Category: movies

my 100 movies: the second 50

So, a couple of nights ago, I posted a list of my favorite movies. (Inspired by lists from Webs of Significance and Falling Stones are Not Heavy) The lists that inspired me were of 100 movies, but in order that I might get to sleep that night, I focused on my favorite 50. Tonight I’m posting the next 50.

Here’s the thing. It was pretty easy to make a list of my real all-time favorite movies. The movies I have watched over and over. The ones I can quote from easily. The ones I will reach for as audio-visual comfort food.

The trouble is, that list was only about 40 or so long with my initial braindump. A bit more poking around (in my brain, DVD cabinet, and Amazon ratings) filled out another 30 or 40 pretty easily. It’s been harder deciding which others should fill out the rest of the 100.

It’s funny to realize that I’m choosing a few movies that I consider quite cheezy, and even some that I’m slightly embarrassed about. Meanwhile, I’m leaving off most of the greatest films ever made. (If I were to make a list of the best films I’ve ever seen, my list would be quite different.)

  1. 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
  2. 101 Dalmatians (1961)
  3. The Addams Family (1991)
  4. Addams Family Values (1993)
  5. Amélie (Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain) (2001)
  6. Back to the Future (1985)
  7. Batman Returns (1992)
  8. Beauty and the Beast (1991)
  9. A Bug’s Life (1998)
  10. Charlie’s Angels (2000)
  11. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
  12. Conspiracy Theory (1997)
  13. Dolores Claiborne (1995)
  14. Edward Scissorhands (1990)
  15. The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill, But Came Down a Mountain (1995)
  16. Ever After (1998)
  17. The Fisher King (1991)
  18. Gone with the Wind (1939)
  19. Heathers (1989)
  20. Iron Monkey (1993)
  21. Jurassic Park (1993)
  22. L.A. Story (1991)
  23. Ladyhawke (1985)
  24. Little Voice (1998)
  25. The Man Who Knew Too Little (1997)
  26. The Matchmaker (1997)
  27. Memento (2000)
  28. Monsters, Inc. (2001)
  29. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
  30. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
  31. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
  32. Peking Opera Blues (1986)
  33. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
  34. Pleasantville (1998)
  35. The Replacement Killers (1998)
  36. Roger and Me (1989)
  37. Roman Holiday (1953)
  38. Say Anything… (1989)
  39. The Sixth Sense (1999)
  40. Splash (1984)
  41. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
  42. Strange Days (1995)
  43. Strictly Ballroom (1992)
  44. Tank Girl (1995)
  45. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
  46. To Catch a Thief (1955)
  47. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
  48. The Truman Show (1998)
  49. Waiting for Guffman (1996)
  50. Wing Chun (1994)

my 100 movies: the first 50

A few weeks back, I saw a post by YTSL of Webs of Significance listing 100 movies “which have particularly impacted and/or impressed [her] over the years.” Not too surprisingly, this list inspired me to think about listing my own personal favorite movies. (YTSL had, in turn, been inspired by a list of movies at Falling Stones are Not Heavy of that author’s own 100 movies to which he felt a particularly strong connection.)

Seeing as it’s late at night, I will start by posting only 50 movies. This first half of my 100 movies includes my all-time favorite movies, though I have not ranked them here. I have instead followed YTSL’s lead and simply listed them alphabetically.

These movies are not necessarily all good movies (though many are great ones) but I have connected with them in some way. It amuses me to see the recurring themes in the movies I list: dark humor and paranoia, time distortion and surrealism, silliness and whimsy, as well as women kicking some ass. My weaknesses for costume dramas and musically-oriented movies are also revealed. Anyone notice any other trends?

  1. 12 Monkeys (1995)
  2. Amadeus (1984)
  3. Beetle Juice (1988)
  4. Best in Show (2000)
  5. The Big Lebowski (1998)
  6. Bob Roberts (1992)
  7. Brazil (1985)
  8. The Cable Guy (1996)
  9. Chasing Amy (1997)
  10. Clueless (1995)
  11. Cold Comfort Farm (1995)
  12. The Commitments (1991)
  13. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
  14. Dead Again (1991)
  15. Fargo (1996)
  16. The Fugitive (1993)
  17. The Full Monty (1997)
  18. Gosford Park (2001)
  19. Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)
  20. Groundhog Day (1993)
  21. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
  22. Lone Star (1996)
  23. The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
  24. Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
  25. Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
  26. Mystery Men (1999)
  27. Office Space (1999)
  28. The Princess Bride (1987)
  29. The Professional/Léon (1994)
  30. The Remains of the Day (1993)
  31. Run, Lola, Run (1998)
  32. The Secret of Roan Inish (1994)
  33. Serenity (2005)
  34. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
  35. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
  36. Shakespeare in Love (1998)
  37. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
  38. The Sound of Music (1965)
  39. Supercop (Police Story 3: Supercop) (1992)
  40. This is Spinal Tap (1984)
  41. Tremors (1990)
  42. Truly Madly Deeply (1990)
  43. The Truth About Cats and Dogs (1996)
  44. Unbreakable (2000)
  45. West Side Story (1961)
  46. Wet Hot American Summer (2001)
  47. When Harry Met Sally (1989)
  48. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
  49. Wolf (1994)
  50. Zero Effect (1998)

