"mein name ist otto" / "otto? el piloto?"
Excellencies! We've been mighty artsy lately. But none of that - the results of the movie game of Spring (yes, Spring - it's totally here) 2006.
(Lj-cut still doesn't work correctly; apologies.)
1. Quills - Awesome film, came out while I was a sophomore in high school, methinks. This is after the Marquis, deprived of paper, writes an erotic tale directly upon his clothing. 2 people guessed correctly.
2. Igby Goes Down - Russel is a performance artist. 2, but a different 2.
3. It Happened One Night - Great scene, which was the inspiration for the creation of Bugs Bunny some time later. The same 2 from the one before.
4. Bon Voyage - First of the fairly unfair options - I've yet to meet anyone who has seen this film and hasn't spent large part of their life studying French. It could be a coincidence, but shrug. It's great though, and humorously deals with the Nazi invasion of France during WWII. 1 person.
5. Orlando - Scene right before Lord Ambassador Orlando turns into Lady Ambassador Orlando, to add curiosity to the fact that he/she had already having lived well past what would have been considered normal, and with remarkable preservation as well. Hurrah! Tilda Swinton; Hurrah! the 2 who got it (well done, because it's fucking awesome). Different 2 by now, of course.
6. Les Triplettes de Belleville - 5 got this one, hurrah! Josephine Baker, Django Reinhardt, and Gene Kelley being eaten by a shoe all dominate this particular scene.
7. Todo Sobre Mi Madre - This was the least obvious shot I could find, which is good, from the beginning of the film. 3 got it (Ali named it, but unfortunately not for #7.)
8. Young Frankenstein - To be honest, I wanted a shot of Frau Blücher, but all the one's I could find were close-ups which really would have been to difficult to guess (and putting the quote "I am...Frau Blücher!" [Horse Neighing] would have been way to obvious). 7 got this (well done).
9. L'Auberge Espagnole - Yay! People seem to have remembered that quote more than the film. 4 got it.
10. The Princess Bride - So-not a tricky still! One of the best scenes from the movie (anything with Wallace Shawn's Corsican would have been way too obvious), featuring "The Impressive Clergyman". 5 got this; Collin, whose fake answers were better than his real ones, guessed that it was Elmer Fudd joins the Priory.
11. Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex (*But Were Afraid To Ask) - Probably most famous scene (save for the giant killer breast) from the film; 3 got this ("Something Woody" was not specific enough; Sperm Sperm Revolution is not a real film, Collin.) True fact: we watched this movie as a family when I was in third grade.
12. A Very Long Engagement - One of the best scenes of the film, in which Tina Lombardi (murderous prostitute) takes revenge on the man that shot her lover by confronting him and shooting him to death via a tug of her glasses. No one got this, though, curiously, Ali guessed The City of Lost Children (same director). I want to see Delicatessen.
13. Mujeres Al Borde de Un Ataque de Nervios - I didn't expect to many to get this, but I kind of wish more would have, because it's a really funny movie. Go see it. 1 identified it correctly by title, 2 others identified it as an unspecified Almodovar film.
14. Flight of the Navigator - Oh man! So the staple of childhood, since it was ALWAYS on HBO or the Disney Channel (Robin had the same reaction). I concrete remember only a few things from this movie - a Beach Boys song, some deal with candy bars, a little furry thing that the kid almost sits on, the way the stairs "melted" into each other, and that, after his flight with the Navigator, the kid gets delivered to the wrong time period. Fun film; 2 got it (go Collin!).
15. 8 Femmes - Awesome movie that you should all see; the answers were awesomer: all of the women in the still are, in fact, women and, what's more, famous, incredibly succesful, iconic French actresses. That didn't stop Claire from identifying it as To Wong Foo: Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, the drag queen comedy of 1995, which starred Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze and John Leguizamo. What's more, at the time the comment-screening option was not working, so Tharisson goes on to comment, "Okay, i suck, and the only one i knew was to wong foo, with love." Somewhere, iconic sex-symbols Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart, and others are probably not altogether amused. Other really great reactions to this still and the quote: Revenge of the Combs and "Too many women in that picture." Ultimately, 2 identified it correctly.
16. E La Nave Va - I expected no one to guess this one, and I kind of put it up for fun; it's a fairly obscure Fellini film from 1982 which I saw pseudo-recently, and it was really enjoyable so I recommend it, if only for final scenes like the one featuring a man, a rhino, and a row boat. It reminded me very much of Allende; it is a magical-realism type film, and beautifully anti-war. Collin: Babar (unfortunately not). (This one was supposed to be the bonus, but I mixed up the stills; shrug.)
Bonus: Cidade de Deus - This is the beach scene. 2 got this.
Right, so, firstly, I have to say that I'm immensely proud of all of you. The stills were not easy; suffice it to say that 9 of the ones selected were from foreign-language films, some of them quite recent, and some of them quite old. I take immense pride in noting that, despite this, save for the A Very Long Engagement fluke (and the expectedly unknown E La Nave Va) the sum of the participants managed to identify all the movies, and that makes me quite happy, as I enjoy sporadically reaffirming that my friends are indeed a wildly intelligent and cultured lot. As for the victors: as per usual (we expected this, which is why we didn't publish results until she took the test), Ali Gitlow was the unrivalled champion, with 9 films correctly identified. Following in close second, with 7, Justin _____-____ (
poesian). In a close third, Taylor Dearr (
yossarianjumps), followed by a quadruple tie for fourth place between Claire (
lasdesperadas), Robin (
mspinkie), Layla (
raggedclause) and Maddy (
imperialduchess). There were some very noble, fighting, British-colonialist, Charge-of-the-Light-Brigade-type efforts also made by Lena (
lenin_grad) and the ubiquitous Mr. Cole (
twosomebodies). And, along with the traditional loser of the movie game (John), we have a newly vanquished player, though we won't go into details about him. Well done, everyone!
Some other notes:
Occurrencia (Occurrence) came up on my last final (linguistics); apparently, it is the thing that keeps your mind from being blank (and what meditation strives to suppress), it is the agent which continually bombards the conscious with thoughts and words. It is shaped by three things: 1) the Body (which recognizes physical distractions of any sort); 2) Mental illness (which can affect the Occurrence by way of hallucinations and paranoia); 3) Worries (which can dominate the Occurrence, and cause the bombardments to deal exclusively with a certain determined issue, rather than random thoughts.) According to the text we studied, the Occurrence is completely out of our control, belonging to the subconscious, yet it seriously affects how the ego and superego act. At random, it seems, or by correlating matters with one another, it produces thoughts constantly. Fascinating stuff, that.
Los Amantes del Circulo Polar is an incredibly and fantastically beautiful and splendid film; it makes me happy, and the entire first-night-together sequence, as well as the under-the- bed kiss, i the most intensely romantic thing I've seen in ages (and it feels far more authentic and impulsive and relative than, say, the intense romanticism of A Very Long Engagement, which felt a bit more contrived. They canceled Sociology yesterday (teacher was ill) so I hopped down to the Videoteca and watched it; awesome, brilliant, hurrah, well done.
Claire and I were talking about death the other night, over hot chocolate and churros, (which is of course what you should be taking care of at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night in the center of Madrid, after going pubbing.) I feel I should like to go, if I must (and many years from now), in the way of Cyranno, and leave with the dusk of a very nice summer's day. (After having a large beam of would dropped on my head by agents of my enemies, and concealing the wound in order to confess my love to my life-long soulmate in a convent moments before succumbing to the great inevitable.) (As one does.) But yes, either that, or peacefully in my sleep. We decided that fire and drowning might not be fun, and particularly not would decidedly be being buried alive.