Tag: Geek Stuff

(Updated below, and updated again.)

Here are thirteen first lines of spoken dialogue from some movies I like a lot. Try and guess the titles.

1. “Whenever I get gloomy about the state of the world, I think of the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport.”

2. “Echo Three to Echo Seven! Han old buddy, do you read me?”

3. “I’ve been saying for years, sir, that our special equipment was obsolete; and now, computer analysis reveals an entirely new approach: Miniaturization.”

4. “With the coming of the Second World War, many eyes in imprisoned Europe turned hopefully, or desperately, toward the freedom of the Americas.”

5. “The poison is still fresh, three days. The Hovitos are near.”

6. “I’m just going to get some flowers, dear. I’ll be back in twenty minutes. It’s tulip season today. I’m so happy.”

7. “Liberty’s moving.”

8. “Sixty knots? No way, Barnes.”

9. “In ancient times, the land lay covered in forests, where, from ages long past, dwelt the spirits of the gods.”

10. “I don’t feel anything.”

11. “The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the Earth. I smell it in the air.”

12. “T minus six zero three and holding, laser positive, latch compressors.”

13. “Freddy, go and find a cab.”

Guess. I dare you. Heh!

UPDATE 2-24-07: As of this morning, Nos. 6, 9, 10, 12, and 13 remain unidentified. Answers will be posted tomorrow morning.

UPDATE II 2-25-07: Below are the answers, in pseudo-invisitext, so you’ll have to highlight them to read them (unless you’ve got great eyes).

1. Love, Actually
2. Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
3. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
4. Casablanca
5. Raiders of the Lost Ark
6. As Good As It Gets
7. The American President
8. The Abyss
9. Princess Mononoke (English dub)
10. Say Anything
11. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
12. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eighth Dimension
13. My Fair Lady

And there you go.

Share This Post

Some geek-type stuff to launch the weekend:

:: I kind of liked this quiz, because not only does it tell you which superhero you are, it also breaks out a bunch of others you could be. (Although as much as I love Wonder Woman, I don’t much see how I could be her, since I’m a dude and stuff.)

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 85% Hulk 75% Robin 68% Iron Man 65% Catwoman 55% Supergirl 53% The Flash 50% Green Lantern 45% Superman 45% Wonder Woman 38% Batman 35%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Spiderman, eh? Fine by me!

:: Here’s an article about the ratings-crash of LOST. I no longer watch the show, having quickly grown bored with it in Season One. What interests me is the way the show is constantly mentioned in the same breath as The X-Files, with the earlier show continually being cited as an example of a mystery-mytharc type of show petering out in an unsatisfying way. And yes, TXF certainly did that, but it’s worth noting that TXF managed to go on for nine seasons, surviving far longer than LOST‘s current three. (From what I’ve read in the past, LOST is almost certain to go away after its fifth year, if the ratings allow it to survive even that long.)

Why did TXF go on so long? Well, a few reasons — for most of its run it focused on the chemistry between two characters, as opposed to the large cast that inhabits LOST, it was able to tell stories that were a lot more varied than sticking to a single island (character flashbacks notwithstanding), and most importantly, for all the invective thrown at TXF for the way its internal mytharc was eventually mishandled, TXF just didn’t do mytharc all that often. Over nine seasons the show produced around 180 total episodes, with only around 60 of those actively advancing the mytharc (and that’s depending on how you count the mytharc episodes in the first place — is “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man” a mytharc episode at all?). LOST seems to be all-mytharc, all-the-time. (I may be wrong here, of course, since I stopped watching a long time ago, but back in the 90s, FOX only felt it necessary to air a “Mytharc summation” TXF special once, whereas it seems that ABC has to do this for LOST twice a season.)

:: I’ve probably linked this before, but it’s worth doing so again: Wil Wheaton is slowly blogging his way through watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. His write-ups of each episode are hilarious; for instance, from his writeup of “The Last Outpost” (when we first meet the Ferengi):

Data says Ferengi are like traders, and explains this with the most obvious contemporary reference: Yankee traders from 18th century America. This indicates that, in the 24th century, the traditional practice of using 400 year-old comparisons is still in vogue, like when you’re stuck in traffic on the freeway, and you say, “Man, this is just like Vasco de Gama trying to go around the Cape of Good Hope!”

