Movie Quote Meme

In as much as it’s Oscar weekend, I thought I’d cop this from Gordon. However, I didn’t looked at his responses before writing this because I didn’t want to be influenced by my near-twin’s choices:

1. Pick 10 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Fill in the film title once it’s guessed.
5. NO Googling/using IMDb search functions.
(Feel free to stick your guesses in the comments section)
I THINK half of them may be easy, the other half not so much, but none of these films are obscure.

1. There’s an old joke – um… two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of ’em says, “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know; and such small portions.”
“Annie Hall” = Tom the Dog

2. It’s got a long rock wall with a big oak tree at the north end. It’s like something out of a Robert Frost poem. It’s where I asked my wife to marry me. We went there for a picnic and made love under that oak and I asked and she said yes.
“Shawshank Redemption” – Scott

3. You’re a sucker for French poetry and rhinestones. You’re very generous. You’re kind to strangers and children, and when you stand in the snow you look like an angel.
“Groundhog Day” – Tom the Dog

4. If I don’t get a little law and order around here, I get busted down to a traffic corner. And your friend don’t like traffic corners.
“West Side Story” – Gordon

5. We’ve become bored with watching actors give us phony emotions. We are tired of pyrotechnics and special effects.
The Truman Show

6. They have to paint me red before they chop me. It’s a different religion from ours. I think.
“Help!” – Gordon!

7. Uh, well, if anyone from the, uh, from the IRS is watching, I… forgot to file my, my, my 1040 return. Um, I meant to do it today, but, uh…
“Apollo 13” –Jaquandor

8. My story begins in London, not so very long ago. And yet so much has happened since then, that it seems more like an eternity.
One Hundred and One Dalmatians

9. I want them to stop looking to me for answers, begging me to speak again, write again, be a leader. I want them to start thinking for themselves. I want my privacy.
“Field of Dreams” – Scott

10. Do you have a special grudge against me? Do you feel a particularly strong resentment? Is there something I’ve said that’s caused this contempt, or is it just things I stand for that you despise?
The Graduate
***
For Gordon and Lefty, other Doctor Who fans, and linguists: Darleks vs Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre

ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: La Vie En Rose


Sunday evening, after I had finished watching The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, I started watching this film. On the surface, they have some comparables. Both in French with subtitles, both with Oscar nominations, this one, deservedly, for actress Marion Cotillard, who I last saw in the previews for – but the actual film – A Good Year with Russell Crowe. Both also touch on going to a physical location of great spiritual significance, though while Diving Bell’s Bauby tends to dismiss it, it’s a more recurring theme here.

This is a more conventional biopic about chaunteuse Edith Piaf, starting off with her terrible childhood of illness and abandonment until she is literally pushed by her father to perform. Then we see the grown-up Edith move from street corner busker to the highest levels of stardom, only to be brought down by her addictions to alcohol and drugs, so that when (hardly a SPOILER ALERT) she dies at age 47, she looks about 20 years older.

The film is good, but it’s long. I started it Sunday night (saw 90 minutes) and finished it Monday morning (another 45 minutes), which is not a fair way to see it. The other problem I had is that Piaf, at times, reminded me of Judy Garland in the early 1960s, another child singer who had reached great fame but also great tragedy because of her addictions. In fact, Cotillard looks and acts at times remarkably like Judy Davis in the 2001 TV movie Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows. I know this is MY hangup, but there it is.

See it for yourself and let me know what you think.

One last thing. The DVD EXTRAS involved all of less than eight minutes of Cotillard and writer/director Olivier Dahan talking about the process of getting the Piaf character; trés disappointing.

ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.


Dizzyingly claustrophobic. We’ll get back to that in a bit.

Every year for the past several, our real estate agent has sent out a card to allow his patrons to watch a free movie at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany on a weekend near Valentine’s Day. That opportunity came up this past Sunday, and we took advantage, inviting a couple from church to the movies; he allows for up to six free passes to be used, plus $3 off per person at the concession stand on a $5 purchase. Unfortunately, one of our church friends, who we’d seen only an hour earlier, fell ill, so I called one of my work friends, and she called one of our former workmates, Maureen, and we all rendezvoused at the cinema. We had a babysitter for Lydia.

