Matthew Perry Takes Down Idiotic Men (Quote of the Day)
This entry is part 25 of 25 in the series Quote of the Day. While watching the 2012 Comedy Awards (a couple weeks late), this speech from Matthew Perry stuck out: “This year we saw many hilarious performances by women, as well as many idiotic articles from men about how women suddenly became funny. Yes, imagine how great The Mary Tyler Moore Show would’ve been had Mary, Betty White, Cloris Leachman, and Valerie Harper actually been funny. If only Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Gilda Radner, or Julia Louis-Dreyfus had been able to get a laugh. I guess what I’m saying is this...
Read MoreWhy Steve Carell and I Dislike DVD Commentaries (Quote of the Day)
This entry is part 24 of 25 in the series Quote of the Day.If someone asks me How do you go about [creating that joke or nailing that scene]? I find it very difficult to talk about — because doing so takes away all the joy. It’s pulling that curtain back. The viewer really doesn’t want to know what went into it. That’s why I don’t like DVD commentaries. I hate those and I hate doing them because, to me, it’s taking away the magic of it all. [Feigning a commentary] “I was so sick when I was shooting this scene, and, you know, I really had to pee. So...
Read MoreThe Director, the Set, the Star, and Her Vibrator: Hollywood Lore from Yolanda and the Thief (Quote of the Day)
This entry is part 23 of 25 in the series Quote of the Day.Vincente Minnelli’s emphasis on visual effects and props sometimes led him to neglect the essential — namely the actor before the camera. The bathroom scene [in Yolanda and the Thief, 1945] was a case in point. Kay Thompson visited the set to watch the shooting, and recalls, “Lucille [Bremer] was in her elaborate bathtub, filled with soap bubbles and water, liquid soap and perfume. On the marble ledge of the tub was a telephone. It would ring, Lucille would pick up the receiver and say, “Hello,” and...
Read MoreBackstage Musicals: For People Without Balls (Quote of the Day)
This entry is part 22 of 25 in the series Quote of the Day.The main reason why most film and TV musicals are backstagers is simple: it provides a ready-made excuse for people to sing. Just like a movie such as 42nd Street, Smash is a musical where most of the original songs (by the Hairspray team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman) are performed either as part of the show within a show, or as fantasy sequences where the characters imagine themselves performing. “I always think of backstage musicals as musicals for people who don’t have the balls to make a musical,” says classic film...
Read MoreI’m Not Impressed: Elaborate CGI vs. Old-Fashioned Planning (Quote of the Day)
This entry is part 21 of 25 in the series Quote of the Day.The opening pre-title-card sequence in Hugo (Martin Scorsese, 2011) takes us through all the mechanisms of all the clocks in the colossal train station that Hugo, the boy who lives, orphaned, inside the clocks, maintains daily. It twists and winds its way through in a way that I know that camera actually couldn’t, so I know I’m not watching an actual set and scene presented on celluloid but a CGI construction. This is thoroughly unimpressive to me. The more elaborate CGI shots get (this one was reminiscent of the...
Read MoreMLK’s Rhetorical Use of Style in “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
This entry is part 20 of 25 in the series Quote of the Day.There are several reasons readers should familiarize themselves with Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (also known as “The Negro Is Your Brother”). First and most significantly, it was written during “a critical turning point in the struggle for African American civil rights” and is, therefore, generally considered “the most important written document of the modern civil rights movement and a classic text on civil disobedience” (Milestone Documents). But the...
Read MoreWoody Allen’s Smoking Hot Body (Quote of the Day)
This entry is part 19 of 25 in the series Quote of the Day. I was in love with him before I knew him. He was Woody Allen. Our entire family used to gather around the TV set and watch him on Johnny Carson. He was so hip, with his thick glasses and cool suits. But it was his manner that got me, his way of gesturing, his hands, his coughing and looking down in a self-deprecating way while he told jokes like “I couldn’t get a date for New Year’s Eve so I went home and I jumped naked into a vat of Roosevelt dimes. ” Or “I’d rather be a with a beautiful woman...
Read MoreWhat, An Erotic Judy Garland? Burn the Negative! (Quote of the Day)
This entry is part 18 of 25 in the series Quote of the Day.Since I’m currently infatuated with certain sensual scenes/shots from The Pirate (Vincente Minnelli, 1948), here are a couple of similar-themed quotes from a making-of featurette of the film (Warner Bros, 2007). After reading, please feel free to join me in cursing the ghost of Louis B. Mayer… The song “Voodoo,” which was to be Garland’s second showcase in the picture, happens in the plotline where Gene Kelly hypnotizes her and she goes into this huge “Voodoo” song and dance. For its time, it...
Read MoreThe Movie Ratings System and Jack Valenti’s Delusions
This entry is part 17 of 25 in the series Quote of the Day.On this day in 1968, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) put into effect its self-imposed ratings system. The initial categories were G (appropriate for all ages) M (for mature audiences, but all ages admitted) R (persons under 16 not admitted without an accompanying adult) X (no one under 17 admitted). Over time, however, the ratings would shift and grow. For example, M would become PG NC-17 would replace X (for fear that “X” would connote pornography) the age-limit of the R rating would be raised to...
Read MoreOrson Welles “Apologizes” for War of the Worlds (Quote of the Day)
This entry is part 16 of 25 in the series Quote of the Day.“I’m extremely surprised to learn that a story, which has become familiar to children through the medium of comic strips and many succeeding novels and adventure stories, should have had such an immediate and profound effect upon radio listeners.” – Orson Welles Welles’s War of the Worlds Seventy-three years ago today on CBS radio, Orson Welles performed an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel War of the Worlds, which was so realistic in terms of acting, sound effects, and narrative delivery...
Read MoreI'm following
Instagrams
Professor of film and Shakespeare. Advocate of social media. Lover of popular culture,