Monthly Archives: April 2011
Movie Quote of the Day – The Land Before Time, 1988 (dir. Don Bluth)
Ducky: Petrie, do not feel sad. It is alright. Many things cannot fly. Rocks, trees, sticks, Spike…
A Cinematic Alphabet
This was going around all the blogs last week and I resisted doing it, mostly because I found it too difficult to pick just one title for some of the letters (for A alone I had at least ten viable choices!), but I finally got over my own neurosis and forced myself to choose. I think this list is a pretty accurate portrait of my taste in movies. A little bit classic, a little bit modern. A lot of romance, a little sci-fi.
Movie Quote of the Day – Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 1958 (dir. Richard Brooks)
Margaret “Maggie” Pollitt: You know what I feel like? I feel all the time like a cat on a hot tin roof.
Brick Pollitt: Then jump off the roof, Maggie. Jump off it. Cats jump off roofs and land uninjured. Do it. Jump.
Margaret “Maggie” Pollitt: Jump where? Into what?
Brick Pollitt: Take a lover.
[beat]
Margaret “Maggie” Pollitt: I don’t deserve that.
Movie Quote of the Day – Manhattan, 1979 (dir. Woody Allen)
Isaac: Talent is luck. The important thing in life is courage.
Oscar Vault Monday – Jerry Maguire, 1996 (dir. Cameron Crowe)
I’ve been reticent to discuss 1996 because my all-time favorite film came out that year: The English Patient. In fact, it won Best Picture. So in my eyes, Oscar got it very right that year. That being said, there is a film that came out in 1996 and was nominated for Best Picture that I absolutely adore. I saw Jerry Maguire in theaters when I was ten and loved it and as soon as it came out on VHS (remember, this was nearly 15 years ago) I bought it and watched it over and over and over. I have seen this film so many times I have every line of dialogue and every little nuance of every performance memorized. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one: Best Editing, Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor Cuba Gooding, Jr. (won), Best Actor Tom Cruise and Best Picture. The other films nominated that year were: Fargo, Secrets and Lies, Shine and winner The English Patient.
Movie Quote of the Day – O Brother, Where Art Thou?, 2000 (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)
Pomade Vendor: I can get the part from Bristol. It’ll take two weeks, here’s your pomade.
Ulysses Everett McGill: Two weeks? That don’t do me no good.
Pomade Vendor: Nearest Ford auto man’s Bristol.
Ulysses Everett McGill: Hold on, I don’t want this pomade. I want Dapper Dan.
Pomade Vendor: I don’t carry Dapper Dan, I carry Fop.
Ulysses Everett McGill: Well, I don’t want Fop, goddamn it! I’m a Dapper Dan man!
Pomade Vendor: Watch your language, young feller, this is a public market. Now if you want Dapper Dan, I can order it for you, have it in a couple of weeks.
Ulysses Everett McGill: Well, ain’t this place a geographical oddity. Two weeks from everywhere!
Movie Quote of the Day – The Wild One, 1953 (dir. Laslo Benedek)
Kathie Bleeker: Well, what d’ya do? I mean, do you just ride around or do you go on some sort of a picnic or something?
Johnny Strabler: A picnic? Man, you are too square. I’m. . .I. . .I’ll have to straighten you out. Now, listen, you don’t go any one special place. That’s cornball style. You just go.
Movie Quote of the Day – Star Trek, 2009 (dir. J.J. Abrams)
Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy: I may throw up on you.
James T. Kirk: I think these things are pretty safe.
Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy: Don’t pander to me, kid. One tiny crack in the hull and our blood boils in thirteen seconds. Solar flare might crop up, cook us in our seats. And wait till you’re sitting pretty with a case of Andorian shingles, see if you’re so relaxed when your eyeballs are bleeding. Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.
James T. Kirk: Well, I hate to break this to you, but Starfleet operates in space.
Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy: Yeah. Well, I got nowhere else to go, the ex-wife took the whole damn planet in the divorce. All I got left is my bones.
March Madness, Or How I Watched 144 Films in 31 Days
Somehow, despite subbing more in March than in January and February combined, I watched more new-to-me films than those same two months. I also read 2.5 books, but that’s another story. TCM’s star of the month was Jean Harlow, so I watched every film of her’s they showed (except the two I’d already seen). Via Netflix I saw some real essentials (I only have three films left from the combined AFI 100 Years…100 Films list; 123 films in all); you can see Oscar Vault Monday links to two of them below (I also included links to some films I reviewed for YAM Magazine). Also, for the first time ever, I have seen at least one film from eleven different decades. That’s a feat I hope to duplicate often. All and all March was a great month for me and films. As per usual, after the cut there is a full list of all the new-to-me films, as well as five favorites.
Movie Quote of the Day – The Jazz Singer, 1927 (dir. Alan Crosland)
Jack Robin: Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet! Wait a minute, I tell ya! You ain’t heard nothin’!
the diary of a film history fanatic 