I was looking forward to seeing director Julian Schnabel’s Le scaphandre et le papillon, a French film with English subtitles, for a couple reasons. One was that many said that Jean-Dominique Bauby’s novel based on his real-life experience of living in an almost totally paralyzed body, save for his left eye, was unfilmable, so I was curious what kind of screenplay Ronald Harwood could come up with. Mostly I was wondering how Schnabel, whose previous films Before Night Falls (2000) and Basquiat (1996) I had enjoyed, would tackle the story.

The first 10 minutes (15? 20? I wasn’t looking at a watch) was from inside Bauby’s left eye. It was blurry and narrow in scope, dizzyingly claustrophobic, as I said. If people got vertigo from seeing Cloverfield (which I have not seen), I can imagine they might also get the feeling here. Yet, as the perspective changes, as Bauby’s sense about his captivity changes, one starts feeling for the people around him, including his family, and even for Bauby himself, the Elle magazine editor who was a bit of of a lothario. I laughed out loud when he realized how beautiful his therapists were and how he was totally incapable of hitting on them, for instance.

As Bauby decides to write his book, using only that left eye, I was reminded of a comment in Salon magazine that said, in essence, that the movie has turned writer’s block into a very lousy excuse. One suggestion, however; don’t use your rudimentary high school French to try to figure out the words Bauby is trying to say, since the performers are spelling out the words in French, while the screen is spelling them out in English. Just go with the flow of the film.

Schnabel’s directing Oscar nomination is well deserved. Recommended.
ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: No End In Sight


I believe I’ve been quite clear in my long-standing opposition to the war in Iraq. Yet, I also believed that if we were to go to war, we ought not have gone understaffed, based on everything I had read at the time. This documentary written and directed by Charles Ferguson, and narrated by Campbell Scott, lays out the case that the failure of the United States military policy after the fall of Baghdad in the spring of 2003, far from being unforeseen, was utterly predictable. And there were high-ranking officials, many with military experience, telling the Bush administration that they were doing the occupation all wrong. These people included former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Ambassador to Iraq Barbara Bodine, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, and, most notably, General Jay Garner, who was in charge of occupation of Iraq through May 2003.

No End In Sight, which I watched on DVD last week, lays out in painful detail the three main problems that took place. One was the failure by the US to provide security because they were understaffed when the looting of museums and other national treasures took place. The de-Ba’athification of Iraq showed serious loss of of the professional class, most of whom joined the Ba’ath party pretty much for the same reason managers joined the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, because that’s how to get and keep a job, not out of any ideological affinity. But perhaps the greatest blunder was to dismiss the Iraqi army; when the invading US Armed Forces told the army to go home, it did, but the entity, which predates the creation of the country of Iraq, was waiting for requests from the Americans to help rebuild Iraq, a call that failed to come. Thus, one created a situation with bunch of unemployed, angry people with guns that helped fuel the insurgency.

You may seethe to hear Donald Rumsfeld’s various pronouncements, one of which, early on, was that there WAS no insurgency. Many of these inept decisions were carried out by Paul Bremer, but it is not clear whether they were his initiatives, or that he was merely carrying out the wishes of chickenhawks such as Rummy, Dick Cheney, Paul Wofowitz and Doug Feith.

Ferguson filmed over 200 hours, and many of the extended interviews show up in the DVD extras, probably longer than the actual film.

However you feel about the Iraq war, its justification, or how it needs to be handled now, there’s little doubt that when you see this film, you’ll wonder how such early blunders were made, leading to many unnecessary Iraqi civilian and US military deaths.

ROG

Mondo meme

The groupings or levels are practically random. Jaquandor did it, but dropped some questions. I went back to Samauri Frog’s post and took all the questions, masochist that I am.

