They don’t make them like this anymore.

It is an oft-repeated and tired saying that glorifies the past and belittles the achievements of the present yet, in the case of David Lean’s sweeping, Lawrence of Arabia, it is entirely true. Whilst epic films are still produced today few can match the scale, artistry and majesty of this larger than life tale of a narcissistic British army officer and his conflicted loyalties during the Arab Revolt. At just shy of four hours, Lean takes the audience on a grand journey that manages to juggle the personal travails and wider issues of an entire nation.

What makes this stand above nearly every other epic is that the film perfectly balances these small…

Today was the day...

...that I finally conquered Lawrence of Arabia.

I'm only 51 years late to the party. How did I manage to miss out on this golden gem of cinema? Well, I honestly couldn't tell you. I've been swept away by other great films throughout the years, I have always been short of time and my backlog grows and grows with every day. It's sad that a monumental film like this got pushed so far back but my mindset was always "I'll watch that soon. I HAVE to watch that soon."

Repeat that for a few years and you get why I'm only just now seeing Lawrence of Arabia here in May of 2013. But I'm glad I…

One of the grandest epics ever produced on film celluloid, Lawrence of Arabia isn't just a film but a journey of a man's life & his love for a nation, and even with its nearly 4 hours of runtime, it manages to keep the viewers completely glued to their seats, thanks to the sheer magic of David Lean's stellar direction, breathtaking cinematography, stunning production design, spectacular score & Peter O'Toole's dominating performance.

Set during the First World War, Lawrence of Arabia follows the life of a controversial British figure named T. E. Lawrence and covers his experiences in the Arab Peninsula where he was sent to investigate the progress of Arab revolt against the Turks but later leads them in winning their…

Something about my parents' massive television renders everything so crystal clear. I assume it's one of those high def formats that I can't keep rack of, 1080p Blu-ray with 10K megapixels and a 3D surround sound and dreamatorium, that sort of thing. I've no idea. The television is bigger than your apartment. It's disgusting, but holy fuck, it makes bad movies look good and good movies look great and movies like this look like... your preferred cliche of what looks good. The depth you get, the visual depth, the clear, clean colors, the details you pick out, it's too real, so vivid that it breaks down your suspension of disbelief, because it shows the edges of the sets when there…

I'd love to say it was that I've steadily been ticking off all the movies on a list of classics I've never seen, but it was the Young Indiana Jones TV/movies that prompted me into seeing this and I'm glad I did because it's very good.

After watching this it's easy to see how Spielberg was inspired by it. Funnily there's echoes of this in the first and third Indiana Jones Movies, and you can see how the music and the wide shots obviously influenced silly Sci-Fi movies like Stargate. It's an absolutely gorgeous film from start to finish with some really incredible shots of hundreds of horses charging across the desert.There's just so much going on in some of…

A man writes his own legend, comes to believe in it as gospel, only to become a heretic against his auto-deification. "The writing is still yours," the Sharif reassures. He doesn't realize Lawrence wishes it could be unwritten.

A rapturous epic, sweeping vistas and sweeping feelings, with plenty of room for complication. There's no didacticism about colonialism being bad or some such, instead the evil and callous chaos it spreads while the rich and royal shake hands in board rooms to determine where to mete out carnage are presented as is. For humanity nothing is more unifying than the impulse for war, the terrifying intoxication of bloodshed and plunder and power. Lawrence, an inscrutable and alien figure, evincing some inkling…