Dec 25, 2010

Christmas Screengrab 2010: My Life in Pictures

For no other reason but that I'm enamoured of these new screengrabs — my favorite movies from 1968, 1970, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 200, 2009 and 2010. It's funny how much pride one can take in lining up one's favorite movies in a row like this. You'd think I'd made the damned things, instead of just watching them like every other putz.

19 comments:

  1. Love the grabs! This is the best I could do....pretty poor performance.

    2009 The Hurt Locker
    2008 The Wrestler
    2007 Dunno
    2006 Brokeback Mountain
    2005 Birth
    2004 Mystic River
    2003 Dunno
    2002 Dunno
    1999 Titanic
    1997 Before Sunset
    1995 Dunno
    1992 Dunno
    1991 Dead Calm

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  2. You know all the others, but the screengrabs are cunning....

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  3. Ok, from the bottom, some of these I know, some are guesses
    The French Connection
    Badlands
    Jaws
    The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
    Apocalypse Now
    The Shining
    The Untouchables
    The next 8 I don't know
    The Sixth Sense
    Then the rest are already guessed...
    The Right Stuff

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  4. The Right Stuff should be after the one I think is The Untouchables (on the grand Union Station steps)

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  5. Well done, Steve, most of those are right although the one you have as The Taking Of Pelham 1,2,3 is actually Taxi Driver, and the one you pegged as The Untouchables is actually Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's from the very last scene — Indy is ruing have lost control of the Ark, now stashed in a government vault. He was never better dressed.

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  6. Of COURSE (kicking myself hard in the shins). Also I KNOW I"m going to know the one with the girl having her hair washed - that's is SO familiar but I just can't peg it.

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  7. Adding a few, to the above
    Before Sunrise, not Sunset I think...
    Either 3 Colours Red or Double Life of Veronique
    Blue Velvet

    Happy Christmas :)

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  8. .....Oh, and United 93!

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  9. Yes to the Double Life of Veronique and Sunrise
    and Happy Christmas!

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  10. God, that really looks like Isabella Rossellini......
    Hmmmmm

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  11. Oh and yes to Blue Velvet, I didn't see you'd mentioned that

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  12. And you got United 93, too.....

    The only ones to get now are:— 

    Typed numbers from 2002
    Backlit forest from 1992
    Pointed gun from 1990
    and
    Skateboarding from 1985

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  13. Backlit Forest: Cape Fear?
    Typed Numbers: Schindler's List?

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  14. 1990: Goodfellas?

    1992: Last of the Mohicans?

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  15. Craig is on the money with Goodfellas and Last of the Mohicans

    For the last one, Scott is very close to the mark with Schindler's List: wrong film, right director. It's interesting how often Spielberg uses paperwork in his films — forms, files, bureaucracy, numbers, officialese — to underline the more extraordinary elements...

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  16. Well, you kind of gave it to us but, Minority Report for 2002 typing.

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  17. It's one of the few he's taken on recently not as a "Spielberg film" but just a job of work — his name was not prominent on the posters — which may be why it works so well. It has the collie-like bounce of the work he did when he was in his twenties, which is to saying something. Only Astaire comes close to the unbearable lightness of young Spielberg. Plus you have Hanks and Di Caprio, both of them terrific. Its suprisingly rare to get three-way collaborations that work as well as this one. Call it 'The Philadelphia Story' effect. I always puzzled over that when I was younger. If everyone knew that Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart were good together, why not stick them in every picture? It's the same with Catch Me If You Can. Time is going to smile on this one, I think.

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