Level 1
(x) Smoked a cigarette.
() Smoked a cigar.
(x) Kissed a member of the same sex.
(x) Drank alcohol.

I’ve probably smoked 25 cigarettes in my life, a plurality of them in the early part of 1977 when I was living in Charlotte, NC with my parents for four months. They used to sell stuff (costume jewelry, knickknacks) with others at these craft fairs. I didn’t really fit in. I was an effete snob from the North who used words of more than two syllables. I tried smoking, which most of them did, to try to fit in; didn’t work. (I’ll say that Charlotte is much better now.)

I was in a production of Boys in the Band in May 1975 in Binghamton, which involved greeting someone at a party with a kiss.

Level 2
(x) Are/been in love.
(x) Been dumped.
(x) Shoplifted.
() Been fired.
(x) Been in a fist fight.

Most recently (late 1990s) dumped by e-mail.
Shoplifted gum when I was eight or nine; got caught; mortification.
I’ve been in about five fist fights, but it was almost always brought to me.

Level 3
(x) Had a crush on an older person.
(x) Skipped school.
(x) Slept with a classmate.
(x) Seen someone/something die.

Heck, went out with a couple of older persons.
I had perfect attendance from 3rd to 11th grade. Senioritis then struck.

Level 4
() Had/have a crush on one of your friends who is now on Facebook.
() Been to Paris.
() Been to Spain.
(x) Been on a plane.
(x) Thrown up from drinking.

At a party drinking Polish vodka, feeling very lucid. Ran out, switch to some Johnny Walker something, got drunk and sick in about two minutes. Lesson: don’t mix alcohol.

Level 5
(x) Eaten sushi.
() Been snowboarding.
() Met someone BECAUSE of Facebook.
() Been in a mosh pit.

Don’t really LIKE sushi. My wife does.

Level 6
(x) Been in an abusive relationship.
(x) Taken pain killers.
(x) Love/loved someone who you can’t have.
(x) Laid on your back and watched cloud shapes go by.
(x) Made a snow angel.

In high school, I had this father confessor role, where people, mostly female, would tell me their problems. One young woman told me about her boyfriend problems; I had a massive crush on her, but never let that show.

Level 7
(x) Had a tea party.
(x) Flown a kite.
(x) Built a sand castle.
() Gone mudding (offroading).
(x) Played dress up.

I had two sisters; of course, I played dress up.

Level 8
(x) Jumped into a pile of leaves.
() Gone sledging.
() Cheated while playing a game.
(x) Been lonely.
(x) Fallen asleep at work/school.

I don’t recall cheating in a game, unless you mean throwing it to a three-year old.

Level 9
(x) Watched the sun set.
(x) Felt an earthquake.
() Killed a snake.

There have been at least two earthquakes that one could feel in upstate NY. The last time, I thought a huge, overweight truck must be rumbling down the street.

Level 10
(x) Been tickled.
(x) Been robbed/vandalized.
(x) Been cheated on.
(x) Been misunderstood.

I’ve lost baseball cards, LPs, my coin collection, a boom box, a half dozen bicycles. And that’s without really thinking about it.

Level 11
(x) Won a contest.
() Been suspended from school.
(x) Had detention.
(x) Been in a car/motorcycle accident.

I won a racquetball tournament in 1989.

Level 12
() Had/have braces.
(x) Eaten a whole pint of ice cream in one night.
(x) Danced in the moonlight.

The ice cream was undoubtedly related to affairs of the heart.

Level 13
(x) Hated the way you look.
(x) Witnessed a crime.
() Pole danced.
(x) Questioned your heart.
() Been obsessed with post-it-notes.

Called the police on some jerk hitting a woman.

Level 14
(x) Squished barefoot through the mud.
(x) Been lost.
() Been to the opposite side of the world.
(x) Swam in the ocean.
(x) Felt like you were dying.

I liked swimming at Jones Beach on Long Island when i was a kid, and in the Caribbean when Carol and I went to Barbados in 1999.

I thought I’d die on a mountain in Utah in 1994.