Even better, his introspective ruminations on the part he played on TNG are fascinating. Here’s an excerpt from what he says about the episode “The Battle” (that would be the one where Picard is being mind-controlled by a Ferengi captain who has a personal axe to grind with Our Dear Captain):

I haven’t watched this episode in over a decade, but it’s probably one of the most important for me to see, because it clearly illustrates exactly why Wesley Crusher went from mildly annoying to vehemently hated character so quickly: First of all, acting ensign or not, having Wesley rush into the middle of the Bridge and effectively tell Riker, “Hey, I figured this out before you all did because I’m so fucking smart” is quite possibly the worst way to help the audience accept that this kid is going to be part of the main crew.

I never loathed Wesley as much as many other fans did, but it did get annoying when all these Starfleet personnel would turn out to be too stupid to figure out what’s going on. It would have been helpful to have an episode where Wesley bursts onto the bridge and says, “Hey, I figured it out! You need to…oh, you’ve already done that. OK, but next make sure you…oh, you’re on that, too. OK, I’m gonna go back to my room.”

:: The Disney Corp. has lost a legal battle over the ownership or some other rights issue pertaining to Winnie the Pooh. Maybe we can finally start tilting back in favor of the idea of public domain over the next decade or two? (And maybe someone who understands the issues involved in that case I linked can sum up what happened?)

Share This Post

AICN reports that the great visual effects artist Peter Ellenshaw has died. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, check out his filmography. You almost certainly know his work.

Share This Post

Via Jason Bennion I see a list of Fifteen geek movies to see before you die. Which ones have I seen? The ones in bold, of course:

Brazil (I can only count this by virtue of equating “seen” with “having been in the same room when it was on”. It was so long ago that I remember nothing from the movie. In fact, I may even be thinking of the wrong movie entirely. So on second thought, scratch that.)

The Matrix (Loved it when it came out. I liked it a little less every time I watched it afterwards. I got the second one from the library a while back, and I actually fell asleep in the first half hour, and it wasn’t one of those nights when I had gone to work at 5:00 a.m., either. I’ve never looked back, either. For additional hatin’ on The Matrix, check out 50 reasons to reject The Matrix, which includes the following:

You’ve worked as a policeman your whole life, protecting the innocent, enforcing the law. You retire with honors, then take a job as a security guard, working the metal detector on the ground floor of a skyscraper in order to help pay for your wife’s arthritis medication. You’re sitting there, on a slow day, reading your newspaper, when a girl walks in wearing a trenchcoat. She issues no demands, no warnings, no “freeze” or “drop your gun.” She just tears you in half with a spray of machine-gun fire, then does cartwheels along the walls while killing all your friends.

The Fifth Element (Good movie, but man, is it weird. And I’ve never understood people who insist that this movie is a great work of genius, with that unimaginably irritating character in it, and yet also tell me that Jar Jar Binks is too evil to let stand.)

Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (I suppose, but I still think it’s overrated. But hey, KHAAAANNN!)

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Good movie and all, but is it really indispensible geek viewing? Really?)

Serenity (Out of purism, I won’t watch this until I’ve seen all of Firefly. I know they say you don’t have to have seen the show to grok the movie, but I’m gonna do it right.)

Dark City

12 Monkeys (I liked it a lot. But I have to be in a special mood for Terry Gilliam. Same as I have to be in a special mood for Wild Turkey jello shots.)

Shaun of the Dead (You know, I like reading horror, but I’m not a great fan of movie horror.)

Darkman (Wow! One of the funnest nights ever in college involved this movie. We did one of our “Three movies and a bunch of beers” nights, and this one was the second movie. Most times the second movie ended up being the most fun, since that movie always occupied the “sweet spot” when we’d consumed enough beer to understand the plot and still laugh uproariously at horribly inappropriate stuff, like when the bad guy chastises an underling by cutting off his fingers with a cigar clipper, or when the hero coerces a baddie to give him information under threat of death — and then proceeds to kill the guy anyway. “Wait! I told you what I knew!” “I know you did — but let’s pretend you didn’t!” Oh, and Liam Neeson rocks.)

Army of Darkness

War Games (Incidentally, this was the last time I liked Matthew Broderick in anything. And even then I didn’t like him that much. A nerd like that, going out with Ally Sheedy? GAHHH!)

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Well, duh! And check out the complete script, which includes a lot of different stuff from what actually ended up in the finished movie. For instance, here’s a bit that would have taken place just after the Bridge of Death, when Arthur and Bedevere are coming to the boat that will take them to the Castle Aggghhhhh:

Suddenly the air is filled with ethereal music, and out of the mist appears a wonderful barge silently and slowly drifting towards them. They gaze in wonder. The mysterious boat comes to where they are standing. As if bewitched, they find themselves drawing closer to the boat. As they are about to step in, a ragged figure looks up at them.

