I saw Tron in the theater in 1982! How about that? I’d forgotten all about it, until just now that I read the word “Tron”.
There was an arcade next door, of course - they had the Tron game! A guy was playing like a wizard, I asked if he’d gone next door to see it, he looked at me and said - “I’ve seen it four times”. I wonder where that guy is now. Did he go into computer engineering or something like that, just at the right time when the industry was about to explode in size?
You know just how far away from The Law that place was when the mob got its’ claws on it? That’s also the land where polygamy remained a standard practice until relatively recently.
It’s a great choice by the director how everyone scowled when they didn’t get the canned bullshit answer disguised as an enlightened one. How this one panelist decided to break the mesmerized charade and you see confusion and anger in peoples’ eyes.
BUT… that “we used to be” line is also lazy nostalgic whitewashing of a mountain of incredibly inconvenient, sordid history.
That Casino Royale scene might be in my personal top five. After having drifted away from Bond since the last one I had really enjoyed - that would be The Living Daylights - while watching this Madagascar parkour I felt the spark rekindle completely.
EDIT: #1 in my old classics bucket list is to someday watch Lawrence Of Arabia on the big screen. I think the restoration and remaster was overseen by Martin Scorsese.
Supposedly that scene so technically accurate, it is used in assault rifle training, all eyes asked to concentrate on what Kilmer does.
Now that is one spectacular choice.
That phone call ruined the philosophical mood for the audience as well as for Max. We are supposed to be in Max’s head more than just observing him.
There’s also the thing of picking your battles. There are changes one can and cannot make depending on the hostility of the political environment and if fickle potential voters have your back - which they have proven too often that they don’t. There is also often sabotage in the delicate process of trying to pass and enact anything, sometimes all that is needed is one or two assholes from your own party to bring the whole house of cards down.
In an ideal world, they could try again, but for that we need educated and consistent voters to support them, and instead they get tarred with the label bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe by the oh-so-pure crowd - “if I don’t get everything in the first try I don’t wanna try at all… not even one fucking day a year”.
Meanwhile, the assholes on the other side send death threats to you and your colleagues. Their propaganda machine portraying you as a ‘Murica-hatin’ less-than-human caricature.
I cannot imagine trying to navigate this as a career.
While growing up in Mexico, turn-of-the-20th-century president Porfirio Diaz was always described as a villain who abused his position to cling to power for around three decades, leading to the Mexican Revolution and old man Diaz living the rest of his life in exile in France.
But now it seems that legacy has been reevaluated as much more nuanced and complex than that, with Diaz as more of a benevolent dictator with weaknesses and blind spots, who pushed his country to modernize and enter the Industrial Era, a likely reason why Mexico - flaws and all - didn’t fall too far behind during the 20th century, did not become a pseudo-colonial/corporate territory like so much of Central and Southern America and the Caribbean.
Does that count as a scene or as a gif with sound?
I’m gonna double dip here in the comments and add my second favorite, the Rogue Two scene from “The Empire Strikes Back”.
Echoes of The Graduate…
“I’ve got one word for you, Benjamin. One word only. Are you listening?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Plastics.”
Meditation is better advice. By which I mean doing the exercises to approach grounding oneself in the present, sensing and feeling things from that perspective, instead of the YESTERDAY and TOMORROW clashing storms inside our minds.
But one can’t just start meditating one day - “from zero to sixty”, so to speak - and expect immediate results. It’s a discipline, like brushing your teeth every day.
You know… I’ve never really thought about it that way, but my three favorites may be the same most watched.
2001: A Space Odyssey
The Empire Strikes Back
Miller’s Crossing
Sometimes I’ll watch Miller’s Crossing with English subtitles/captions, just to take in all that insane and masterful dialogue, it truly is as if William Shakespeare had written a 1920s mob tragicomedy.
You ain’t got a license to kill bookies and today I ain’t sellin’. So take your flunky and dangle!
Isn’t Grosse Pointe Blank from around '98 or ‘99?
That’s when VHS was on its’ very last legs. I think my first DVD player was from around 2001, by that time the graph line of DVD rising and VHS falling had already intersected, and this was in Mexico, I’m not sure when other parts of the world made the transition, say in the US, Europe or Japan it happened earlier.
That mid-Almodovar peak was incredible, now that you mention it. My personal favorite from that time has to be Habla Con Ella (Talk To Her), in parallel Woody Allen filmography terms I would equate it with Hannah & Her Sisters, in artistic achievement.
Barry Lyndon is currently a rising “underrated masterpiece” topic with most of the best film critic podcasters. My personal favorite film has nearly always been 2001: A Space Odyssey, but I just recently rewatched Barry Lyndon and man… in any other filmography this would have stood alone at the top.
And we still have the rest of Kubrick’s work to contend with… Dr. Strangelove, The Shining, Paths Of Glory, Eyes Wide Shut… it’s just ridiculous.
For a long time now, I’ve regarded two people as my artistic heroes of the 20th century: Stanley Kubrick and John Coltrane. Mark Rothko could be up there, too, I cannot imagine my day-to-day life without his work to stop and look at, or to simply have as a presence in my surroundings.
“…the Rat Pack one with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin!”
Imagine some crazy guy saying that.
This list of yours needs Werner Herzog’s Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo in there.
There was this duplex in '82 that was showing Blade Runner (rated R) on one screen and Clint Eastwood’s Cold War thriller Firefox (rated PG) on the other. As an unaccompanied teen I had to see Firefox, but I do remember that Vangelis soundtrack, which you could hear from the lobby area. I really wanted to see it then, but it didn’t happen until I rented the VHS tape a year later, maybe even a bit longer than that.