It’s a slow Friday night and once again boredom has hit him until I came upon a great idea. What better way to relieve myself of this boredom than to watch one of the funniest moments in NFL history. It also happens to be one of the most embarrassing moments for the NY Jets, their fans and their hapless and useless of a starting quarterback Mark Sanchez.
The scene is straight out of the late season game between heated AFC East rivals New England Patriots and the NY Jets. What makes this a favorite scene of mine even though I’m a diehard San Francisco 49ers fan is the fact that it’s a sequence that never gets old and continues to entertain.
Released in 1970, Zabriskie Point was the great Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni’s attempt to make the definitive film about both America and the counterculture. While most critics feel that Antonioni failed on both counts, it is also generally agreed that he captured some beautiful images of an America struggling to definite itself culturally.
The film ends with one of Antonioni’s most iconic images as hippie-turned-revolutionary Daria Halprin watches as her lover’s house explodes. Is what Daria sees real or is she just fantasizing about the end of capitalism? Antonioni leaves the answer up to the viewer.
First released in 2006, Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly is one of the unacknowledged great films of the past ten years. The scene below, featuring Rory Cochrane as the hapless Charles Freck, is all the stronger for being adapted almost word-for-word from Philip K. Dick’s source novel.
This scene (which, be warned, is a huge spoiler) is from the original Django (1966) and features the one and only Franco Nero. If you liked Django Unchained, you’ll love Django.
As I sit here writing this, I am the most tired girl in the world but I could not let this day pass without sharing one of my favorite dance scenes. In this romantic scene from the infamous environmental “horror” film Birdemic, our main characters end a perfect day by dancing to a song called Hanging Out With My Family.
News that the sequel to Eastern Promises was one of the few pieces of news that really bummed me out when it made the rounds late 2012. The first film was one of my top ten for 2007 and consider it one of the better films about organized crime in the 21st century. A sequel to this film wasn’t needed, but most fans of the film wanted one just to see a furthering of the storyline between Viggo Mortensen’s character and that of Vincent Cassel’s character.
While the sequel may not be happening there’s still hope that it will get resuscitated in the future. Until that happens let’s take a look at what has to be one of the most realistic fight scenes on film. It’s the infamous (or famous depending on how you feel about the scene) Russian bath house scene near the end of the film. The scene sees Viggo Mortensen’s character of Nikolai Luzhin set upon by a couple of Chechen hitmen in the bath house where he proceeds to fight for his life in the most vulnerable fashion anyone can ever find themselves in.
Cronenberg has always been one of my favorite filmmakers and I continue to believe that his work body of work throughout his career puts him in the upper echelon, if not the elite level, of filmmakers living and working today. This fight scene has nothing glamorous about it. The cool factor that some attribute to the scene just emphasizes Cronenberg’s recent observation about the hypocrisy of those who denounce violence yet look at the violence he creates on film and call it art.
I consider this a scene I love just for the base simplicity of the scene itself. It’s primal and almost Darwinian in the lengths a person will go through to keep themselves alive for one second more. The scene also reminds me why Viggo Mortensen remains one of this era’s most underrated and greatest actors. Yes, it’s just a fight scene, but he gives so much into making it authentic that one could almost believe that his life was in danger and he did the fight for real (in fact Mortensen did injure himself so much during the several takes of the scene that his bruises afterwards became a problem for the make-up department who had to apply his vory v zakone tattoos every day).
Yesterday, Arleigh shared the opening of John Woo’s The Killer. For today’s scene that I love, I’m going to do the opposite and share the final five minutes of the 1975 exploitation film Trip With The Teacher.
Why is this a scene that I love? Well, first off, you have to understand that Trip With The Teacher is a drive-in film from the 1970s and the final five minutes really are the epitome of low-budget 1970s cinema. From the false feel of the happy ending to the insanely catchy (and borderline annoying) closing music, Trip With The Teacher feels like it should be in a time capsule.
However, the main reason why I love the end of Trip With The Teacher is because of what happens after the credits. We get a montage of scenes featuring (and identifying) the film’s cast. I love these type of cast montages because, while watching these randomly selected scenes and listening to these film’s closing music, it’s always tempting to imagine that these scenes have all been taken from a different, better film. As such, you can take these random scenes and imagine the film that they could have been taken from.
With Veteran’s Day coming to a close I would just like to share a scene that encompasses the sort of people that make up the men and women of our military. While this scene is from Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan I think the sentiment shared by Capt. Miller to his squad works just as well today as we find more and more of our country’s civilians being called in to do their military duty as part of the nation’s Reserve Force.
Yes, the military now is an all-volunteer one, but it doesn’t count those men and women who make up the reservists force. These soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors have done their tour of active duty and decided to join the reserve force on a part-time basis. They do this knowing that when the time comes they might be called to answer the call from the country’s military to take up their uniform once again and deploy to a war zone as they have done so for the past decade in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These are doctors, police men and women, lawyers, teachers, construction workers and men and women from every walk of life.
I know that it’s not popular to venerate and admire these people in today’s day and age, because to do so means people like myself and others glorify war and against peace. People have become cynical to the point that they deride these people for getting themselves in the predicament of leaving behind their families and jobs to fight for a war they might not believe in. These people don’t understand the sacrifice and will to do their duty for their country even if its leaders might fail them in the end.
It’s not just soldiers of the US I speak to about celebrating but every man and woman brave and dedicated enough to do their job either as a volunteer or as part of their nation’s conscription call. It’s these very same people who understand the real cost of war and the first to wish for peace, but until the time comes when they’re not needed anymore they will always answer the call to do their duty.
Through the Shattered Lens 