The horse's head in the bed. Marlon Brando's Oscar-winning performance as Don Vito Corleone. The line "shooting your father was business, not personal, Sonny." Everyone knows The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 gangster epic. Or at least they claim they do. People nod their heads sagely when the film is discussed at dinner parties. "Oh yes," they say, "one of the best films of all time." The thing is, a lot of them are not being strictly honest. According to new research for the movie-rental website lovefilm.com, more people pretend they've seen The Godfather - when they've done nothing of the sort - than any other film.
Intriguingly, this isn't the first time The Godfather has topped such a poll. In 2009, a similar investigation by the mobile phone operator Orange came to exactly the same conclusion: people were so mortified at the prospect of confessing in public that they hadn't seen The Godfather they just said they had, no doubt keeping their fingers crossed that there would be no further conversation about the intricacies of the plot. Furthermore, the lovefilm.com research confirms the almost tyrannical hold that classic films - and not just The Godfather - have over our culture. An astonishing four out of five people in the survey admitted to lying about films they hadn't actually seen, in the vain hope that their seemingly broad range of tastes would impress friends and acquaintances.
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The other films on last week's list were Casablanca, Taxi Driver, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Reservoir Dogs. Only the most dedicated kind of film fan has seen all of those movies in their entirety - personally, I was slightly bored by Kubrick's portentous sci-fi and genuinely can't remember what happened in most of The Godfather. Reservoir Dogs passes the test… but probably because it's so mercifully short. The plaudits lavished on such films may well be deserved, but they can also be intimidating. Admitting that, say, White Christmas is just a little tedious is akin to saying you don't particularly like The Beatles. But, with so many good new movies every week, reverentially trawling through the annals of film history, obsessively ticking off the 1,001 Films You Must See Before You Die seems just a little pointless. Sure, there's a case to be made that a course in classic filmmaking fosters a greater appreciation of contemporary work. But Toy Story is perfectly enjoyable without having first seen the similarly magical Wizard of Oz or Mary Poppins.
In a world where every plot development is at our fingertips on the internet, boasting about our impressive cultural consumption is easier than ever. But why is it so difficult to admit to a book club that we haven't read Tolstoy, Dickens or Austen? Clearly, we find such literary admissions of "failure" as problematic as owning up to which must-see films we haven't seen because in 2009 there were two similarly titled books, both best-sellers, which attempted to help out the less well-read in difficult social situations.
Who's Afraid of Jane Austen: How to Really Talk About Books You Haven't Read, by Henry Hitchings, was a slightly predictable, trivia-heavy guide to the sort of books that might get talked about at rarefied parties. Hitchings' trick was to show how easy it is to pass such classics off as well-thumbed tomes in your personal library. But Pierre Bayard's How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read was fascinating - not so much a lesson in how to fake knowledge as a rather amusing and intelligent treatise on what it means not to read a book. His argument, essentially, was that since it's impossible to read everything, we shouldn't feel ashamed to admit that a book such as James Joyce's Ulysses has passed us by. And if we do fear such shame, Bayard argues that we shouldn't feel guilty about gleaning only the roughest facts about a book's plot. Most people skim read anyway.
Which doesn't quite answer exactly why some of us lie about what we have or haven't seen or read. Perhaps it's embarrassment, insecurity, or a simple desire to fit in. So a word of advice. Next time The Godfather comes up in polite conversation, if you haven't seen it simply guide the conversation towards a cool new gangster movie. Jean-Francois Richet's Mesrine: Killer Instinct, for example. There'll be plenty of impressed looks and appreciative nods. It's a good idea to sit down and watch it first, though.
Election pledges on migration
CDU: "Now is the time to control the German borders and enforce strict border rejections"
SPD: "Border closures and blanket rejections at internal borders contradict the spirit of a common area of freedom"
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
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T20 World Cup Qualifier fixtures
Tuesday, October 29
Qualifier one, 2.10pm – Netherlands v UAE
Qualifier two, 7.30pm – Namibia v Oman
Wednesday, October 30
Qualifier three, 2.10pm – Scotland v loser of qualifier one
Qualifier four, 7.30pm – Hong Kong v loser of qualifier two
Thursday, October 31
Fifth-place playoff, 2.10pm – winner of qualifier three v winner of qualifier four
Friday, November 1
Semi-final one, 2.10pm – Ireland v winner of qualifier one
Semi-final two, 7.30pm – PNG v winner of qualifier two
Saturday, November 2
Third-place playoff, 2.10pm
Final, 7.30pm
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More coverage from the Future Forum
Cinco in numbers
Dh3.7 million
The estimated cost of Victoria Swarovski’s gem-encrusted Michael Cinco wedding gown
46
The number, in kilograms, that Swarovski’s wedding gown weighed.
1,000
The hours it took to create Cinco’s vermillion petal gown, as seen in his atelier [note, is the one he’s playing with in the corner of a room]
50
How many looks Cinco has created in a new collection to celebrate Ballet Philippines’ 50th birthday
3,000
The hours needed to create the butterfly gown worn by Aishwarya Rai to the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
1.1 million
The number of followers that Michael Cinco’s Instagram account has garnered.
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
WHAT IS A BLACK HOLE?
1. Black holes are objects whose gravity is so strong not even light can escape their pull
2. They can be created when massive stars collapse under their own weight
3. Large black holes can also be formed when smaller ones collide and merge
4. The biggest black holes lurk at the centre of many galaxies, including our own
5. Astronomers believe that when the universe was very young, black holes affected how galaxies formed
Maestro
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MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League semi-final, second leg result:
Ajax 2-3 Tottenham
Tottenham advance on away goals rule after tie ends 3-3 on aggregate
Final: June 1, Madrid
Normcore explained
Something of a fashion anomaly, normcore is essentially a celebration of the unremarkable. The term was first popularised by an article in New York magazine in 2014 and has been dubbed “ugly”, “bland’ and "anti-style" by fashion writers. It’s hallmarks are comfort, a lack of pretentiousness and neutrality – it is a trend for those who would rather not stand out from the crowd. For the most part, the style is unisex, favouring loose silhouettes, thrift-shop threads, baseball caps and boyish trainers. It is important to note that normcore is not synonymous with cheapness or low quality; there are high-fashion brands, including Parisian label Vetements, that specialise in this style. Embraced by fashion-forward street-style stars around the globe, it’s uptake in the UAE has been relatively slow.
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Our legal columnist
Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
Pari
Produced by: Clean Slate Films (Anushka Sharma, Karnesh Sharma) & KriArj Entertainment
Director: Prosit Roy
Starring: Anushka Sharma, Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Ritabhari Chakraborty, Rajat Kapoor, Mansi Multani
Three stars