Category: movies

My Dirty List

Time for a small vanity project (as if every post made on this blog isn’t a vanity project, right?).

I think everyone has certain movies that they love to watch regardless of others’ ratings and reviews. It’s our dirty secret.

Here is my dirty list. I’ve seen each of these movies at least a dozen times, and have a few of them on DVDs, but I still watch them when they come on. Some of them don’t come on much any more, because they’re old, and in black and white, and a few of them depressed people.

The list isn’t in any order. Each movie has several particularly favorite scenes. Thinking about those, I realize they usually come at the movie’s end. IMDB helped me with the quotes because my memory isn’t that good.

Unforgiven (1992) – “It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.”

Fail Safe (1964) – “You learned too well, Professor. You learned so well that now there’s no difference between you and what you want to kill.”

This Is Spinal Tap (1984) – “I believe virtually everything I read, and I think that is what makes me more of a selective human than someone who doesn’t believe anything.”

A Christmas Story (1983) – “Oh, fudge. Except I didn’t say fudge.”

The Great Escape (1963) – “Cooler.”

Tropic Thunder (2008) – “I know who I am. I’m the dude playin’ the dude, disguised as another dude!”

Being There (1979) – “It’s for sure a white man’s world in America. Look here: I raised that boy since he was the size of a piss-ant. And I’ll say right now, he never learned to read and write. No, sir. Had no brains at all. Was stuffed with rice pudding between th’ ears. Shortchanged by the Lord, and dumb as a jackass. Look at him now! Yes, sir, all you’ve gotta be is white in America, to get whatever you want. Gobbledy-gook!”

No Country for Old Men (1997) – “What you got ain’t nothin’ new. This country’s hard on people. You can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.”

On The Beach (1959) – “The trouble with you is you want a simple answer. There isn’t any. The war started when people accepted the idiotic principle that peace could be maintained – – by arranging to defend themselves with weapons they couldn’t possibly use – – without committing suicide. Everybody had an atomic bomb, and counter-bombs, and counter-counter bombs. The devices outgrew us; we couldn’t control them.”

Fifty First Dates (2004) – “Sharks are like dogs, they only bite when you touch their private parts.”

Bladerunner (1982) – “Time…to die.”

Bridge Over the River Kwai (1957) – “Are they both mad? Or am I going mad? Or is it the sun?”

Love Actually (2003) – “A tiny, insignificant detail.”

Men In Black (1997) – “No, ma’am. We at the FBI do not have a sense of humor we’re aware of. May we come in?”

The Dirty Dozen (1967) – “I reckon the folks’d be a sight happier if I died like a soldier. Can’t say I would.”

Doctor Strangelove (1964) – “Well, boys, we got three engines out, we got more holes in us than a horse trader’s mule, the radio is gone and we’re leaking fuel and if we was flying any lower why we’d need sleigh bells on this thing… but we got one little budge on them Rooskies. At this height why they might harpoon us but they dang sure ain’t gonna spot us on no radar screen!”

What of you? Andy dirty secrets about the movies you watch again and again?

 

 

 

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

I watched Atomic Blonde, an interesting take on the spy situation in Berlin as the wall was coming down, along with East Germany (GDR), and ultimately, the U.S.S.R. The music was a wonderful compilation of the new wave and punk era sound relating to Europe. Hits from Flock of Seagulls, Nena, After the Fire, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and others were offered. The final song was “London Calling” by the Clash. That’s an intriguing choice, since the song was released in 1979, ten years before the wall fell. I guess it could be seen as a bookend, and some ironic meaning found there, given the events of the movie. I enjoyed the movie, mostly. The violence was a little tedious, but it was a good cast, with Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan, and John Goodman (among others) complementing Charlize Theron and James McAvoy’s roles.

 

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Friday’s Theme Music

So, confession, again. I enjoy the original Mad Max trilogy. The first is the least of them, but I will watch The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome again and again without too much thought.

Which is what I did this week. Thunderdome ends with Tina Turner singing “We Don’t Need Another Hero.” Which makes sense in that context; they’ve already lost it all. Civilization has been wiped out, and they’re trying to rebuild something out of the wreckage, something more humane than Bartertown and the Thunderdome.

But I wake up and read the news, and think, we need a hero. Seems like any fucking day, someone is going to decide, “Today is a nice day to nuke! Let’s find someone and make a radioactive statement.” Then a shit storm of retaliation will fire up. Anarchy and chaos get stirred in as civilization’s plastic veneer melts, and norms, morals, and ethics get tossed.

(As an ironic aside, I first saw The Road Warrior on VHS while I was on temporary duty with the Air Force in South Korea.)

Yeah, gloomy fucking Friday, right? Not really. A hero can stop all that. I don’t see anyone riding in at the moment, but I’m always an optimistic person that eventually sanity prevails.

So listen to Tina singing in 1985, and think about it. Focus on the song’s words, “Looking for something we can rely on, there’s got to be something better out there.”

Yes, there’s got to be.

 

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“Plastics.”

“Plastics.”

