Ricardo Montalban

Ricardo Montalban (left) and Pricilla Presley
Photo courtesy of http://www.flixster.com/photos/ricardo-montalban-the-naked-gun-from-the-files-of-police-squad-ricardo-montalban-as-vincent-ludwig-in-the-naked-gun-from-the-files-of-police-squad-11338651

Happy birthday to Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino, or more commonly known as Ricardo Montalban. He would have turned 91 today.  He sadly passed away in early 2009 from congestive heart failure at the age of 88.  Montalban is probably best known for the TV show Fantasy Island.  I chose to watch his movie The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! from 1988.  One thing to note about this movie is that it is a spoof movie on the TV show Police Squad.


On with the movie.  I personally love this movie, mainly because I like spoof movies and I love Leslie Nielsen.  This movie is funny in that corny, 80's comedy kind of way.  The humor in this movie would not have been possible without the amazing cast, which includes Leslie Nielsen, Pricilla Presley, and O.J. Simpson.  Montalban plays the bad guy in this movie, but in a funnyish kind of way.  I haven't seen any of his other movies or shows so I only know him as this role, and he does a good job at it.  And with that, I raise my lighter to light the candles on Ricardo's cake.


I give this movie 3 cakes out of 5.  

Leonardo DiCaprio

Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator
Photo courtesy of http://wabootboy.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/classics-the-aviator/

Happy birthday to Leonardo DiCaprio, who turns 37 today.  In honor of his new movie J. Edger coming to theaters, I chose to watch The Aviator from 2004.  The Aviator is the real life story of director and aviator Howard Hughes.  It follows Hughes's career from 1930 with his film Hell's Angels to 1947 with "the way of the future."
On with the movie.  Leo did an amazing job doing a slow decent into severe OCD.  Throughout the movie, Hughes's OCD gets progressively worse, and Leo does a great job at capturing this.  I am also going to credit some of this awesomeness to the director, Martin Scorsese, but a majority goes to Leo.  I always enjoy a good biopic, but this one was a little hard to watch.  The length of this movie was far to long.  It was 2 hours and 50 minutes.  It did NOT need to be this long.  I believe that this could have been a fine movie at 2 hours or even 1 hour and 30 minutes.  I was also extremely disappointed with the lack of a biographical wrap up at the end of the movie.  You wouldn't think this is a big deal, but the ending of the movie really left a lot of wondering.  I do enjoy knowing what happened to people after the movie has concluded.  Leo did an overall good job on portraying Hughes.  And with that, I raise my lighter to light the candles on Leo's cake.

I give this movie 3 cakes out of 5.  I'm not sure how I feel about this movie.  I think that if I watched it a couple more times that I would be able to give a more definitive rating.