a sopping Thursday

It’s raining here today. Lots of rain. It’s a good day to bring out some umbrellas, so I give you a ThThTh list of umbrella things.¹

a selection of umbrellas

  • The Sopping Thursday, by Edward Gorey. This is one of my all-time favorite Gorey books. John and I have been known to send each other messages that are quotations from the book:
  • I have lost my umbrella.
  • I do not find my umbrella
  • I have been poked in the eye with an umbrella
  • None of these umbrellas will do

    • And perhaps our favorite:

    The child has somehow got shut inside its umbrella

  • Mary Poppins: The famed fictional nanny of books, stage and screen uses her wind-propelled umbrella as a mode of transportation. (I think that’s how it works, at least. I confess that I haven’t read the books, and this horror trailer recut video is the most I’ve seen of the Disney movie.)
  • John Steed. A character from the 60s British spy show The Avengers. Carrying a finely crafted traditional British umbrella is one of his trademarks.
  • James Smith & Sons, Umbrellas Ltd.: An umbrella store in London, established in 1830. A place to go if you would like to buy a finely crafted traditional British umbrella .

  • The Correct Way to Kill: An episode of The Avengers. The plot involves a lot of umbrellas, as well as an umbrella store. Also spies with bad fake Russian accents. A favorite quote, which must be spoken with a bad Russian accent is:

    What would a chiropodist want with a case of umbrellas?

  • Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964). A musical starring Catherine Deneuve, featuring an umbrella shop.
  • Chatri Chor/The Blue Umbrella (2005) An Indian movie based on the children’s book by Ruskin Bond. About a poor girl who gets an umbrella, which is then stolen by a shopkeeper.
  • Singin’ in the Rain (1952): The famous scene where Gene Kelly dances around in the rain with an umbrella (though generally not held over his head) singing “Singin’ in the Rain.”
  • Umbrella, a song by Innocence Mission (also the album title):

    You dance around with my umbrella.
    You dance around the obvious weaknesses.
    Around the room with my umbrella.
    You dance around the room with me.

  • let your smile be your umbrella: an expression meaning something like “let a good attitude keep your day from being totally crappy.” It’s probably good that the meaning is metaphorical, because let’s face it. A smile is pretty ineffectual at keeping you dry in the rain.
  • “Under the Umbrella of the United States”. This was a song that I remember singing in my Junior High chorus class as part of a series of jingoistic patriotic songs about America.²
  • umbrella superstitions: It is considered bad luck to open an umbrella indoors. Or give an umbrella as a gift. There are a few others, too.³
  • a Haitian riddle:

    Q: Three very large men are standing under a single little umbrella. But, not one of them gets wet. Why?⁴

  • little paper umbrellas: What can I say about them? They are little umbrellas. Made from brightly colored paper. Often used in tropical-esque cocktails. I really liked them when I was little.⁵


    • ———————-
    ¹ I’ve had this list in mind for a while, but I was saving it for a rainy day…

    ² The song was pretty awful, and I can’t find a record of it. Anyone else ever heard of it? (I fear it may have been written by the chorus teacher himself. And someday he may find my scathing review.)

    ³ My own superstition, if you want to call it that, is that carrying an umbrella with you will prevent the rain. At least, it rarely rains when I bring an umbrella, and I rarely have an umbrella with me when it does rain.

    ⁴ A: It’s not raining.

    ⁵ The umbrellas, that is. I didn’t so much get to try the cocktails…

    a chicken joke

      Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
      A: To get to the other Starbucks

    ——-

    This was a joke I made up a while back, inspired by a list of chicken jokes. I cracked myself up with it.

    However, recent news that Starbucks is closing 5% of their stores (especially those “unprofitable stores …being cannibalized by nearby Starbucks locations”) may make my joke obsolete. (Though at BU, some students were recently protesting the new Starbucks location, which is basically across the street from not one, but 2 nearby Starbucks locations…)

    And what will future generations think of this?