Level 15
(x) Cried yourself to sleep.
(X) Played cops and robbers.
(X) Recently colored with crayons/colored pencils/markers.
() Sang karaoke.
(x) Paid for a meal with only coins.

Broke in Schenectady, 1978 – talking about nickel and diming someone. And I paid the tip with a check, because I didn’t have enough change.

Level 16
(x) Done something you told yourself you wouldn’t.
() Made prank phone calls.
() Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose.
(x) Kissed in the rain.

Done something…more than once.

Level 17
(x) Written a letter to Santa Claus.
(x) Watched the sun set/sun rise with someone you care/cared about.
(x) Blown bubbles.
(x) Made a bonfire on the beach or anywhere.

I love blowing bubbles. I find it to be a great stress reliever.

Level 18
() Crashed a party.
() Have traveled more than 5 days with a car full of people.
(x) Gone rollerskating/blading.
(X) Had a wish come true.
() Slept with a member of the same sex.

Never was very good at rollerskating, or ice skating, for that matter.

Level 19
(X) Worn pearls.
() Jumped off a bridge.
() Screamed “penis” or “vagina”.
() Swam with dolphins.

When I was a kid, used to wear my mother’s. They probably weren’t real pearls.

Level 20
() Got your tongue stuck to a pole/freezer/ice cube.
() Kissed a fish.
(x) Worn the opposite sex’s clothes.
(x) Sat on a roof top.

Halloween, 1978.

Level 21
(x) Screamed at the top of your lungs.
() Done/attempted a one-handed cartwheel.
(x) Talked on the phone for more than six hours (in one day).
(x) Recently stayed up for a while talking to someone you care about.

Talking on the phone with my sisters.

Level 22
(x) Picked and ate an apple right off the tree.
(x) Climbed a tree.
(x) Had/been in a tree house.
(x) Been scared to watch scary movies alone.

I always wished I had had a treehouse.

Level 23
(x) Believed in ghosts.
(x) Have had more than thirty pairs of shoes (not necessarily all at once).
(x) Gone streaking.
(x) Visited jail.

Well, if you count sneakers…

Not only did I visit a jail (friend Alice in May 1972), I WORKED in a jail as a janitor (summer 1975) and visited Greenhaven prison in the early 1970s.

Level 24
(x) Played chicken.
() Been pushed into a pool with all your clothes on.
() Been told you’re hot by a complete stranger.
() Broken a bone.
(x) Been easily amused.

I can still be easily amused by things no one else gets.

Level 25
() Caught a fish then ate it later.
() Made a porn video.
(x) Caught a Butterfly.
(x) Laughed so hard you cried.
(x) Cried so hard you laughed.

Laughing and crying – always reminds me of the actors’ muses.

Level 26
() Mooned/flashed someone.
(x) Had someone moon/flash you.
(x) Cheated on a test.
(x) Forgotten someone’s name.
(x) French braided someone’s hair.
(x) Gone skinny dipping.
(x) Been kicked out of your house.
() Tried to hurt yourself.

Cheated on a bio test in 9th grade. Didn’t work for me.

Level 27
(x) Rode a roller coaster.
(x) Went scuba-diving/snorkeling.
(x) Had a cavity.
() Blackmailed someone.
() Been blackmailed.

When I was a kid, we loved rollercoasters. I’d ride with my sister Leslie, my father would ride with my sister Marcia. My mom would hold our glasses; the great fear was that they’d somehow fly off.

Level 28
(x) Been used.
(x) Fell going up the stairs.
() Licked a cat.
(x) Bitten someone.
(x) Licked someone – not in private places.

Haven’t we all been used at some point?

Level 29
() Been shot at/or at gunpoint.
() Had sex in the rain.
() Flattened someone’s tires.
(x) Rode your car/truck until the gas light came on.
(x) Got five dollars or less worth of gas.

But I’ve seen someone else flatten someone’s tires because the driver was taking up two parking spaces. This was a matter of “justice”.

ROG

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