Guilty Pleasures and Cool Hand Luke

Posted by Michelle Strozykowski Oct 20, 2008

I was very saddened to hear of the death of Paul Newman. I've posted a tribute to this wonderful man, who starred in 3 of my all time favourite films – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting and Cool Hand Luke. Actually it's 4, if you count the guilty pleasure that is The Towering Inferno too. I have many of these guilty pleasures - don't we all? The sort of films and TV shows we all love, but quickly resign to the back of our minds if somebody asks what's your favourite?

In the good natured spirit shown by Devin Harris when he got hustled by street baller Stuart Tanner, I will now share a few of my often overlooked favourites:

I know we're all supposed to sneer at the mass marketing of our emotions shown by the reality shows, but I just love Strictly Come Dancing. I know I'm not alone on this one, as millions tune in every week, but probably not so many list Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion as an all time favourite film. This film has the best bad dancing I've ever seen. Strictly fans should check it out. Priceless.

There are so many classic foreign films to choose from, and I have hundreds of bona fide, critically approved favourites, but for some reason I still secretly prefer The Magnificent Seven to Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. As foreign film feature writer, I probably shouldn't really admit that, but there you go.

Even worse than that, certainly in the eyes of serious film critics, I completely adore Mike Myer's version of the Dr Seuss classic Cat in the Hat. This film tanked at the box office and got absolutely slated by critics, but I think it is the funniest children's film I've ever seen. Oh Yeah!!!!

Blimey, and that's only the tip of the iceberg! Now I'm going to slowly back out of the room, and we'll all pretend that didn't just happen, OK?