At the suggestion of Mitch, here are my top ten favorite movie quotes in no particular order. I limited myself to only one per movie, since I fear more than a few of my favorite lines might be from the same film. Most of these quotations were found by going to IMDB.com, looking up my favorite films and clicking "quotes" -- I have a feeling this list is skewed in a weird way because of that and that I have forgotten my actual favorite movie quotes. But here goes.
1. "Domo." -- Kill Bill. [I love this one because The Bride meets Hatori Hanzo and says "domo" which leads to a whole conversation about Japanese -- it is one of the few words she knows; it turns out she knows a lot more, and knows who this Sushi chief really is. In the end she convinces him to make her a sword, and the sequence closes as it opens, with the word "Domo" -- except it has gone from being a mere word out of a tourist phrasebook to signifying the deepest kind of human connection. I cannot believe Fraction says Kill Bill vol 1 has no heart. I have an anxiety-of-influence-o-meter and he is way in the red.]
2. "They all have husbands and wives and children and houses and dogs, and, you know, they've all made themselves a part of something and they can talk about what they do. What am I gonna say? 'I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork. How've you been?'" -- Grosse Point Blank
3. "It's the truth that you should never trust anybody who wears a bow tie. Cravat's supposed to point down to accentuate the genitals. Why'd you wanna trust somebody whose tie points out to accentuate his ears?" -- State and Main
4. "Time's up! What do we have for the losers, judge? Well, for our defendants, it's a life time at exotic Fort Leavenworth! And, for defense counsel Kaffee, that's right, it's a court martial! Yes, Johnny! After falsely accusing a highly decorated Marine officer of conspiracy and perjury, Lieutenant Kaffee will have a long and prosperous career teaching... typewriter maintenance at the Rocco Globbo School for Women! Thank you for playing "Should we or should we not listen to the advice of the galactically stupid!"" -- A Few Good Men [People who say Tom Cruse cannot act are just wrong.]
5. "What was in there man? Like, psychos?" -- "Psychos?! PSYCHOS?! Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them. I don't give a fuck how crazy they are!" -- -- From Dusk Till Dawn. [I like the idea that there could be a degree of crazy at which you burst into flames when sunlight hits you.]
6. "I'm sorry. Russ, look, I know this is your joint. I just... there's this girl. I love her, man. I love her, but she is driving me crazy! I can't sleep. I can't work. I quit the show. I totally phoned in that Dennis Quaid movie. I mean, it's like... God, it's almost like this Kabbalah crap doesn't even work!" -- Ocean's 12
7. "Everything else is just polishing the brass on the Titanic" -- Fight Club.
8. "Your're a dick." -- X-Men [I love that they fear he is a shapeshifter and this is how he proves he is really him. It solves a dilemma lightning fast with a joke. Whedon said this is the only line from his draft that remained intact. You can tell.]
9. "My name is William Blake. Perhaps you know my poetry. [he shoots them both with a revolver]." -- Dead Man [This is my favorite thing said before shooting someone].
10. "When will you learn that all my ideas are good ones?" -- "Well, that's funny. Because I thought that you going into the jungle by yourself, being chased by jaguars, lying to me to take you back to the palace were all really *bad* ideas." -- "Oh, yeah. Anything sounds bad when you say it with that attitude. " -- Emperor's New Grove
Do your own top ten list in the comments.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Monday, October 01, 2007
Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men 13
[This post is part of a series of posts looking issue by issue at Joss Whedon's AXM run. For more of the same click the Astonishing X-Men label at the bottom of this post.]
This issue functions as a prologue or teaser to Torn, the six part arc centered on Casandra Nova and the Hellfire Club.
Whedon further anchors his story in Morrison's run. I discussed this at length last time, but he always goes deeper than I think he is going to -- here he returns to just before the Genosha attack and reveals that Nova was responsible for Emma's secondary mutation.
In Whedon's first issue I discussed how the "nothing has changed" line that properly opens Whedon's run is an attack on Morrison -- Morrison changed too much (so many people thought) and so Whedon was brought in to put them back, to emphasize continuity. It is important that the "nothing has changed" mantra returns in this issue twice: Wolverine opens a scene with the line, speaking to the kids recovering from Danger's attack, and Agent Brand opens a scene by saying it to the new commander of Shield. There are many layers of irony here. On the one hand Whedon protests too much. First: A lot has changed in Whedon's run. Second, as he dips into Morrison's "dangerous" changes more deeply he needs to assert his nothing has changed mantra more strongly, so he says it twice. Third, quite a bit has changed in the Marvel Universe since Whedon took over X-Men -- Fury is no longer head of Shield, and he has to acknowledge that. Not to mention Civil War. Whedon ironically puts Morrison's changes (which everyone was so upset about) in the context of the larger editorial changes to the Marvel Universe -- with Civil War, are people really going to bitch about all the continuity revisions in New X-Men?
