Film Quote Friday (Page 2)

The first time I realized that there was something of a ‘geek subculture’ was when the movie TRON came out. The big ‘tentpole’ movies of geekdom — Star Wars, Superman, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET — everybody saw those. Not so much with TRON, which was pretty much ignored that year, except by me; I saw it and assumed that everyone else did, too. But when I mentioned it to classmates, not one of them had bothered. They had all assumed it was just a piece of, well, geek fluff. TRON isn’t a perfect movie,Down the rabbit hole….

With new trailers for the new James Bond movie Skyfall hitting the Interweb this week, I turn my thoughts back a few years to Daniel Craig’s first outing as Bond, Casino Royale. CR was extremely well made, and with all extremely well-made movies, it started with a very intelligent script that made its world seem downright real. Two examples of the movie’s smart dialogue: Early in the film, after James Bond (who, in CR, is a newly-minted Double-O agent) has had a mission go slightly awry (to the tune of an international incident), M (Dame Judy Dench) storms out ofDown the rabbit hole….

Here’s a bit from one of my favorite movies of the last ten years. I truly, genuinely believe this movie to be absolute comedic genius. In the 1970s, “legendary” San Diego news anchorman Rob Burgundy, and his cohorts Champ Kind (sports), Brick Tamland (weather), and Brian Fontana (roving reporter) are used to ruling the roost on their local newscast, until a — gasp! — woman comes along to work with them. Into their station comes Veronica Corningstone, and nothing is ever the same. Of course, we have to have the obligatory attempts by these guys to hit on her, becauseDown the rabbit hole….

Well, I’ve already been a day late a couple of times, and last week, I missed this series completely. Par for the course with regular features here! Anyhow…. I love this silly, raunchy, hilarious ode to how a few men in a rustbelt city will scheme to make a few bucks. The rustbelt town is Sheffield, England, and our heroes are out of work steelmill employees, who concoct an odd plan, led by Gaz (Robert Carlyle), to put on a strip-tease show for pay. Of course, these guys aren’t the best looking examples of the male species, so Gaz decidesDown the rabbit hole….

Nora Ephron died the other day, so here’s a scene, as written (so some of this doesn’t appear in the final film), from my personal favorite Ephron film, Sleepless In Seattle. What’s going on here is that there’s a guy named Sam (Tom Hanks) and his son named Jonah, and their wife and mother has died. They are deeply saddened by this, obviously, so they try to get a change of scenery by moving to Seattle. Problem is, Sam is still having a terribly rough time of it, so Jonah one night calls a radio talk show that focuses onDown the rabbit hole….

Well, it didn’t take long for me to miss a day on this feature, did it? Oops! Thursday was largely taken up by a reinstallation of Windows on the Main Library Computer here at Casa Jaquandor, and Friday was one of those up-at-oh-dark-thirty early-starts-at-work days, followed by a longer than usual nap and generally letting my brain just slosh around in my brain pan for the rest of the night. Not great for blogging. Anyway, this is one of my favorite movies: I remember when this came out, the advertising was all about Jack Nicholson’s Melvin Udall, who was billedDown the rabbit hole….

Yup, it’s baseball! Specifically, my favorite baseball movie of all time, Bull Durham. I won’t wax totally poetic about the movie, having done that before, but…I’ve got baseball on the brain. Why? Well, I have a friend at work whose favorite hobby is collecting sports autographs. And while he does buy signed items from memorabilia stores and online, he does most of the legwork himself: he goes to the ballpark and the arena and the stadium and various other places and gets stuff signed himself. He’s got a ton of great stories about the hobby and the thrill of theDown the rabbit hole….

In honor of Morgan Freeman, who turns 75 today, here’s a bit from my favorite thing he’s done. (Which is probably everybody‘s favorite thing he’s done, but…) Here’s the first scene where Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) starts to bend prison life to his will, manipulating prison guard Vernon Hadley (Clancy Brown), with Red Redding (Freeman) narrating. (Via.) HADLEY …so this shithead lawyer calls long distance from Texas, and he says, Byron Hadley? I say, yeah. He says, sorry to inform you, but your brother just died. YOUNGBLOOD Damn, Byron. Sorry to hear that. HADLEY I ain’t. He was an asshole.Down the rabbit hole….