rated x

Title caught your interest, didn't it?

In an attempt to be more cultural, I've added 'watch AFI's Top 100 movies of all time' to my bucket list.

Sunday night, Blue Eyes & I sat down with the movie list and marked off the ones we've seen so far. I've only seen 23. That's a lot of movie watching, which is going to be a struggle given my attention span lasts about 15 minutes before I need to do something else while watching the TV. I usually break out the iPhone and play Words or Sudoku. The newspaper crossword is also a common distraction. (Yes I get the newspaper. In paper form. I love it.) Now that fall is on the horizon, maybe I'll start up knitting again. Maybe, maybe not.

Back to the top 100. We scrolled through NetFlix until we found the Classics movie section, and picked the first movie that met our criteria: on the top 100 list & not dreadfully long. We ended up with Midnight Cowboy, which I thought was going to be a wholesome Western. Sooooo wrong.

Did you know that Midnight Cowboy is the first and only X-rated movie to win an Oscar for Best Picture? Granted, I had no idea it was rated X until today. It easily could have passed for a semi-raunchy R rating by today's standards. But back in 1969, referencing gigolos & drugs, brief nudity and a smidge of swear words & gore got your movie an X*.

I'm no movie buff. I go to the movies less than five times a year. I watch maybe three a year at home, which is obviously going to need to change if I'm going to cross this item off the bucket list. The last movie I saw in the theater was Magic Mike with my mom and 83 year-old grandma. So I'm not going to write a review on Midnight Cowboy. You can read those here. All I have to say is Dustin Hoffman - wow. He's SO good. And I kept thinking how much Angelina Jolie looks like her dad.

Jon Voight

It was a good movie. It's gritty, emotional, and has a pretty legit theme song. Movie #24 - check!

*FYI: The movie was changed to rated R in 1970 but I'm choosing to ignore this fact because it won three Oscars while it was still rated X. And it makes for a cooler story.