    (From Best in Show.)

    a butterfly collection

    A while back, I gave you a list of moths for a Themed Things Thursday list, and I said I’d get around to the other major set of lepidoptera shortly. So here is a collection of butterfly things, which I have carefully skewered with pins and lined up for your enjoyment.

      A Butterfly Collection

    1. butterfly collecting: a hobby that involves collecting specimens of butterflies, and typically pinning them to a board and displaying them under glass in rows. It was a particularly popular hobby during Victorian and Edwardian times.
    2. The Collector (1965) A movie about a butterfly collector who kidnaps a woman to add to his collection of creatures.

    3. butterfly net: a type of handheld net used for catching butterflies (often for a collection). The image of using oversized butterfly nets to catch people is sometimes used in cartoons (or the imagery is evoked in humor writing). Particularly when depicting the “men in white coats” in pursuit of an escapee from a mental institution. (cf: this, this, or this cartoon.)
    4. “The Butterfly”, a fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson. A tale of a butterfly seeking a flower to be his bride. Unsuccessfully. In the end, he gets caught by people and pinned down, a state he likens to marriage.
    5. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle. A picture book about a caterpillar who is hungry and eats a lot before becoming “a beautiful butterfly.” (Sorry, did I give away the ending?)
    6. Heimlich : a caterpillar (who is generally very hungry) from Pixar’s animated feature, A Bug’s Life. At the end of the movie, he emerges from his cocoon as a butterfly with wings disproportionatley small for his body, saying: “Finally, I’m a beautiful butterfly”?) (You can watch the scene on YouTube.)
    7. butterfly kiss: a nickname for the act of brushing one’s eyelashes against another person’s skin as an act of affection.
    8. In the Time of the Butterflies. A novel by Julia Alvarez about 4 sisters who participated in a resistance against a brutal dictator in the Dominican Republic. Their codename was “las Mariposas,” or “the Butterflies.” Also a 2001 TV movie based on the novel.
    9. butterflies in the stomach: an expression referring to temporary minor gastrointestinal distress triggered by stress, such as that due to an anticipated meeting or public performance. (Doesn’t that sound poetic?)

    10. The Monarch. A bumbling arch-villain from “The Venture Bros.”, a cartoon shown on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Wears a butterfly costume, as do his henchman.
    11. Madame Butterfly: an opera written by Giacomo Puccini about a Geisha in Nagasaki called “Butterfly.”
    12. “Butterfly”, a song by Weezer about catching a butterfly in a mason jar. It also makes reference to the opera Madame Butterfly, and is on the album Pinkerton, which is the name of the male protagonist from the opera.
    13. the butterfly effect:
      An idea from Chaos theory whereby minor events can trigger a chain reaction of other events, which can sometimes lead to big events. Such as the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings leading to a tornado changing its path. (Also a 2004 movie.)
    14. butterfly ballot: a voting ballot notorious from the 2000 US presidential election, as its confusing layout may have led some would-be Gore voters in Florida to mistakenly vote for Pat Buchanan.
    15. The Sinister Butterfly: “Nefariously fluttering from leaf to leaf.” John’s blog. Which he doesn’t update very often these days. But he has posted some great photos there before, as well as some other stuff that’s worth reading.

    ————————

    Butterfly collection image source: Worcester City Museums, UK. The Monarch image was found herehttp://cakerockstheparty.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/ncaa-heisman-trophy-avatars/.

    bucket list

    Late last year, a movie came out called Bucket List, which then inspired a bunch of people to write their own “bucket lists”. Somehow I missed all of it. However, having seen the movie poster hanging in a video store window a few days ago, I’ve had that title running through my head. Running through my head and collecting things in a little bucket, as it were. Things about buckets as it turns out. So I present to you a ThThTh list of buckets.

    A Bucket List

    1. kick the bucket: an expression meaning “keel over”, “bite the dust”, or “buy the farm”.
    2. bucket list: a list of things one hopes to accomplish before one’s death. (As in before one kicks the bucket.) The term may have originated with the screenplay from the movie (below).
    3. Bucket List (2007): a movie directed by Rob Reiner and starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. About 2 men who write a bucket list and work on accomplishing the items on the list. Said to be a tear-jerker. You can watch the trailer (YouTube).
    4. “There’s a hole in my bucket”: a folksong, possibly with German origins.
    5. mercy buckets: an English distortion of the French merci beaucoup, meaning “thank you much.”
    6. a drop in the bucket: an expression meaning “an inconsequential amount in relation to a larger quantity”.
    7. sweat buckets: an expression meaning “perspire copiously”
    8. Mr. Bucket: a game/toy (by Milton Bradley) from the early 90s. The commercial, (which you can watch on YouTube, if you like) had lyrics which apparently raised a few eyebrows:

