- If you call in a robbery in progress, and the robbers have automatic weapons, and you hang around to watch, you will be LUCKY if you only get what’s coming to you. (44 minutes).
- If you are cool, your life has a banging soundtrack. If you are not, the soundtrack of your life is your neighbour’s dog, Viagra come-ons and shills for feminine protection. (all of them)
- You can kill a guy with a carrot, more than once, although you’ll need a new carrot. (Shootemup)
- You can kill multiple guys while having sex without making the baby cry or breaking your girl’s concentration (Shootemup).
- Princesses are grumpy (all of them). If she’s not grumpy she’s probably not a princess.
- People will do really whacked out things to get home (Wizard of Oz, Eric the Viking, ET).
- Horses don’t need food, guns reload themselves, nobody needs to take a dump at an awkward time and somebody’s always got a map. (all of them)
- The obesity epidemic isn’t happening. (all of them)
- There are no atheists. Everybody’s always thanking god, seeing a priest or minister, or going to weddings, funerals and christenings. (all of them)
- I learned to feel sorry for people who aren’t getting money for the product placements in their kitchens. (pretty much all of them),
- The walls pull away so you can get a better shot. (all of them)
- Natalie Portman, in addition to being able to act, looks fabulous with her clothes off (Darjeeling Limited).
- George Lucas should goddamned well retire. (and I need to prove my point because???)
- The Wachowskis only had one good movie in them because they STOLE the idea for the first one.
- The Wilhelm scream was by Sheb Woolley, and once you know about it, you hear it all the time.
- Video games don’t make good movies; they are just an extreme case of product placement.
- There are movies that nobody has seen that everybody refers to.
- Remakes should all have a generic title “The beancounter, the asswipe screenplay, the washed up actor and the witless director”.
- Steadicam oners are da bomb.
- Script first, direction second, editing third, lighting fourth, actors fifth, catering sixth.
- Whoever’s editing action movies these days needs remedial help. (Notice how bad the fight scene editing was for Dark Knight? It sucked hair off a mop).
- Vancouver City Hall is screwing up the local industry by being chuckleheads.
- Not a single movie has been made in the last thirty years that realistically depicted the use of firearms.
- Being a science fiction movie fan is a lot like Waiting for Godot.
- The ratings system is hopelessly fouled up, and the creeps responsible for it should be bastinadoed with licorice while listening to “It’s a Small World after All”.
- It chapped Spike Jones’ ass that the most money he ever made was on Inside Man. Mind you, it’s the best American caper film in years.
- Acting doesn’t run in families. Doing what your folks did for a living runs in families.
- Milton Berle had an enormous penis. I actually know this because I was working in a hotel he was staying at and he kept answering the room service knock with no trousers on and a big stogie in his face.
- Computers are simple to break into and all operating systems are easy-peasy and graphical. (Where do I start? The Net, the Matrix, Jurassic Park, Untraceable, and on and bloody on….)
- Your phone only rings when that chunk of dialogue is complete. (All police procedurals)
- You always have your phone ready to hand.
- Bad guys have lousy teeth. (All of them).
- There’s a picture of Johnny Depp in an attic somewhere. (It’s not just his bone structure, folks).
- Not all actors are gay, but that’s the way to bet. (This is a joke…. based on repeated and increasingly truncated conversations with Jeff).
- Set decoration is an art form and I salute its practitioners. (I’m thinking of True Blood).
- Heroes drive convertibles (this is actually a family saying, but I thought I’d throw it in.)
- If there’s been a movie that realistically depicted aircraft in the last 100 years, I’d sure like to hear about it.
- Virtually every actor I admire has a serious, serious work ethic. Screwoffs burn out or drop dead.
- I loathe continuity errors, and I’ve been catching them since I was ten.
- It’s just as hard to make a frothy comedy as a serious drama, but you don’t get praised for doing it well.
- The risk free life is not worth living. I would rather have a good bunch of people give me two thirds of a good movie trying to do something unusual than the usual gang of idiots playing it safe.
- I wish Charles Laughton had directed more movies. (Night of the Hunter was his only one).
- If the people who made SF movies spent more money on the scripts I would be happier.
- I really don’t like horror films – even psychological ones like The Haunting – and I only watch zombie movies as a concession to my brother. I realize my inability to stomach violence is a serious personal flaw, but there ya go.
- I am prepared to forgive a movie all kinds of lapses if it’s stylish.
- Graphic sex is not nearly as disturbing as graphic violence.
- Henry and June was HOT.
- Watching people smoke cigarettes is a drag, especially if they don’t smoke and they are faking it (Keira Knightley in Domino, William Petersen in Manhunter).
- When I want to watch a movie again, it’s almost always because of the nature and quality of the human relationships in it, not because it was visually stunning or had cool special effects.
- I really like long takes.
- I really like eating takes.
- Most of the time, the critics are wrong. When they aren’t wrong, they’ve still missed something.
- Anybody can walk into your hospital room, get hold of a doctor, get hold of a nurse, and have plenty of room to stand around and chat.
- It’s easy to be in the same room as a corpse.
- Your closest relatives can die and it doesn’t completely f*ck you up for months afterwards – you just keep on working and doing whatever you were doing.
- Work is just an excuse to hang out with your friends (why not, works for me).
- Men like to kiss way more than they let on in real life. Women- at least usually.
- Food happens instantly in restaurants.
58 things I learned from being a movie buff
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Ditto. Except that Natalie Portman’s accent in V for Vendetta was not great, and she doesn’t do well with shitty material (all her Star Wars appearances).
For 37 how about the dam busters. I have flown in lancasters, and about the only thing that was missing was people continually tearing their clothing, skin, etc. on the multitudinous sharp metallic edges on everything.
Loki and I debated #49, considering the movies we watch over and over. And 49 works for us, in spite of Loki’s earlier indication that he prefers plot-driven to character-driven tales.
He does prefer plot driven tales, but not if the characters are putzes.