18 January 2005

Movie meme

I'm memeing again. Such a liar. Have I ever memed before? I believe this may be my maiden memeing voyage. C'mon, bat at me with a bottle of champagne ... Wild Turkey? Anything.
(edit: I lied. AGAIN! After some consideration I realized that this wasn't my maiden memeing voyage. Will you still love me in the morning?)

This time I found the goodie on Viv's blog. She said she found this task amusing; me? Not so much. I don't think I CAN come up with twelve movie quotes so I'm taking up her challenge here and now. Bring it on, sister.

1. Pick one dozen movies that are ones that you have special feelings about.
2. Pick a few lines of dialogue that mean something to you.
3. As people guess the film, strike out that entry.
4. If possible, after the film is guessed, explain why that movie made the list.

Now Viv may have the absoloveliest name I've ever wanted to squeeze (next to Nerolie, but that's another story for another time) and Viv may well get a gaggle of visitors necessitating the unveiling of her movie titles. Me & my blog? ummm... not so much about the visitors. Or visiting folk who leave comments (yet. yet?). So I'll plan to post the answers up in approximately one week just to give anyone who feels like meandering into this a fair deal. Bonne chance!

(*additional edit added 25 Jan '05: I don't know the HTML for drawing a line through text so instead I will BOLD the quotations that have been accurately guessed.)

1. "Oh, you should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about."
KIDS! Nobody guessed this?! It's only from the best, most freaky groovy fantabulous pre-Nemo extravaganza, filmed back in the day when movies were made to be fun and frightening because everyone knew kids were smart enough to hold both fear and humor together in their bulbous little heads at the same time movie ever! 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory'!
ooompa looooma doompa-dee-dooo...


2. "One cannot be betrayed if one has no people."
Kaiser Sosa. Does that clue help anyone figure this out?
This quote was from the very smart 'Usual Suspects'. I remember the bleary stupefied sense I had, that "what just happened here?" feeling that hung like a fog the first time I watched this movie. I daren't say too much, in case you haven't seen this movie yet (because you will. trust me, it'll gnaw at you like a prairie mouse at the door of the silo in winter until you do) but what impressed me was this movie's ability to catapult my 'oh, I know what's going to happen to him/her/it next' assumptions far far away. I didn't know I could be so dense. Fabulous.


3. "A lot of alliteration from anxious anchors placed in powerful posts!"
This may be the only movie quote that I have repeated nearly weekly - for years. If you consider that the movie was made in 1987 that's a reasonably respectable rousting run of repetition. See below #4 for the answer.

4. "And if things had gone differently for me tonight then I probably wouldn't be saying any of this. I grant you everything, but give me this - he personifies everything that you've been fighting against. And I'm in love with you. How do you like that? - I buried the lead." (hint: came from same movie as quote #3)
Oh lordy, RUN to pick up a copy of this, all ye cynical lovers of both hearthbreak and humor. 'Broadcast News' made me a fullblooded Holly Hunter fan (I attempted to emulate her making time to cry bit. It didn't work so well for me but that only increased my admiration for her acting skills). The movie also taught me to keep a critical eye toward the surface levels of whatever on first glance seems simple.

5. "Yeah, we saw you and we were like 'whoa', and then you were like 'whoa' and we went, like, 'whoa'."
(*Yes, this came from 'Finding Nemo' and any adult who has not seen this movie yet MUST view it, whether accompanied by children or not. Very sweet. Ellen DeGeneres rocks as Dorie.)

6. "You cannot find peace by avoiding life, Leonard."
(*A certain east coasterererer has a fantastic sense of name placement. This quote came from 'The Hours'.)

7. "I know what it's like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you ty to fit in but you can't. How you hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside."
This quote comes from 'Girl, Interrupted'. Angelina Jolie. Oh yeah whatever, there were some other actors in the film too, but don't pretend you didn't notice there was Angelina Jolie! Oh. Wait. There was something about a story and a plot in there too. And the curious psych experience (ooh, gotta love hospitals with tunnels)... I was diggin' on those too. But there was Angelina Jolie.

8. "I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries."
(good humorists can be neither felled nor fibbed to. Several of you knew this one immediately; what can I say? I like farts and imagining hamster mommies.) eye heart MONTY PYTHON

9. "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return."
It is my opinion that Baz Luhrmann is a creative genius. If you can lay your hands on a copy of the DVD version of 'Moulin Rouge!', do it. Many impressive production details are included on the DVD version, conceptual stuff on up. I respect that Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor both - actually, really truly sang (and there was much singing!). Neither are particular vocal dynamos, but there's something so much truer in their unprofessional voices; something that gives the rest of the movie's inauthenticity *authenticity*. Also interesting to note, as listed in this IMDB reference: The plot of the movie essentially derives from three operas/operettas. The plot line of a young writer with Bohemian friends who falls in love with a sick girl that eventually dies is from "La Bohème". (Baz Luhrmann directed a stage production of Bohème in Sydney as well as a Broadway production in New York.) The plot line of a courtesan who learns that love can also be true and idealistic comes from "La Traviata". Finally, the plot line of the writer who travels to the 'under world' of the Moulin Rouge to find his love and tries to take her back to the 'upper world' comes from "Orpheus in the Underworld" which is an adaption of the ancient Greek 'Orpheus and Eurydike' myth.

10. "What is this Ethel - Halloween? You tryin' to scare me? Well you're wasting your time! I'm scarier than you any day of the week. So beat it, Ethel! Boo! Better dead than red! Somebody tryin' to shake me up? HAH HAH! From the throne of God in heaven to the belly of hell, you can all fuck yourselves and then go jump in the lake because I'm not afraid of you or death or hell or anything!"
'Angels in America', directed by Mike Nichols, was first released as a play, then a mini-series on HBO. This particular quote, by Roy Cohn (played by Al Pacino), caused the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck to stand at attention and was rasped during his dying days, in a hospital bed, alone, being visited by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg who Cohn has put to death, along with Rosenberg's husband Julius, years earlier convicted for communist acts & espionage during the the Cold War (the height of McCarthyism). I pitied this sad little dying horrible lump of man and I hated him - SO much. I delighted in his suffering. I loathed myself for delighting in his suffering. And when Roy wasn't being an ass, there were other big things happening with other characters, including angelic unions. 'Angels in America' is the great stick playwright Tony Kushner shakes at HIV/Aids, and should be on your list of "to sees" soon.

11. "You can lose ALL your points for any one of three things: One- If you cry. Two- If you ask to see your mother. Three- If you're hungry and ask for a snack. Forget it!" (hint: foreign flick)
You're not going to rent 'Willy Wonka'? Fine. I don't like your choice but I'll accept it. But THIS one is a different story altogether. 'Life is Beautiful' (La Vita e Bella) is the joyful story of a Jewish man's love, his imagination, and his family. It is the story of grace and glory, of what a parent should be expected to do for a child, a husband for a wife. Lovely, lovely, lovely.
This quote was spoken by the father (Guido) to his son when they reached the concentration camp. I don't want to say more about it for fear of giving anything away. See this film, then we'll talk.


12. "Get the butter."
(*Multiple good guessers here - sweet little deviants, all of you. This was Marlon Brando's quote from 'Last Tango in Paris'. Wow-wee. Pardonez-moi while I fan myself.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Several of these look familiar, but the only two I know for sure (maybe) are:
5- Finding Nemo
8- Monty Python, Holy Grail
Curious about the rest, though. Impressive list.

mabeth

mcbeth said...

#5 and #8 are indeed correct guesses.
DING DING DING!!!

I've received additional email off-site with great guesses so let's include those, shall we?

(We shall.)

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