I came upon (what I believe is) a good idea for future posts about movies. Yes, I know, more dreaded film posts. It's between those and general ranting that you actually get posts on somewhat interesting topics, I know, but I much prefer writing about movies.

Anyway, during yet another deathly-boring tutorial where it was dominated by the woman who thinks she knows everything (and, as a result, is extremely condescending in the way she talks to people), a man who likes to come off as smart to impress those of the opposite sex (though where knowledge of 1500s Europe ranks on the 'hotness' scale I have no idea) and the mature student who really does know the right answers, but feels so awkward and out of place that she hardly speaks up and have twenty-odd pairs of working eyes staring at her, I had an idea. I think it was between Vittoria and Native American's possession of their lands that I thought wouldn't it be cool if my favourite movies could fight to the death to see which was the greatest of all! Then my mind ran wild with ideas of Darth Vader heading the meeting in the secret war room during Dr. Strangelove, or Natalie 'Queen Amidala' Portman vs. Natalie 'Sam' Portman.

Of course, my thoughts digressed when it came to two Natalie Portmans, then further when Audrey Tautou got involved ...

Ok, getting back on topic, I thought that it would be pretty cool if I could invent some way to compare, contrast and show down the movies. So I scribbled down two types of, I don't know, maps?, diagrams at least, that I wrote down the similarities of the two films then, exercising the rigorous scientific methods of this idea, put a plus or two next to the film that did that similarity best. I then went and did the same to the differences, weighing up which difference made which film the better of the two. Then, come time to write it all up as a post, I'll outline how the two films are similar or different, then why which film got the plus. At the end, I'll add up the pluses, and if there were any minuses subtract those (such is the extent of my mathematics education), and then we will have an ultimate winner!

Ok, it probably sounds ridiculously confusing without seeing something on paper. However, because I like this idea, I'm going to go ahead and do it for a couple of pairings that I already thought of:

• Amelie vs. Garden State (I suspect this will be the best, as these are rather similar films, yet different enough so that they are still unique)
  
• The Star Wars Saga vs. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Quite the clash of the titans here)
  
• The Godfather vs. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (I was rather surprised at how many similarities I could pull out of these two)

Of course, those are only six of the (figurative) endless films I've seen. And those are all from my "Top 10 List" to the right there. I'm happy to do other films that I've seen as well, or seek out films that I should have seen (after all, I do call myself a well-viewed film connoisseur) .

Thomas.