Sebastian Shaw is hard to take seriously. Whoever designed him decided that a male villain should unironically wear a large purple bow in his hair. I am sure it was based on some Victorian fashion design and was terrible accurate, but taken out of context -- as he is in this issue -- keeps poking out at me as unintentionally silly.
Whedon builds some great mysteries here with what the Hellfire Club is after, how they can be in the mansion, how Casandra Nova, who needs no teammates, is involved, and who the person is in the cloak. Particularly smart is when Emma admits to loving Scott "with all [her] predator's heart." It counters a fear that Whedon is just reversing Morrison, that he is going to have Emma just say she was lying the whole time and all of Morrison's changes were an illusion. Point, Whedon.
The issue is not perfect (see the repeat background watch) but it ends with what I am going to call a major flaw -- Whedon, so spectacular at finding ending beats, ends this issue with a "shocking" image we have seen in Morrison's run: Emma in Jean's Phoenix outfit. What is wanted is surprise, and perhaps a revision. What we have is a rerun. Maybe there is something to the fact that it is the green outfit and not the red one. Maybe there is a revision here I do not see. But the first impression is that Whedon screwed up, stealing from Morrison at the end of an issue in which he invoked him as a predecessor: a deadly combination for a writer. "Look at what the last guy did" he seems to say -- "I can do that too."
Cassaday repeat background watch : Emma is repeated, Hisako is repeated, Wolverine is repeated, a student is repeated, Peter is repeated, the woman in the cloak is repeated, Kitty is repeated three times on one page and the background is repeated as well, a second whole panel with Peter and Kitty is repeated. We have a few scenes with either no background or just a pattern as a background -- trees for Nova and Emma, grey for the danger room, sunset sky for Peter and Kitty, grey for much of the mansion interiors, blue sky and white clouds for the Shield-Sword meeting, a single painting on a red wall for a second Kitty and Peter scene. What sucks about this is Cassaday is great when he decides to put work in -- in this issue Hank's lab is full of cool stuff, and the Shield carrier and Sword headquarters are wonderfully rendered. It only highlights where Casaday decides to put less work in.
This issue functions as a prologue or teaser to Torn, the six part arc centered on Casandra Nova and the Hellfire Club.
Whedon further anchors his story in Morrison's run. I discussed this at length last time, but he always goes deeper than I think he is going to -- here he returns to just before the Genosha attack and reveals that Nova was responsible for Emma's secondary mutation.
In Whedon's first issue I discussed how the "nothing has changed" line that properly opens Whedon's run is an attack on Morrison -- Morrison changed too much (so many people thought) and so Whedon was brought in to put them back, to emphasize continuity. It is important that the "nothing has changed" mantra returns in this issue twice: Wolverine opens a scene with the line, speaking to the kids recovering from Danger's attack, and Agent Brand opens a scene by saying it to the new commander of Shield. There are many layers of irony here. On the one hand Whedon protests too much. First: A lot has changed in Whedon's run. Second, as he dips into Morrison's "dangerous" changes more deeply he needs to assert his nothing has changed mantra more strongly, so he says it twice. Third, quite a bit has changed in the Marvel Universe since Whedon took over X-Men -- Fury is no longer head of Shield, and he has to acknowledge that. Not to mention Civil War. Whedon ironically puts Morrison's changes (which everyone was so upset about) in the context of the larger editorial changes to the Marvel Universe -- with Civil War, are people really going to bitch about all the continuity revisions in New X-Men?
Sebastian Shaw is hard to take seriously. Whoever designed him decided that a male villain should unironically wear a large purple bow in his hair. I am sure it was based on some Victorian fashion design and was terrible accurate, but taken out of context -- as he is in this issue -- keeps poking out at me as unintentionally silly.
Whedon builds some great mysteries here with what the Hellfire Club is after, how they can be in the mansion, how Casandra Nova, who needs no teammates, is involved, and who the person is in the cloak. Particularly smart is when Emma admits to loving Scott "with all [her] predator's heart." It counters a fear that Whedon is just reversing Morrison, that he is going to have Emma just say she was lying the whole time and all of Morrison's changes were an illusion. Point, Whedon.
The issue is not perfect (see the repeat background watch) but it ends with what I am going to call a major flaw -- Whedon, so spectacular at finding ending beats, ends this issue with a "shocking" image we have seen in Morrison's run: Emma in Jean's Phoenix outfit. What is wanted is surprise, and perhaps a revision. What we have is a rerun. Maybe there is something to the fact that it is the green outfit and not the red one. Maybe there is a revision here I do not see. But the first impression is that Whedon screwed up, stealing from Morrison at the end of an issue in which he invoked him as a predecessor: a deadly combination for a writer. "Look at what the last guy did" he seems to say -- "I can do that too."
