NY Times video: Critics' Picks with A.O. Scott: Lawrence of Arabia (1962 Best Film) by David Lean.
Aqaba!!!
I have seen this film, one of the ten-best films ever made, conservatively, about sixty times, including a couple of times at an old-fashioned giant screen at the Uptown Theater in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C., one of the great remaining theaters in the country, and located not far from The National Zoo.
Going to see a new film on that big screen and then walking around the zoo was a frequent pastime of yours truly and my pals on weekends.
To my mind, you simply can not consider yourself a well-educated and sophisticated person without having seen this film a few times and come to understand the brilliance of Lean's depiction of the simple and complex stories running parallel to one another throughout it, along with the myriad complexities and conundrums that puzzle us to this day.
There's always something new you see in it with every showing, and a lesson or allusion you can draw in comparing some aspect of it to something else.
I consider myself a bit of a David Lean buff since I have seen just about every film he's been associated with. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000180/
Original Trailer - Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Path to Aqaba
Maurice Jarre's genius with this score never fails to impress, no matter how many hundreds of times you've heard it. (I've seen it so many times that I know which scene goes with which part of the score.) Three years later, Jarre wins the Oscar again for Dr. Zhivago, the second of his three Oscars.
Maurice Jarre conducts the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1992 performing his Oscar-winning score.
The next showing of Lawrence of Arabia on Turner Classic Movies, DirecTV Channel 256, is Tuesday July 12th at 8 p.m. Eastern.
