50 years (!)

I can sort of get my mind around Bowie being 62, and the idea that picante-flavored Cornquistos and Velamints have gone the way of le dodo.

But how can North By Northwest be fifty years old this year?

I mean, that's a half a century.

I remember the first time I saw this, at the local civic summer movie program's Sunday matinee, and then I went to work at my summer job, picking up golf balls at a driving range. We would partake of "jazz cigarettes" and drive in circles around the grounds, listening to cassettes on Walkmans and waiting for the clang! of the occasional ball strike on the tractor cage, shaking us out of our summertime reveries...what was I saying? Oh! I think I already talked about this early on, but this is such a totally badass flick it's still sort of amazing. James Mason is the most suave mfer in human history. Plus it's at such a precipitous point in history: the language stops thisclose to saucy, yet you can still send a telegram readily from the Oak Bar. May be the start of the decline.