[Blarg]

Jeez, the whole shooting of the Turk and the police captain scene in the restaurant is nail-biting and very cool.

The scene where Brando handles the mortician who wants him to kill his daughter's rapist is full of tension and you can really feel the guy's pain and anger. The Don's processing of it and coming to a good solution was pretty cool and showed a lot of the competence with people and situations that let you know how this guy got this high in his world.

And the scene in the hospital where Michael has to protect his father was brilliant to me. I was on pins and needles there. And his confrontation with the crooked cop outside the hospital definitely got me involved -- and pissed off! This was a really great passage, I thought.

Granted, it was stolen from "M", but the ironic intercutting of the baptism with the murders was telling and fun. The horse's head in the bed thing was brilliant and people were talking about it all the time for the next 20 years.

The shooting of Sony, and the old man's regret, was fantastic. His beating of Carlo was great -- it was even parodied on the Simpsons, it was such an icon of ass kicking.

The scene were Luca Brasi gets his hand stabbed to the bar was outrageous!

When consigliere Tom Hagen gets picked up off the street by the Turk after Brando gets shot and never really knows if he's going to be killed or not is very gripping.

The lonely sadness of the execution by the side of the road while Pauli casually takes a piss in the cornfield and stares off into the distance was moving to me. What a way to go.

Sheesh -- so many good scenes! And the family feel of it, the betrayal by Tessio, the beauty of Michael's virgin bride and her horrible death, the creepiness of Barzini...just so good, all of it.

The only thing that bogged down for me was when Keaton was on screen. Her well-meaning but fairly flat well bred pallor was a sort of pacing between the higher voltage goings-on among all these more red-blooded crazies, so it served a dramatic purpose, but she didn't have a lot of screen dynamism. It was easy to see her as more and more irrelevant and unappealing, and the part I want to get past so I can get to the good stuff.

Really, Coppola (with the help of Mario Puzo) creates a very rich world that feels very lived in and credible and interesting. I was definitely happily along for the ride the very first time I saw it, and every time since.