Ever notice that every blockbuster movie has the same fundamental pieces? A hero, a journey, some conflicts to muck it all up, a reward, and the hero returning home and everybody applauding his or...

CasablancaIf we were trying to get from Paris to New York, all it would take would be about six hours, a passport, four granola bars and $500 or so for plane fare from CDG to JFK. In 1941, things w...

Casablanca has a narrator, but he's only around for about 2.2 seconds at the very beginning to set the stage for us. He doesn't even last as long as Ugarte.Since there's some historical background...

Drama; Romance; WarThere's no end of laugh-out-loud lines in Casablanca, mostly courtesy of Rick and Louis, but we'd be hard-pressed to refer to it as a comedy. When a movie has Nazis, betrayal, un...

With its original title of Everybody Comes to Rick's still attached to the script, Casablanca was a tough sell with the studios. It was rejected nearly forty times outright (doesn't it seem like ev...

Usually it's the guy and his gal walking off into a sunset, not the guy and his unethical counterpart strolling into a heavy mist. But if no one ever rewrote the script, we'd never have any new sto...

PGRated PG, Casablanca was meant to do many things—thrill, inspire, provoke emotions of heartfelt sympathy—but not to shock. There's no surprise shower scene halfway through. No creatures pop o...