Always known to be the quirky, eccentric personality, during last night’s broadcast of the 86th Academy Awards, Bill Murray provided a fitting, spontaneous tribute to his long-time friends and collaborator Harold Ramis.
Harold Ramis passed away last week at the age of 69 and Murray’s on-stage tribute to his friend must’ve brought not just smiles and applause from the crowd but some tears as well.
Whatever one thinks of last night’s show this was one moment that made it all worth watching.
Hi everyone! Do you know what today is?
That’s right — it’s Oscar Day!
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.
From Stripes.
Harold Ramis, R.I.P.
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.
I was shocked and saddened to learn, earlier tonight, about the tragic death of actor Paul Walker. Though Paul is probably best known for appearing in The Fast and Furious Films, he also appeared in several other films, including 1999’s She’s All That.
Below, you’ll find my favorite scene from She’s All That. And yes, it does involve dancing. I was either 13 or 14 when I first saw She’s All That and I have to say that it gave me a lot of very unrealistic expectations about high school. Imagine my disappointment when I went to my first prom and discovered that, despite the best efforts of both the DJ and myself, hardly anyone was actually interested in breaking out into a carefully choreographed dance routine!
But, I guess that’s why we have the movies…
“Gentlemen, aim for their tires.”
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.
Through the Shattered Lens 