i actually did not know that shawshank was the top rated film at the imdb, or that it has been there for a long time. i'm just learning that now.

i used to watch a lot of films with my father & stepmother, and the way this would work would be that we'd pick up two films at the blockbuster - one 'normal' film for the two of them to watch, and that i'd usually skip, and one 'weird' film that i usually ended up watching by myself, after my dad gave up halfway through.

i picked out shawshank 'cause i'd already read it, and the stephen king billing was enough to keep the stepmother interested enough to sit down and try and watch it (she would normally prefer the kind of films that do better at the box office). i'm not sure i have a second example of something that they both managed to get through.

in fact, it was probably my father's favourite film, post-1990, at least. certainly, i can't think of any other film he would reference regularly, excluding things like stallone flicks.

the fact that the three of us could agree on it at the time says a lot, as we really couldn't agree on much of anything. but, it was more than that: if you had polled us at that time, in 1994 or 1995, we would have all ranked this as one of the greatest films ever made.

i'm glad to see it get the recognition that it should have gotten in the first place.

'cause, sometimes things are obvious, even if the world can't see it.