Some of you will read that one word sentence and recognize the allusion to The Graduate. It comes to mind now as how accurate it was in the movie.

Plastics was said to be the future. The writers (novelist Charles Webb and screenwriters Buck Henry and Calder Willingham) were prescient. Plastics are everywhere, floating and polluting the oceans and other aspects of our environment, and is now found to be in bottled drinking water. What’s that mean to our health? The effects are being studied.

We’ll find out in the future, won’t we?

 

2

Velvet Rain

A velvet rain is falling. It’s a rain that makes the world feel cozier and more intimate, inviting deeper thoughts.

I’d planned to walk ten minutes but the rain soothed me, inviting me to keep going. I did, until two miles and an hour had passed.

The rain didn’t appear to soothe all. Some drivers took the rain as a sign to go, “Faster! Faster!”

The walking time allowed for solitude and writing time. I’d dropped into my personal trough the other day in the cycles of buoyancy and depression. Oh, lord, that darkness. Daunting, it drinks me up and swallows me down. The sighs are heavy, the thoughts are bitter, and the world looks grim. Even the cats’ attentions are infuriating irritations.

Perspective helps me survive. Writing, walking, and solitude help me grind out perspective. Alas, Schedules and events kept me from consistently achieving two of the three. But yeah, I survived.

Our new microwave and range were delivered and installed yesterday. They look so modern, I was surprised to realize how ancient the replaced ten-year-old units looked, and the difference it makes to the kitchen. To celebrate, we went out to lunch, and then to a movie.

The movie is part of our annual Oscar Quest. Friends throw a party, and we like to be able to think and talk intelligently about the movies and performances. We’ve only seen a few noms, so we’re behind. We saw “The Post” yesterday. That increases our total to four. We have work to do in our entertainment. None of the previews (“Love, Simon,” “Red Sparrow,” “7 Days in Entebbe,” and “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool”) didn’t inflame deep interest. Each struck me as something to stream and watch at home when it’s available through one of our subscriptions. Of the four, “Love, Simon,” sparked the most intrigue. I suppose I’m too picky and cynical.

As the lights dropped and the previews played, and then the movie opened, my writers emerged with scene ideas. When we returned home, I quietly sat down (quietly, so as to not attract the cats, who seemed determined to stop me from writing at home) at the laptop, opened the required doc, and wrote the scene and changes. Not interested in tempting fate (the cats! the cats!), I saved and closed the doc, but later, while eating, more writing visited me. I stole back into the document and added a few more pages. Best, it left me knowing exactly where to begin today.

It’s a fine feeling, to know what to write, to write it, and to look forward to writing more.

Liquid dripped onto the coffee shop table as I unpacked and set up. Rain or sweat? I don’t know; either were plausible. I suppose I could taste it, but it’s not a critical difference.

Tonight, Wednesday, is when I meet with my friends for conversation and beer. It’s a standing invitation. My attendance record is lackluster but the rain is whispering, “You should go.” I’m ambivalent, but contemplating it.

Meanwhile, the first gulps of hot, black coffee have scalded my lips and tongue. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

 

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Recommendations

Does it sadden you when you think you know someone, and you recommend a book, movie, restaurant, or something, and then ask them about it later, and they say, “Well, it was okay?”

Yes, bums me. The converse is true, too, when someone recommends something to me because they think I’ll really like it, and I don’t .

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Had to hunt this song down.

I was reading the news today (oh, boy), and parts of this song came back to me. After trying and failing to remember more of it as I walked, I finally sat down and googled some remembered lyrics.

Success!

In honor of the POTUS and his administration, here is TMBG with “Doctor Evil,” from “Austin Powers.”

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The Movie Dream

I dreamed last night people were watching one of my novels from the trilogy in progress. I wasn’t certain if it was on television or at the movies. I could see and hear scenes, and see people, including me, watching them.

Conversely, after waking and thinking about it, I wondered if that was how my novel is delivered to my brain: as a movie that exists somewhere else that I’m watching and recording. I suspected that idea because some of what I saw seemed new to me. I was enjoying it and wowed.

Whichever and whatever it was, definitely time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

See you at the movies.

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Storm Names

I’ve been reading about the winter storm. Some call it bomb cyclone, but it has a name, you know. It’s been named Grayson. That name brought to mind Kathryn Grayson. She never won an Academy Award, but I thought, wouldn’t it be neat if they started naming storms after Oscar winners? Then we could say things like, “Clint Eastwood is threatening the East Coast of the United States.”

Yeah.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Today’s song is from the movie, “St. Elmo’s Fire.” The song is, “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)”.

I’ve never seen the entire film. It didn’t grab me. I found it vague, with problems manufactured by unthinking, vapid, self-absorbed characters. Perhaps I should have given it a greater viewing.

I knew the song mostly because of FM Stereo. It came out in nineteen eighty-five. I was doing a lot of traveling, then, putting over forty-thousand miles on my car during the year. So I heard it a lot. I didn’t think much of the song, but it’s stuck in my head, so I present it to you.

Cheers

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