      I’m Mr. Bucket put your balls in my top.
      I’m Mr. Bucket, out of my mouth they will pop…

    9. Buckethead: a musician noteworthy for performing with a bucket on his head.
    10. bucket drummers: percussionists, typically street performers, who use upended buckets (usually plastic paint buckets) as drums. Buckets are often supplemented with pots, pans, and other improvised instruments. There’s a blog on bucket drummers. You can also find a bunch of short clips on YouTube of some very impressive bucket drummers, like these guys:


    11. lolrus: A pinniped, usually a walrus, featured in a lolcat-style image. The captions of these typically feature commentary about buckets, especially the loss of buckets and the seeking of buckets. (Or, in the language of lol, buckits or bukkets.) To explore lolruses and their buckets (and to see the original), i can has cheezburger has the tag “bucket” for your convenience.

      funny pictures

    ———
    The picture at the top of the page is Phoebe with her bucket. Well, it’s small for a bucket. Really more of a pail, by comparison. (I’m sorry. I had to say it.)

    having my cake

    I got to have me some cake this week.¹ I ate it, too. And this cake-having inspired me to think about cake. So I’ll be serving up a list of cake-oriented things for this week’s ThThTh.

    Bon appétit!

    A Cake List

    1. Cakes are used for lots of holidays and celebratory events in many cultures. Some examples include birthday cakes, going away cakes at office parties, French bûches de Noël or German stollen at Christmas. Also…
    2. Wedding cakes. Usually elaborately decorated multi-tiered cakes meant to serve all the guests at a wedding. They can be quite tall, and easily knocked over or smashed for comedic effect in movies or sitcoms.
    3. stripper in a cake. A tradition (if it really happens outside of TV and movies) of having an exotic dancer jump out of a large cake-shaped container. (You can make your own, if you like.) (I toyed with making a list of movies/shows where you see a stripper cake, but could only remember “Under Siege,” where the stripper fell asleep in the cake. Anyone have any others?)
    4. sexy cakes. A sketch on Saturday Night Live with Patrick Stewart as a baker of cakes decorated with erotic images. That is, erotic if you have similar ideas to the baker as to what’s “sexy”. (The video seems not to be up on the SNL website, but you can read the transcript. Come on, go read it. It’s funny. Especially if you imagine Patrick Stewart’s dignified stentorian voice for the baker’s lines.)
    5. “Let them eat cake!” A phrase attributed to Marie-Antoinette, reflecting her insensitivity to the hungry masses who could not afford to buy bread. It was likely not really said by her. (And certainly not in English.) Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote of someone using a similar phrase under similar circumstances in 1767, several years before Marie-Antoinette even arrived in Versailles.

    6. the icing on the cake. An expression meaning an additional bonus, benefit, or other desirable thing. As in something good on top of something else that’s good.
    7. cupcake. A small individual serving-sized cake. Also an endearment.
    8. babycakes. Another, even cutesier, endearment. (Want to see something creepy? Check out this YouTube video of someone making a realistic sculpted baby cake. Perhaps not as deeply unsettling as bread made to look like dismembered body parts, but creepy nonentheless.)

    9. Pat-a-cake. (or Patty-cake). An English nursery rhyme. Also used for a clapping game.

      Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man.
      Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
      Pat it and roll it and mark it with “B”
      And put it in the oven for Baby and me.

    10. a piece of cake. An idiomatic expression meaning “easy.” As in “eating up all that chocolate was a piece of cake.”
    11. have your cake and eat it, too. An expression describing a desire to have things 2 different ways that are not compatible. More along the lines of “save your cake and eat it too.”
    12. takes the cake. An expression meaning “the most extreme example,” such as the winner of a contest or other comparison. As in “I thought Martin was a geek, but his brother Andy really takes the cake.”
    13. Cakewalk. A game, set to music, where the winner gets win a cake. I hadn’t realized it had origins as an actual dance:

      Cakewalk is a traditional African American form of music and dance which originated among slaves in the Southern United States. The form was originally known as the chalk line walk; it takes its name from competitions slaveholders sometimes held, in which they offered slices of hoecake as prizes for the best dancers.[1] It has since evolved from a parody of ballroom dancing to a “fun fair” like dance where participants dance in a circle in the hopes of winning a free cake.

    14. Cake. A band. My favorite song of theirs is probably their cover of Gloria Gaynor’s “I will survive.”

    —–

    ¹ Actually, what I technically had was a celebratory fresh fruit tart, with a preamble of a couple of donuts holding some candles. But these were symbolically cake:

    Dude, where’s my chocolate?