Cassaday repeat background watch : Emma is repeated, Hisako is repeated, Wolverine is repeated, a student is repeated, Peter is repeated, the woman in the cloak is repeated, Kitty is repeated three times on one page and the background is repeated as well, a second whole panel with Peter and Kitty is repeated. We have a few scenes with either no background or just a pattern as a background -- trees for Nova and Emma, grey for the danger room, sunset sky for Peter and Kitty, grey for much of the mansion interiors, blue sky and white clouds for the Shield-Sword meeting, a single painting on a red wall for a second Kitty and Peter scene. What sucks about this is Cassaday is great when he decides to put work in -- in this issue Hank's lab is full of cool stuff, and the Shield carrier and Sword headquarters are wonderfully rendered. It only highlights where Casaday decides to put less work in.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Josh Hechinger on Iron Fist (Comment Pull Quote from "Comics Out" this week)
- [The nice thing about Fraction Brubaker and Aja's Iron Fist]:
- It's less "everything you thought you knew about the character was wrong" and more "everything you forgot about the character was great".
Friday, September 28, 2007
Free Form Comments
Say whatever you want to in the comments to this post -- random, off topic thoughts, ideas, suggestions, questions, recommendations, criticisms (which can be anonymous), surveys, introductions if you have never commented before, personal news, self-promotion, requests to be added to the blog roll and so on. If a week goes by and I have failed to add you to the blog roll TELL ME TO DO IT AGAIN, and KEEP TELLING ME UNTIL IT GETS DONE. I can be lazy about updating the non-post parts of this site.
ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy (but now might not be). That is often the reason I fail to get back to people, and on a blog, after a few days, the comments thread dies and I just kind of forget about it. Let's use this space to fix that, because it does need to be fixed; I look like a jackass sometimes, leaving people hanging. I will TRY to respond to any questions here.
AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore. For example, if you thought of a great quote for the great quote commonplace book, but now no one is reading that, you could put it here.
You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option.
If you think your free form comment here might be better as its own post, but you do not want it to be public yet, email it to me. My email address is availible on my blogger profile page. If I think it will work on this site, your post will be published here with your name in the title of the post.
ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy (but now might not be). That is often the reason I fail to get back to people, and on a blog, after a few days, the comments thread dies and I just kind of forget about it. Let's use this space to fix that, because it does need to be fixed; I look like a jackass sometimes, leaving people hanging. I will TRY to respond to any questions here.
AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore. For example, if you thought of a great quote for the great quote commonplace book, but now no one is reading that, you could put it here.
You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option.
If you think your free form comment here might be better as its own post, but you do not want it to be public yet, email it to me. My email address is availible on my blogger profile page. If I think it will work on this site, your post will be published here with your name in the title of the post.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Geoff Klock's Blog: Expansion Pack
The comments threads on this blog are often great, especially in the Free Form Comments. We have a lot of smart, cool people around here. A few weeks ago I realized that these comments were being missed by incurious readers, and so I decided to pull one good one out a week and give it its own post, a Comment Pull Quote post. Now I want to expand again.
I want to start publishing blog posts by other people here. You can find my email address in my blogger profile page (click the link at the top right of the blog). If you think your Free Form Comment would be better as a post -- email it to me. If you have an idea for a post for this blog, email it to me -- an idea or a draft. You can also put your pitches in Free Form Comments, if you want your pitches public. On every post you write that is published here your name will be prominently displayed in the title and a tag with your name on it will be put at the bottom. Neil Shyminsky commented on a Slate article a few weeks ago. Under the new system that post would have been called "Neil Shyminsky: Slate on 300" and his writing would be the post, rather than merely a comment.
Why would you publish a post on a blog with my name at the top when you can open or create your own blogger account in seconds?
If you want to start a blog but you don't want to deal with the responsibility of updating frequently -- you can pitch blog posts here whenever you like, with no pressure to do any more. If you update your blog irregularly or rarely, your audience, who don't know to check in, may be small: consider sending your post to me for publication here; I update almost every day and you may find more readers through me. If lots of people do this we may get a lot more readers. If you are a regular commenter here, people may already know you, and like you. If you are advertising your blog on Free Form Comments, you are only reaching those readers who bother to check the comments. If you publish here you will reach the "lurkers." Keep in mind, there is no reason you cannot publish a post here, and immediately post it again on your blog. This is not a "real" magazine, and I do not "own" your posts or anything. Consider publishing an exciting first paragraph here that links to the rest of your post, which continues on your blog. Stephen Frug -- your blog could go all-politics if you published your comics and book reviews here. Jason Powell -- this is where you can do your Clairmont X-Men issue by issue analysis.
