With all the hoo-ha about LEAVING LAS VEGAS, everybody is suddenly interested in drinking movies. Well, maybe not everybody, but I am, at least, and I didn't even see the movie! So I thought I would share with you, the illustrious cyber-readers of Reviews, my thoughts about movies that make you want to go out and have a few drinks (but remember! Don't drink and drive!).

One of my favorite drinking movies is a 1949 British film named WHISKEY GALORE (unfortunately, it was renamed TIGHT LITTLE ISLAND for its American release, as the old Production Code forbade the use of alcoholic beverages in the titles of movies). Directed by Alexander Mackendrick, WHISKEY GALORE is about the covert attempts of a bunch of Scottish villagers to recover a forbidden cargo of whisky from a sunken ship. This movie will make you thirsty from laughter alone, and at 82 minutes, it will give you time for about 3-4 beers or shots of Scotch, or maybe more depending on your own rate of alcoholic consumption.

But most of the really cool drinking movies come from Hollywood. Almost anything with Humphrey Bogart will feature healthy boozing. However, some Hollywood movies from the "Golden Age" will leave you wondering why everybody bothers ordering all these champagne cocktails and cognacs, only to leave them sitting on the bar or table while the potential drinker goes off to make the Nazis look foolish or to make some time with a hot babe. Of course, there's nothing wrong with fighting Nazis and kissing hot babes, but can't it wait until the drink is finished? That's the way I do it, anyway.

CASABLANCA is a good example of this, as closing time at Rick's Cafe Americain finds full glasses scattered all over the place. It does have a classic drinking scene, however, when Rick (Humphrey Bogart, of course) gets totally trashed over Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman; a babe worth getting drunk over any day), with whom he'll always have Paris. Remember? "Play it, Sam. Play "As Time Goes By". You played it for her; you can play it for me." You must remember this...

For movies (good movies, that is, not that ARTHUR crap) in which mass quantities of booze are consumed, look no further than the alcoholic classics THE LOST WEEKEND and THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES. WEEKEND, an Oscar winner in 1945, features Ray Milland as a boozed-up, down-on-his-luck alcoholic writer trying, mostly successfully, to resist attempts by those who love and care about him to help him dry out and recover some small fragment of his self respect. You'll pick up some useful tips on where to hide your booze so nobody else can find it (hang it out of the window on a string!), and how to squeeze drinks out of bartenders when you're broke (but you have to have a typewriter).

THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES not only contains a really cool title song (guess what the name of it is!!), but actually has a watchable performance by Jack Lemmon (okay, to be fair, he was really good in SOME LIKE IT HOT, too, especially when he claims as his own the cute little silver flask of whisky that falls from the garter belt of Sugar Kane, played by a super-sultry Marilyn Monroe). Lemmon plays an alcoholic public relations man who uses booze to loosen up potential clients (here in the Department of English Language and Literature at NUS we use poetry instead; it's a lot cheaper, but doesn't work quite as well). He meets a hot babe (played by Lee Remick), who, unfortunately, doesn't drink, so he gets her drunk on brandy alexanders (a girlie drink that doesn't even really taste like booze) and has his way with her. She instantly becomes an alcoholic, then he recovers and cops a holier-than-thou attitude. Along the way there are some really great drinking scenes, but the real point of the movie is the moral lesson it should impart to women everwhere: If a man offers you a brandy alexander, don't take it. He wants to get you drunk without you knowing it so he can take advantage of you. Instead, order a few double Jack Daniels (no ice). This way you will know that you are getting drunk, and he won't fool you.

Well, anyway, these are some of my favorite drinking movies. If I left out your favorite, e-mail me and I will check it out. In the meantime, remember what I said: Don't drink and drive! Take the bus or the MRT, and wake me up when it gets to Clementi.



Dr Timothy White is a weird guy we see on campus sometimes talking to himself.