgy internet connection like the last time.

I also mentioned recently wanting to go to London this Spring and it looks like it might happen. I talked about it with my brother and over drinks last week Kristian and his girlfriend took over the project and have found plane tickets and a cheap hotel, so unless something goes terribly wrong I think the four of us will be going to London on the 1st of March. We're going for four days where I think we'll just hang out and do a spot of shopping and maybe I'll visit the people at the company I've done some freelance work for. But the main reason we're going is to see Fountains of Wayne at Astoria, which will be huge. I've been a huge fan of FoW since I picked up their first record and I've never seen them live, so I'm really looking forward to this show.

I'm running out of shelf space for my CDs, so I had to take about 50 CDs and stick them in a box to make room for the ones I've bought lately. I've sold a lot of crap CDs over the years, but there are still a few in my collection. Some of them I've kept for sentimental reason (like if I interviewed the band) and some because I knew nobody would buy them off me. But now they're under my bed in a box, which means the one CD that people always pull out at parties and make fun off (it's always the same one and I'm not saying which one it is) is gone. And going through my CDs I realized I have way too many CDs with American college rock one-hit-wonder bands and also probably more Ben Lee CDs than I need.

My brother listed how many of the top 100 movies at IMDb he'd seen, so I figured I'd do the same. However, I've placed them in the More section at the bottom of this post, so they don't take up as much space.
I've seen 66 of the movies on the list and I might have seen Dr. Strangelove, The Great Escape, Ran, The General, City Lights, and Notorious, but I'm not sure. Sunset Blvd. has been at the top of my Recommendations list at the DVD rental place I use, so I'll have to check it out at some point (and I've already seen Heat, so I have an idea as to what the movie is about). Going through the list I realized that the first time I watched any of the movies from before 1980 was probably more than fifteen years ago. Meaning that I was a lot of classics back then and I've not seen a lot since I moved out of my parents' place.

When I was a kid I used to watch a lot of old movies, so I watched movies like The Maltese Falcon and High Noon before I was even a teenager. I watched a lot of Marx Brothers, Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, Westerns, Screwball Comedies, and Woody Allen back then, so that's why I've seen so many of the movies on the list.
If I have to make a few objections to the list I think it's bizarre that Toy Story 2 is on there instead of Toy Story, but having not seen the sequel I won't complain about it. However, there are a lot of movies I'd add to a Top 100 before LoTR, The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, and Kill Bill.

It's Valentine's Day today, so I was wondering if there are any good songs about Valentine's Day. There's a Willie Nelson song called Valentine, which is really sweet and there's an Old 97's song called Valentine, which is a lot more bitter. But those are the only ones I know. Doesn't matter really though as I bought Dylan's Blood on the Tracks recently, so I'll be listening to that tonight instead.

I've seen the movies in bold and I want to see the ones in cursive:

1. Godfather, The (1972)
2. Shawshank Redemption, The (1994)
3. Godfather: Part II, The (1974)
4. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The (2003)
5. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002)
6. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001)
7. Casablanca (1942)
8. Schindler's List (1993)
9. Shichinin no samurai (1954)
10. Star Wars (1977)
11. Citizen Kane (1941)
12. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
13. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
14. Rear Window (1954)
15. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
16. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
17. Memento (2000)
18. Usual Suspects, The (1995)
19. Pulp Fiction (1994)
20. North by Northwest (1959)
21. 12 Angry Men (1957)
22. Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, Le (2001)
23. Psycho (1960)
24. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
25. Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Il (1966)
26. Silence of the Lambs, The (1991)
27. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
28. Goodfellas (1990)
29. American Beauty (1999)
30. Sunset Blvd. (1950)
31. Vertigo (1958)
32. Matrix, The (1999)
33. Apocalypse Now (1979)
34. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
35. Pianist, The (2002)
36. C'era una volta il West (1968)
37. Third Man, The (1949)
38. Some Like It Hot (1959)
39. Taxi Driver (1976)
40. Paths of Glory (1957)
41. Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001)
42. Fight Club (1999)
43. Boot, Das (1981)
44. Double Indemnity (1944)
45. L.A. Confidential (1997)
46. Chinatown (1974)
47. Singin' in the Rain (1952)
48. Maltese Falcon, The (1941)
49. M (1931)
50. Requiem for a Dream (2000)
51. Bridge on the River Kwai, The (1957)
52. All About Eve (1950)
53. Cidade de Deus (2002)
54. Se7en (1995)
55. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
56. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
57. Raging Bull (1980)
58. Rashômon (1950)
59. Wizard of Oz, The (1939)
60. Sting, The (1973)
61. Alien (1979)
62. American History X (1998)
63. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
64. Léon (1994)
65. Vita è bella, La (1997)
66. Manchurian Candidate, The (1962)
67. Touch of Evil (1958)
68. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
69. Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The (1948)
70. Great Escape, The (1963)
71. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
72. Clockwork Orange, A (1971)
73. Wo hu cang long (2000)
74. Modern Times (1936)
75. Amadeus (1984)
76. Ran (1985)
77. On the Waterfront (1954)
78. Annie Hall (1977)
79. Jaws (1975)
80. Braveheart (1995)
81. High Noon (1952)
82. Apartment, The (1960)
83. Fargo (1996)
84. Aliens (1986)
85. Sixth Sense, The (1999)
86. Shining, The (1980)
87. Strangers on a Train (1951)
88. Blade Runner (1982)
89. Metropolis (1927)
90. Duck Soup (1933)
91. Finding Nemo (2003)
92. Donnie Darko (2001)
93. General, The (1927)
94. Princess Bride, The (1987)
95. City Lights (1931)
96. Toy Story 2 (1999)
97. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
98. Great Dictator, The (1940)
99. Sjunde inseglet, Det (1957)
100. Notorious (1946)