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I know, I haven’t done one of these in a ridiculously long time! But here’s something, a favorite moment from a movie that I think is starting to border on being criminally underrated: Apollo 13. The story is well known by this point, I hope; the moment I’m quoting here isn’t one of the more famous moments, but it’s an excerpt, in the movie, of an interview astronaut Jim Lovell had given before the Apollo 13 mission ever blasted off. It’s the type of wonderful scene that may seem at first glance like a bit of filler, but it establishesDown the rabbit hole….

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It’s been way too long since I watched this movie. I love this little scene, early in the film, after the party at Jim Lovell’s house has ended and the first moonwalk in history is over. Jim and his wife, Marilyn, are in the backyard. MARILYN LOVELL: You’re drunk, Lovell. JIM LOVELL: Yeah, I’m not used to the Champagne. MARILYN LOVELL: Me neither. I can’t deal with cleaning up. Let’s sell the house. JIM LOVELL: All right. Let’s sell the house. They’re back inside now, looking up at us. Ain’t that something? MARILYN LOVELL: I bet Jenny Armstrong doesn’t getDown the rabbit hole….

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In honor of Roger Ebert…. Rick: Last night we said a great many things. You said I was to do the thinking for both of us. Well, I’ve done a lot of it since then, and it all adds up to one thing: you’re getting on that plane with Victor where you belong. Ilsa: But, Richard, no, I… I… Rick: Now, you’ve got to listen to me! You have any idea what you’d have to look forward to if you stayed here? Nine chances out of ten, we’d both wind up in a concentration camp. Isn’t that true, Louis? CaptainDown the rabbit hole….

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I’ve only seen this movie once, and I liked it, but not really enough to watch it again. At the time I remember finding it well-made, well-acted, and all, but a bit on the slow-moving side and generally not too involving. But at the end of the film, when the court case in the story (regarding the status of a group of Africans, on their way to being sold into slavery, who rise up while still on the slave ship from Africa) reaches the Supreme Court, we get to hear a long speech by former President John Quincy Adams (playedDown the rabbit hole….

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2010 is a fairly odd film, all things considered. It harks back to when Hollywood’s mania for sequels was just starting to get underway, and when the idea of reboots was still way off. And the idea of making sequels to films that were nearly twenty years old? And to films that are considered classics? Yup, it’s strange that this project ever got off the ground, even with a pretty decent Arthur C. Clarke novel to go by. But off the ground 2010 got, providing some answers for the extremely enigmatic 2001: A Space Odyssey. Some would claim that theDown the rabbit hole….

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When this movie came out in spring 1990, I was on the tail end of a fascination with the spy genre that had lasted two or three years. I’d devoured a whole bunch of Robert Ludlum and Nelson DeMille novels; I’d found Tom Clancy somewhat less readable but OK, and I bounced right off John Le Carre. Shortly thereafter I returned to reading fantasy and science fiction, having had my fill of spy stuff. Nowadays I haven’t read a spy novel in quite a few years, and I generally rely on movies and teevee for my espionage desires. (Plus, aDown the rabbit hole….

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Seeing as how I devoted yesterday’s Something for Thursday post to The Sea Hawk, my favorite Errol Flynn movie, I figured, why not use it in this feature too? The Sea Hawk tells the story of a rogue English sea captain, Geoffrey Thorpe, who is commanding his ship and preying on Spanish vessels right around the time the Spaniards are building their Armada for their final reckoning against England. Thorpe becomes involved in the various politics involved in convincing Queen Elizabeth I that the Spanish threat is very real and that she must arm her nation and prepare for inevitableDown the rabbit hole….

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COSMO: You could have shared this with me. MARTIN: I know. COSMO: You could have had the power. MARTIN: I don’t want it. COSMO: Don’t you know the places we can go with this? MARTIN: Yeah, I do. There’s nobody there. COSMO: Exactly! The world isn’t run by weapons anymore, or energy or money. It’s run by ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It’s all just electrons! MARTIN: I don’t care. COSMO: I don’t expect other people to understand this, but I do expect you to understand this! We started this journey together! MARTIN: It wasn’t a ‘journey’, Cos.Down the rabbit hole….

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Been a while since I did one of these, huh? So much for ‘regular features’. Par for the course around here, though. I may one day relaunch this blog as a series of regular features, with one post each before completely disappearing. Anyway, election season has me thinking about The West Wing. One thing that bugged me about the show during its run was that Aaron Sorkin wasn’t always very good at tying things together over the long haul of a teevee series, which led to things like the character Mandy (who was totally annoying) utterly disappearing between seasons oneDown the rabbit hole….

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“Darmok” is one of the most memorable episodes, and for me a high point, of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The Enterprise makes contact with a people, the Tamarians, whose language has resisted all efforts at translation, to the point where not even the Universal Translator can make head nor tail of what they are saying. Their language appears to be based on random citations of stories, an extreme way of talking in metaphor and citing examples from a rich storytelling heritage to make one’s point. As someone who often thinks in terms of stories I’ve read or seen andDown the rabbit hole….