100, 99, 98, 97.....

Thanks so much to Entertainment Weekly's Popwatch for pointing out this fabulous selection of movie clips counting down all the numbers from 100-1. It's astonishing how immediately identifiable so many of the clips are.

Most inspirational Movie Quotes 2006

Thanks to Reel Fanatic for directing me to Reel Life Wisdom's list of the most inspirational movie quotes of last year.

I can't say I agree with all of them -- that fortune cookie aphorism from "Rocky Balboa?" You've got to be kidding me. And the "Man of the Year" line was old here in Washington back when Chester A. Arthur was President. But I, too, liked these, and I am always happy to see the screenwriters recognized, especially Mark Twain(!):

1) "Every show's your last show. That's my philosophy."
A Prairie Home Companion - Screenwriter: Garrison Keillor

2) "The further you run from your sins; the more exhausted you are
when they catch up to you."
Inside Man - Screenwriter: Rusell Gewirtz

3) "You got a dream, you got to protect it. People can't do something
themselves, they want to tell you that you can't do it. You want
something? Go get it."
The Pursuit of Happyness - Screenwriter: Steve Conrad

4) "He gets down to the end of his life and he looks back and decides
that all those years he suffered, those were the best years of his life
because they made him who he was. All those years he was happy,
you know, total waste. He didn't learn a thing."
Little Miss Sunshine - Screenwriter: Michael Arndt

8) "What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we do know
for sure that just ain't so."
An Inconvenient Truth - Screenwriter: Al Gore (quoting Mark Twain)


For me, the best movie quotes from 2006 would include just about everything Dustin Hoffman said in "Stranger than Fiction," like this:

Dr. Jules Hilbert: The thing to determine conclusively is whether you are in a comedy or a tragedy. Have you met anyone who simply might loathe the very core of you?
Harold Crick: I'm an IRS agent. Everyone hates me.
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Well, that sounds like a comedy!

Dr. Jules Hilbert: Hell Harold, you could just eat nothing but pancakes if you wanted.
Harold Crick: What is wrong with you? Hey, I don't want to eat nothing but pancakes, I want to live! I mean, who in their right mind in a choice between pancakes and living chooses pancakes?
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Harold, if you pause to think, you'd realize that that answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led... and, of course, the quality of the pancakes.

Another list...

The Independent has a list of the best movie quotes. I don't agree with all of their choices, and will defend to the death some they list as clunkers, but they have some great categories, and they are indisputably right about this:

There are two monologues in cinema history that tower over all others, and you know what they are. That's right: Brando's despairing "I coulda been a contender, I could been somebody," speech as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954); and Orson Welles' "cuckoo clock" speech in diabolical justification of his crimes as Harry Lime in The Third Man (1949).

And these may be clunkers, but they are fun:

How about Andie McDowell as Carrie, resembling nothing so much as a drowned rat, to the sodden Hugh Grant in the downpour that marks the end of Four Weddings and a Funeral (1993): "Is it raining? I hadn't noticed." Or Sean Connery in Goldfinger (1964), cracking a crime ring and keeping straight-faced long enough to deliver the line: "At least they won't be using heroin-flavoured bananas to finance revolutions."

You could fill a phone book with atrocious lines from sci-fi and horror movies, but we'll content ourselves with two examples. Here's Roddy Piper in John Carpenter's They Live (1988) as Nada: "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." And, from Flash Gordon (1986): "I love you, Flash, but we only have 14 hours to save the Earth."