Friday, July 11, 2008
Let’s play, shall we?
I’m starting late tonight but I have a very good reason. This girl just came back from a ride in my poppa’s brand new Maserati Quattroporte and oh my does that car move. My poppa’s going to be racking up the speeding tickets if he’s not careful. Now on to business.
1) Name a movie you’ve seen that made you laugh ... and I don’t mean just laugh-out-loud, I mean full-metal belly laugh and guffaws.
2) Name a movie that you think is terrific that no one else seems to have seen.
3) And, just to change things up, if you could be the author of just one of the books that you’ve read which one would it be?
Me first.
1) Hmmmmmm, I’m going to break my own rule and name more than one. Snatch, A Fish Called Wanda, Drop Dead Gorgeous and Dogma all made me howl at different points in each film. I have to admit, half the hilarity of Drop Dead Gorgeous lies in the startling resemblance the Mount Rose townspeople bear to the Blogging Tories, don’t you think?
2) Beautiful Girls by Ted Demme (who is an astonishingly underrated director) — an absolutely outstanding little film with an incredible cast playing small-town friends exchanging crisp, witty, intelligent dialogue as they evaluate life and what may come next.
3) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, a book that I’ve read and reread countless times ... and each time I enjoy it more.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
Okay, I'll play.
1) I seem to give this answer a lot in these games but it generally seems to fit somehow... Spinal Tap because I roared through it the first time, the second, each time and any time I watch it. Because it's all too, too true. Special bonus for the long-haired stoner/metal boy sitting behind me the first time I saw it who said to the long-haired stoner/metal boy beside him, quote: "Hey dude, they're not a half bad band. Why have I never heard of them before?"
Exhale, dude. Exhale.
2) None of my friends seems to have ever watched Withnail & I, but I'm actually going to go with another movie altogether.
The Horse's Mouth, a 1958 film adaptation of Joyce Cary's 1944 novel, starring (Sir) Alec Guiness. Still to my mind the best movie I've seen about being an artist and why artists must create. Ditto for the original novel, although the book delves much more deeply into attendant social and political themes than the movie. I guess I would have to say that I've known a few Gulley Jimson's.
3) Another one of those my-answer-could-change daily questions. Could go with Vonnegut, Hammett, Ken Kesey, Steinbeck or HST, and can't forget Dostoyevsky. But, at this very moment I'm going to say A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren. His mid-50's turn on Candide inpsired themes and recast in the Deep South of the USA, mostly in The Big Easy. It's a book of lost souls and uneasy redemption. As Algren noted himself, it's a book that "...asks why lost people sometimes develop into greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their whole lives."
It's also the book that is the source for the since oft-quoted 'Three Rules of Life":
"Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own."
Occasionaly surreal and uproariously funny.
How can anybody just answer one per question??? Arrrgphff.
1) There's Something About Mary, South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut, The 40-Year-Old-Virgin (aka "The Patrick Ross Story"), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
2) Dark City (pre-The Matrix sci-fi), American Movie (a ridiculously hilarious documentary), and of the slightly more well-known yet still shockingly unseen-by-people-I-know movies: City of God (a masterpiece).
3) The Shock Doctrine (Naomi Klein) - I'd be pretty proud to be the author of that book, Blink (Malcolm Gladwell), Animal Farm (Orwell), and whoever wrote the Choose Your Own Adventure series.
Nice questions LuLu!
The 40-Year-Old-Virgin (aka "The Patrick Ross Story")
Somebody had to say it. It was only a question of when. ;-)
1) Laugh out loud funny? Monty Python and The Holy Grail.
2) Good that no one's ever seen? Equilibrium.
3) Book I wish I'd written? Neuromancer by William Gibson. Such tight, rich prose in that book.
1) yikes, that's a long list.
they've been showing jerry lewis' the ladies man on cable recently. despite a few shaky gags and the obligatory dollop of syrup, that movie is comedy genius.
2) another long list.
tom dicillo has made a handful of nifty little films, including box of moonlight and living in oblivion.
3) strangest question you've ever asked, lulu.
salman rushdie. never read him, but how cool is a price on your head?!
KEvron
1) Best in Show mostly due to Fred Willard and his antics; Parker Posey going crazy over a missing dog toy was great as well.
2) Bleu of the Trois Couleurs trilogy. Yes it's a foreign film but come on! Broaden your horizons people.
3) Catch-22 by Joseph Heller; it is written how my brain works when concocting stories. And it has the ability to drive some people quite mad.
1) So many to choose from but I have to include Life of Brian, Waiting for Guffman, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Withnail and I, Zoolander, and Bon Cop, Bad Cop to that list.
2) Again, so many to choose from but I would highly recommend My Life as a Dog, My Son the Fanatic, Vera Drake (or any Mike Leigh film), Dance Me Outside, Melody and Be Kind Rewind and The Walker.
3) Another tough one. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Who wouldn't want to write such a masterpiece.
Laugh out loud: Peter Bogdonovich's adaptation of "Noises Off". Who knew he could pull off the perfect farce?
Undiscovered Gem: Cannibal, the Musical, by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, before they got famous.
Book I would most like to have written: Too many options. "The True Autobiography of a Guy Who Made A Zillion Dollars, Cured Cancer and Knew How To Dance Real Good"?
Post a Comment