Posts have to be short (no longer than my longest blog post) and I would prefer posts that are focused on single, small things, such as individual songs. If you have read my posts you know what I am looking for -- but I would like this blog to expand into subjects outside my wheelhouse, such as the evaluation ofvideogames . What I am looking for is short appreciations of high culture and popular culture -- that means no politics unless it is part of a larger critical/evaluative point. Theory also, must be intrinsically interesting (e.g. Zizek ) or help in aesthetic evaluation. No jargon unless it is clearly explained. Reviews of all kinds -- TV, Movies, Comics, Albums, Games, Theatre -- are always welcome. I am not looking to publish creative writing. I am willing to consider pod-casts and video-blogging.
I will be the editor-in-chief. I may send your post back to you with revisions. I may reject posts if I think they are not appropriate. I think I would like to write short -- 3 to 5 sentence -- introductions to any post not by me, but we will see.
I do not know what this will actually be like. It may be that occasionally there is a post here by someone other than me. It may get to the point where a lot of the posts here are not by me. This may turn out to be too much trouble for me and I will have to drop it. It may turn out that we have far too many posts, and publishing them would exhaust readers. There is no way to know how many people will beinterested in writing here, or how many I will want to post.
I plan to continue publishing here as usual. These new posts would be posts in addition to my usual 5-7 a week.
Your reactions to this idea to expand are important, so if you have something to say, please put it in the comments.
I want to start publishing blog posts by other people here. You can find my email address in my blogger profile page (click the link at the top right of the blog). If you think your Free Form Comment would be better as a post -- email it to me. If you have an idea for a post for this blog, email it to me -- an idea or a draft. You can also put your pitches in Free Form Comments, if you want your pitches public. On every post you write that is published here your name will be prominently displayed in the title and a tag with your name on it will be put at the bottom. Neil Shyminsky commented on a Slate article a few weeks ago. Under the new system that post would have been called "Neil Shyminsky: Slate on 300" and his writing would be the post, rather than merely a comment.
Why would you publish a post on a blog with my name at the top when you can open or create your own blogger account in seconds?
If you want to start a blog but you don't want to deal with the responsibility of updating frequently -- you can pitch blog posts here whenever you like, with no pressure to do any more. If you update your blog irregularly or rarely, your audience, who don't know to check in, may be small: consider sending your post to me for publication here; I update almost every day and you may find more readers through me. If lots of people do this we may get a lot more readers. If you are a regular commenter here, people may already know you, and like you. If you are advertising your blog on Free Form Comments, you are only reaching those readers who bother to check the comments. If you publish here you will reach the "lurkers." Keep in mind, there is no reason you cannot publish a post here, and immediately post it again on your blog. This is not a "real" magazine, and I do not "own" your posts or anything. Consider publishing an exciting first paragraph here that links to the rest of your post, which continues on your blog. Stephen Frug -- your blog could go all-politics if you published your comics and book reviews here. Jason Powell -- this is where you can do your Clairmont X-Men issue by issue analysis.
Posts have to be short (no longer than my longest blog post) and I would prefer posts that are focused on single, small things, such as individual songs. If you have read my posts you know what I am looking for -- but I would like this blog to expand into subjects outside my wheelhouse, such as the evaluation ofvideogames . What I am looking for is short appreciations of high culture and popular culture -- that means no politics unless it is part of a larger critical/evaluative point. Theory also, must be intrinsically interesting (e.g. Zizek ) or help in aesthetic evaluation. No jargon unless it is clearly explained. Reviews of all kinds -- TV, Movies, Comics, Albums, Games, Theatre -- are always welcome. I am not looking to publish creative writing. I am willing to consider pod-casts and video-blogging.
I will be the editor-in-chief. I may send your post back to you with revisions. I may reject posts if I think they are not appropriate. I think I would like to write short -- 3 to 5 sentence -- introductions to any post not by me, but we will see.
I do not know what this will actually be like. It may be that occasionally there is a post here by someone other than me. It may get to the point where a lot of the posts here are not by me. This may turn out to be too much trouble for me and I will have to drop it. It may turn out that we have far too many posts, and publishing them would exhaust readers. There is no way to know how many people will beinterested in writing here, or how many I will want to post.
I plan to continue publishing here as usual. These new posts would be posts in addition to my usual 5-7 a week.
Your reactions to this idea to expand are important, so if you have something to say, please put it in the comments.
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