    Okay, okay. I’m terribly slow to get around to things. Last week I put up a post wherein I announced that I would randomly select a commenter to receive a box of Brazilian chocolate in the mail. The deadline to enter this drawing was almost a freakin’ week ago, and I still haven’t announced a winner. But here’s the problem: once I announce the winner, I’ll feel compelled to act upon that announcement, and get my lazy ass over to the post office.

    So here goes. We have a winner! (Ding ding ding!)

    Madame Meow of
    A Daily Dose of Zen Sarcasm

    …is not the winner!

     
    Oh, no, wait. She is the winner. (Ding ding ding!)

    And as soon I get her snail mail address, you can bet that I’ll be heading right over the post office. Within the fortnight. (I also have a return gift for the lovely Dragonfly, who got the chocolate ball rolling.)

    As a consolation prize for those of you not soon to receive chocolate in the mail, I offer you this scene, in honor of the meow-ness of the winner’s name. Meow! (It’s from the movie Super Troopers.)

    Update:
    Because Flutter asked about it (“um where is the chocolate?”), I will share some more details on the chocolate in question. It is currently on my kitchen counter, all boxed up and addressed and everything. It almost made it to the post office, but I ran out of time. I managed to get a couple of photos before I closed up the boxes.

    Mme. Meow gets this batch: a box of various Garoto brand filled chocolates, a couple of small candy bars, and a whopping big bar of Lacta’s Diamante Negro (“black diamond”), which is milk chocolate with some sort of crunchy cashew bits.

    Dragonfly, who has expressed a desire to visit South America, gets the slightly more tropical Garoto mix, which includes some banana and coconut chocolates, as well as two candy bars and a roll of guava cookies (which are not chocolate, but looked good).

    leaping lepidoptera!

    Here we are, moving from Spring towards Summer up here in the Northern Hemisphere. The days are getting longer, the trees are getting leafier, and the bugs are coming out in force. Excitingly for many small people, this includes large numbers of caterpillars. Around here, we get lots of Eastern tent caterpillars, fairly big brown hairy things with patterns of black stripes and blue dots. It is not uncommon to hear a gleeful cry of “I found a cater-pidder!” from Ms. Phoebe.

    This army of furry future moths¹ has inspired this week’s moth ThThTh list.²

    1. Arthur: The Tick‘s sidekick. Wears a white moth suit in the comics, cartoon and live action TV show.
    2. Gypsy Moth, a moth character from A Bug’s Life voiced by Madeline Kahn
    3. Luna Moth, a fictional comic book character from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon. That is to say, the fictional characters in the novel created a comic book character named Luna Moth, a mothy superhero. (I just saw that there is going to be a movie based on the book. It was a really good book by the way. You should read it.)
    4. The giant luna moth from Dr. Dolittle. Carries Dr. Dolittle back to England at the end of the movie. (I’m not sure if the moth is in any of the books.)
    5. Mothra/Mosura: a (fictional) giant moth monster. Fought with Godzilla in a few movies, like Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) and Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992)

    6. Silence of the Lambs (1991). The serial killer in the movie raises imported Death’s-head hawk moths, which are noteworthy for the skull-like pattern that appears on their back. The moths shown in the movie were apparently actually another type of moth, in costume.
    7. silk A fabric. The fibers come from silk worms, which are actually caterpillars of a moth that is now completely domesticated. The cocoons are boiled to unravel the long, continuous strand of silk produced by the catepillar. The boiling must happen before the moth emerges, as the moth would otherwise make a hole, making the fibers too short.
    8. Boiled silkworms are eaten in some places in the world. In Korea, it’s called beondegi.³
    9. The Moth, an episode of Lost.⁴
    10. The Moth, by Aimee Mann. A song:
    11. Bedtime for Frances, by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Garth Williams. A picturebook about a little badger who has trouble going to sleep, and imagines all sorts of possible dangers and adventures. It ends with her deciding that a moth going “bump and thump” against her bedroom window is not a real threat, so she goes to sleep.

    ——————–
    ¹ Can I mention that I have a bit of a moth phobia? Maybe I’ll share it later.

    ² I was going to include butterflies, too, but the list was getting out of hand, and I do need to get some work done tonight. Also sleep. So perhaps butterflies will flutter back this way next week or so.

    ³ A friend of mine from college was somewhat scarred by having tried them as a child when visiting Korea. There was a certain kind of carob-flavored soymilk I got which she couldn’t stomach, as the flavor reminded her of beondegi.

    ⁴ I’ve never actually seen Lost…