In order to prepare for my favorite holiday, I figured that I would go on YouTube and look at a few old Oscar production numbers. In doing so, I came across the infamous Rob Lowe/Snow White dance number that opened the 1989 Academy Awards. I was only three years old when this was first broadcast but I still like to think that, as this endless dance number was broadcast live across the world, I was sitting in front of the TV and telling myself that I could have done a better job with the choreography.
Incidentally, Snow White was played by an actress named Mary Ellen Bowman. I have no idea if she’s a relative.
Latest “Scenes I Love” comes courtesy of Quentin Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson.
There’s nothing else to say other than: “AK-47, the very best there is. When you absolutely, positively, got to kill every motherfucker in the room; accept no substitutes.”
Now, that is true since the venerable rifle designed by the late and great Mikhail Kalashnikov sprays all over the place like a freshman seeing a naked girl live for the very first time. Now, his comments about the .45 was a tad misleading. The .45 will jam once in awhile, but not more than any other firearm and the fact it’s still one of the most sought after and popular handguns in the world speaks to the creative genius that is John Browning.
1993’s In the Line of Fire was and continues to be one of my favorite action-thrillers. What’s not to like about a film that has John Malkovich playing a rogue and mentally-unstable CIA assassin who has decided that he wants to assassinate the current President of the United States. Then there’s Clint Eastwood as the last living Secret Service agent who failed to prevent Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas.
The film was directed by Wolfgang Petersen and was both tense and thrilling in equal amounts. Yet, the film also took some time to develop the relationship between Eastwood’s aging Secret Service agent with a much younger, but capable agent played by Rene Russo. This is a relationship that starts off as quite adversarial but one that gradually moves past that into one of respect then romance.
It was the scene with the two characters taking a break from the dangers of their job to debate the role of women in the Secret Service. It makes Eastwood’s character sound very old-fashioned and while it annoys Russo’s character to no end there’s a sort of playful and flirty byplay between the two throughout the scene. It’s a scene that culminates with Eastwood’s character predicting through years of experience that Russo’s agent character has shown interest in him and thus planting the seeds of a budding romance.
This is the scene I’ve chosen to continue the march towards next week’s Valentines Day.
I’ve been pretty open about my love for anime and, of late, my love for the incredibly funny and irrelevant anime series Nichijou.
This is a series where it runs on it’s own logic that may not makes sense to us, but definitely adds to the hilarious scenes, moments and overall tone of the show. This particular scene is from episode 16 and has Yukko visiting the new coffee shop to try the place out. Ok, nothing funny about it so far, but this is no ordinary coffee shop but one that serves all those fancy espresso type drinks.
So, this scene just ends up even more hilarious when one thinks of their very first time entering a Starbucks or an espresso cafe having no idea how to order those fancy drinks. For most people not in their 20’s coffee was either black or with cream and served small, medium or large. We didn’t know what that “Tall” meant small or that “Grande” meant medium and don’t even get me started on “Venti”.
This scene just brought back memories of seeing people new to such coffee houses trying to order their coffee and acting as if they know what they’re doing when everyone around them, especially the barista, knows they have no clue what’s going on.
Forbidden Planet is on TCM right now, which gives me the perfect excuse to share this scene from the film. I don’t care what anybody else says — that’s one scary monster!
So, this year, the toadsuckers at NBC (the same people who put Whitney on the air and who fired Dan Harmon from Community) decided to bump the annual showing of It’s A Wonderful Life on December 14th so that they could re-air the Carrie Underwood version of The Sound of Music.
Really, NBC? The remake of The Sound of Music may have gotten great rating when it first aired but it wasn’t that good. In fact, it was downright annoying at times. Meanwhile, nearly 70 years after it was first released, It’s A Wonderful Life remains a classic.
With that in mind, here’s one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies. And yes, it is a dance scene.
NBC will air It’s A Wonderful Life on December 20th.
Drive Angry came out in early 2011 and it was one of those films which everyone thought was going to flop and flop hard. It did flop like a dying carp on a desert dune, but it was also one of the most fun flicks of the year. People just didn’t get what the film was about and trying to do. I, for one, was of the minority that got “it”.
This film starring Nicolas Cage going the subdued crazy route had so many funny and WTF sequences that it was difficult just to pick one, but pick one I shall.
I think the sequence where William Fichtner’s supernatural bounty hunter, The Accountant, chasing and assisting the undead John Milton on his vengeance ride against a Satanic cult leader, and to the tune of the KC and The Sunshine Band’s “That The Way (I Like It)” classic song was a major favorite. It emphasized just how over-the-top Drive Angry turned out to be, but in a fun and hilarious way. William Fichtner just chews the scenery in this scene. I also like how Tom Atkins, himself a veteran of grindhouse flicks, matches Fichtner chew for chew.
Weekend was busy, but still found time to catch a few favorite flicks on TV. One of these happened to be the classic early 90’s western Tombstone starring Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer. I already profiled my favorite scene from this film awhile back, but as I watched the film again I realized there was another sequence that totally made the film for me.
So, the latest “Scenes I Love’ once again comes from Tombstone and it does a great job in showing the darker and vengeful side of Wyatt Earp as played by Kurt Russell. The first scene I loved about this film was more about the cool, calm and badass Wyatt Earp who can spot a bullshitter, blowhard, coward from a miles away. This scene shows Earp in his scary, God’s Wrath mode as he begins his vendetta ride against the Clantons and the Cowboys.
Just love the look of fire and brimstone from Russell’s eyes as he confronts a cowed Ike Clanton and lets him know what he has planned for his clan and group. Better yet, in addition to Kilmer’s Doc Holliday, we also see a younger Michael Rooker aka Merle Dixon. He plays one of the members in Earp’s posse.
Tuesday night was election night so, of course, everyone on twitter was talking about politics. People were making fun of Chris Christie’s weight, accusing Barack Obama of being a communist, and going on and on about the Tea Party. Some of them were very liberal and some of them were very conservative and quite a few of them made a big deal about being in the middle. However, the one thing that many of them had in common was that, regardless of what they believed, they were convinced that they had the best plan for America and that anyone who disagreed with them had to be idiotic, evil, or both.
That, by the way, is why I tend to stay off of twitter whenever there’s something political going on. It’s far too stressful having to deal with so many people convinced that tomorrow belongs exclusively to them.
Myself, I believe in freedom of choice and the importance of the individual. That’s one reason why twitter bothers me when it comes to politics. Everyone has something to say but nobody says it as an individual. Instead, there’s a mob mentality that I find difficult to take.
Today’s scene that I love is all about that political mob mentality.
Bob Fosse’s 1972 film Cabaret takes place in pre-World War II Nazi Germany. In this scene, writer Brian (Michael York) and the decadent aristocrat Max (Helmut Griem) visit a Berlin beer garden. As they discuss their own personal concerns, they are interrupted by a boy who singing a patriotic song called “Tomorrow Belongs To Me.”
Fosse begins the song with a close-up of the boy’s angelic face, only gradually moving the camera to reveal that the boy is dressed in the uniform of the Hitler youth. As the boy’s singing steadily grows more and more strident, the other Germans at the beer garden join in. As more and more voices join in, the song goes from being hopeful and optimistic to being ominous and threatening.
Most significantly, only one old man declines to join in. Instead, that man can only watch the scene with a weary sadness that indicates that he’s survived enough to know better.
It’s a powerful and disturbing scene and one that serves as a powerful warning against the political mob mentality.
Through the Shattered Lens 