The Tempest (2010) - May 31
Prospera: We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
The Tempest (2010) - May 31
Prospera: We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005) - May 31
Zaphod: This is the right one! I have a hunch!
Ford: His hunches are good! Arthur! I say we go!
Arthur Dent: Go with a hunch of a man who’s brain is fueled by lemons?
30 Day Film Challenge Day #12: A Movie by a Hated Director
Can’t say I hate many directors. Most of the ones who make movies I dislike go unnoted by name. Here’s an exception:
There’s Something About Mary by the Farrelly Brothers
I don’t mind gross-out humor. I think It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a hilarious show, and it’s frequently vulgar. The revulsion I feel toward this movie, and the few others of theirs I’ve seen (Dumb and Dumber being an exception I feel likely to enjoy), comes from the vulgarity being an unspoken norm for otherwise decent people, like it’s the expected way of the universe or something. Kind of like how some of Woody Allen’s movies depress me because the universe of the movie assumes people will be lonely and miserable, living empty lives. Anyway, don’t like the movie, don’t care for them.
Honorable Mentions: The Puffy Chair by the Duplass Brothers, Coffee and Cigarettes by Jim Jarmusch, Palindromes by Todd Solondz, All the Real Girls by David Gordon Green, Million Dollar Baby by Clint Eastwood, Transformers by Michael Bay, Cinema Paradiso by Giuseppe Tornatore
The Lost Weekend (1945) - May 30
Don Birnam: Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. It’s so simple. You’ve gotta catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rain spout in front of her house, the ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethoven’s Pastorale, a letter scribbled on her office stationary that you carry around in your pocket because it smells like all the lilacs in Ohio.
Pour it, Nat!
Out of the Past (1947) - May 20
Jeff: I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Whit.
Whit: My feelings? About ten years ago, I hid them away somewhere and I haven’t been able to find them.
Jeff: Where’d you look?
Whit: In my pocketbook.
Reality Bites (1990) - May 19
Lelaina: I just don’t understand why things just can’t go back to normal at the end of the half hour like on the Brady Bunch or something.
Troy Dyer: Well, ‘cause Mr. Brady died of AIDS.
![Drive (2011)- May 18
Driver: I don’t have wheels on my car. Irene: [laughing] Okay. Driver: It’s one thing you should know about me.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m492l9aUDO1rqpik8o1_r2_1280.jpg)
Drive (2011)- May 18
Driver: I don’t have wheels on my car.
Irene: [laughing] Okay.
Driver: It’s one thing you should know about me.
Pretty in Pink (1986) - May 16
Andie: You know you’re talking like that just because I’m going out with Blaine.
Duckie: His name is Blaine? Oh! That’s a major appliance, that’s not a name!
Young Adult (2011) - May 13
Mavis Gary: I’m crazy! And no one loves me. You don’t love me.
Matt Freehauf: Guys like me are born loving women like you.
Mavis Gary: I went to Buddy’s house.
Matt Freehauf: What happened?
Mavis Gary: I ruined my dress.
30 Day Film Challenge Day #11: A Movie by a Favorite Director
After a certain amount of deliberation:
Robert Altman, directing Prairie Home Companion
Lola Johnson: What if you die some day?
Garrison Keillor: I will die.
Lola Johnson: Don’t you want people to remember you?
Garrison Keillor: I don’t want them to be told to remember me.
Altman uses his characteristic inter-sectional style to weave together the narratives of the on- and off-stage personalities of the famous, long-running radio show Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor during its unfortunate last performance (fictional, of course - the show still goes on for now). Since I have such a warmth for the show, and because it is infused further with the warmth of Midwestern culture, I think familial cast was even more welcoming. And as Altman’s last film, made while ill in health, its themes of impermanence and the twinned nature of creation and death resonate fully.
Honorable Mentions: No Country for Old Men by Joel and Ethan Coen, Some Like it Hot by Billy Wilder, To Be or Not to Be by Ernst Lubitsch, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape by Lasse Hallstrom, Bringing Up Baby by Howard Hawks, The General by Buster Keaton, Dr. Strangelove by Stanley Kubrick, Casino by Martin Scorsese, Prairie Home Companion by Robert Altman, Magnolia by Paul Thomas Anderson, Royal Tenenbaums by Wes Anderson, Radio Days by Woody Allen, Pi by Darren Aronofsky, My Own Private Idaho by Gus Van Sant, Rear Window by Hitchcock, City Lights by Charlie Chaplin, Quiz Show by Robert Redford, The Station Agent by Tom McCarthy, Rachel Getting Married by Jonathan Demme, WALL-E by Andrew Stanton, Howl’s Moving Castle by Hayao Miyazaki, The Secret of NIMH by Don Bluth, The Iron Giant by Brad Bird, Return of the Pink Panther by Blake Edwards, Big Fish by Tim Burton, Catch Me If You Can by Steven Spielberg
Foreign Correspondent (1940) - May 12
Johnny Jones: I’m in love with you, and I want to marry you.
Carol Fisher: I’m in love with you, and I want to marry you.
Johnny Jones: Hmm… that cuts down our love scene quite a bit, doesn’t it?
Leon: the Professional (1994) - May 12
Léon: You need some time to grow up up a little.
Mathilda: I’m finished growing up, Léon. I just get older.
Léon: For me it’s the opposite. I’m old enough. I need time to grow up.
The Avengers (2012) - May 10
Steve Rogers: Is everything a joke to you?
Tony Stark: Funny things are.
Brief Encounter (1945) - May 10
Laura Jesson: Isn’t it awful about people meaning to be kind?
Broadcast News (1987) - May 6
Aaron Altman: What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he’s around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I’m semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing… he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance… Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen. And he’ll get all the great women.
