With nothing better to write, here's a list of favorite NYC movies...

I don't know how bloggers do it, writing day after day about their lives, politics, the visions in their heads...how do they know what's interesting and what will bore the public? I've noticed lately that when I press the "Next" button, I have been encountering many "blogs" that really are just advertisements that link you to all sorts of products: horse racing, pharmaceutical products, porn, automobiles, porn... then there are the strange Singaporean ones with oversized anime characters that seem to reflect the sad mood and torment that these young Asian kids seem to indulge in. Anyway, I think my blog's not too bad. A bit simple in design and without graphics, kind of bland. That's okay. I'm trying to work on just trying to write something interesting everyday. This exercise seems to help clear my mind and steer me away from television. Oh, T.V., my first babysitter...

Anyway, speaking of entertainment, if you ever want to watch movies that take place in NYC, try any of the following:

1. Annie Hall: By far the best love letter to the city. Whenever I cross the GWB, I always remember the scene where Woody Allen and his friends also come off the bridge and merge onto the southbound Henry Hudson Parkway. I also enjoy the scene where Diane Keaton drives her VW Beetle northbound under the FDR in and out of traffic as Woody Allen nearly keels over from fright.
2. Manhattan: The second best movie to take place in NYC especially with the opening montage of the skyline. My favorite scene is the one that ends the movie, where Woody Allen meets Muriel Hemmingway in the lobby of her apartment building and tries to convince her not to go to France while she tells him that he's got to learn to trust that she might return. I love the ambivalence of the ending. I think it creepy now, though, that in this movie, Hemmingway plays a 17 year old just graduating from college...
3. Spiderman 2: The best scene is when Spiderman fights Doc Ock on an elevated train line going south along Manhattan and ending just where the South Street Seaport is located. Of course, there is no such line in real life, but I thought it was really cool. I could see Brooklyn across the river as the train nearly topples over the broken tracks...
4. King Kong: The Empire State Building. A giant gorilla. The evil paparazzi freaking out a shackled beast. Biplanes over the city. What kind of imagination thought of such hilarity and mixing it up together? I want to drink what he's having!
5. The Taking of Pelham 123: A hijacked train, cops and robbers shooting it out in the subway tunnels, a race to deliver money above ground through the streets of NYC...ah, the good old days when crime was out of control and the city was just seedy enough.

That's it for now. I'll be sure to include some more great NYC films. It wasn't a real top ten list, of course, but five is good enough to start with.