BOATKEEPER: (he is the same as the BRIDGEKEEPER and the SOOTHSAYER) He who would cross the Sea if Fate, must answer me these questions twenty-eight.

He fixes them with a baleful eye, ARTHUR and BEDEVERE exchange glances, then turn, with minds made up, pick him up bodily and throw him in the water. They climb into the boat and the boat moves off into the mist

Ni!)

Office Space (They said I could keep my radio at a reasonable volume.)

Repo Man (I don’t know the first thing about this movie!)

Jason points out a number of movies that could also be considered “Essential Geek viewing”; I’d add The Abyss and Superman to the list. Another? Well, it’s not a SF or horror flick, but neither is Office Space, and I’ve never met a single person that I held to be a Geek in Good Standing who hadn’t seen The Karate Kid.

Share This Post

John’s got a brief post in which he describes a TV show moment that makes him cry. Since I myself have been known to blubber like a baby at certain movies and TV shows, I figure, why not make a list of such moments? (It’s not like this is a masculine blog or anything; I mean, geez, look at the picture at the top!)

:: Titanic. OK, I never found this movie to be the overwhelming emotional experience that many folks did, and Jack’s frigid and wet demise never made me tear up at all, but that brief bit where the mother in steerage is telling her two kids their last bedtime story before the waters swirl around them, and then the moment just after that when the elderly first-class couple is on their bed for the last time, always gets me. (Yes, I still like Titanic. I’ve never seen so befuddling an example of something so universally beloved at one point becoming so universally loathed a bit later on.)

:: Field of Dreams. When the catcher removes his mask, and Ray Kinsella realizes just who he is and just why he’s been doing all this weird stuff — oh, crap, where’s my Kleenex?

:: Back when ER didn’t suck, it could usually be counted on to have one big tear-jerking scene per year. The “Love’s Labor Lost” episode (Dr. Greene saves the baby but the mom dies) was one such episode; then there was the second season episode when one of the two ambulance-driver dudes died of the burns he suffered in a fire. I always found the episode where Dr. Greene died overdone — it was like the producers were saying, “You will cry now. Cry, damn you! CRY!!!” — but the episode before that one really got me. That was when, at the beginning of the episode, Dr. Carter is reading a letter to the ER staff from Dr. Greene, and then at the bottom, he gets to the note that Elizabeth had added to the end: “Mark died this morning.” The rest of the episode tracks everyone’s reaction to the news, and it ends with a flash-forward by about six months or so — and the last letter of Dr. Greene is still pinned to the bulletin board.

:: OK, I gotta mention the Little House on the Prairie episode when Laura Ingalls gets jealous over the attention being paid to her baby brother, and prays for the baby to die, which he then does. And then Laura runs away from home and goes up on top of this really high mountain (an oddly high point, given that the Ingalls family is supposed to be living in the flatlands of Minnesota, but who cares), whereupon she meets an angel played by Ernest Borgnine. While Laura’s learning all kinds of wisdom from the angelic Borgnine, Pa and Mr. Edwards are frantically searching for her. Yes, it’s exactly as maudlin as it sounds, but that moment at the end when Pa finally arrives…and then Laura turns to introduce her new friend, but he isn’t there…shit, I need more Kleenex.

:: The West Wing: when Aaron Sorkin was really on top of his shit, he could get me like nobody else. The opening minutes of the second-season premier, “In the Shadow of Two Gunmen”, gets me every time, when Toby starts speaking to Josh and then realizes he’s bleeding profusely from his gunshot wounds. “Two Cathedrals” is a tough one, too, as Jed Bartlet comes to grips with Mrs. Landingham’s death and his big MS problem. But nothing got me quite as much as the scene in “25”, Aaron Sorkin’s last episode of the show, when Toby spoke to his newly-born twins.

:: I don’t recall actually tearing up during the second half of Star Wars Episode III, but I definitely felt like I’d been punched in the gut as Anakin’s betrayal of the Jedi starts to play out. The look on Plo Koon’s face as he realizes that the clone troopers are now training their blasters on him is devastating.

:: The Shawshank Redemption: “I hope the Pacific is as blue as it is in my dreams…I hope.” Wow.

OK, that’s about it. I could go on, though.

Share This Post