"Nothing goes over my head; my reflexes are too fast".
From Guardians of the Galaxy, my latest favorite flick.

                         Good morning, Dave.

 
 

craigb

outland144k
[font="'book antiqua', palatino; color: #003366; line-height: 1.8"]I like this because Arthur C. Clarke (and Kubrick after him) were referencing the very first time a computer (an IBM 701; Clarke was actually present at the demonstration) was made to speak in 1962.  It was brilliant the way Clarke uses the song both as historical citation and emblematic of a computer "losing (its) mind" in order to emphasize sentience in the character development of the HAL 9000.

 
And, of course, the fact that "HAL" is actually just IBM with each letter one letter back.

 
You know, I never noticed that. That's cool. Thanks!

Ernest T. Bass:
She called me a creechter, I ain't no creechter!"
"I'm a little mean, but I make up for it by being real healthy."
 
James Bond: "Shocking!"; "Bond, James Bond."
 
Rhett Butler: "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."
 
"I am Groot".
 
Agnes: "It's so fluffy i'm gonna die."
 
Steve Martin (The Jerk): "Okay. It was never easy for me. I was born a poor black child."
 
Airplane. "Surely you can't be serious."
- "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley."
Picture with the "autopilot"
 
 
 
 
 
 

TRAVIS:  Why you always whooping on me?
 
COLLIER:  Because you're an animal.  A dog.  The only thing you understand is the fist and boot.
 
"Fury," but not the Fritz Lang one. 
 
Also, from "Crossfire" and some classic Noir.
 
THE MAN (Paul Kelly): You know what I just told you? That's a lie. I'm not her husband. I met her the same as you did, at the joint. I can't keep away from her. I want to marry her. She won't have me... You believe that? Well, it's a lie, too. 
 
That is one twisted scene.
 
@

outland144k

Moshkito
Hi,
 
"... listen to them ... children of the night ... what music they make!"

Mina: How did Lucy die?
Van Helsing: Well…
Mina: Was she in great pain?
Van Helsing (relatively deadpan, while continuing to eat): Ja, she was in great pain. Then we cut off her head, and drove a stake through her heart, and burned it, and then she found peace.

 
I read somewhere that Hopkins' Van Helsing was so intense in Bram Stoker's Dracula that the director, Francis Ford Coppola, felt compelled to add in the Dracula as wolf-beast and bat-creature scenes to add more malevolence to the character of Oldman's Dracula.
 ...

Crazy, silly and bizarre thought considering that these are a part of the original story, although it is hard to bring them out, since the whole thing is in diary form by folks that do not know how to explain what is happening. The original had even more than just those creatures ... and the film actually did a nice job in bringing that out which many other films did not.

Hi,
 
There are a lot of movie quotes, worth mentioning.
 
The issue is that we mostly use lines here that are sort of like prime time crap tv lines, and the ones I remember are the ones that are in a different medium all along. The movie is usually very important, and its subject matter is "on", instead of it being just another soap opera.
 
Some of the magic moments include, a lot of NO WORDS, moments ... where the face and the expression and the reaction is worth a 1,000 bombs (not those kind!), of laughter, tears, and stunned silence on our part.
 
Probably the oldest movie that ever got me good, and you must remember that I did not come to America until October 1965, and did not know a word of English then, and could not understand a lot of these things, but it was around 1975 or 1976 with my room mate Guy Guden in this radio show (Space Pirate Radio) and he used a lot of film soundtracks ... and 2 of them that taught me a lot about words, were FORBIDDEN PLANET and DRACULA (Bela Lugosi's). To this day, there are a lot of lines in both those films that stand up big time ... "dreams can't hurt you" ... and "miles and miles and miles ... " when he is describing the world of the _____ and their technical know how. (don't even remember the word). The other film was "The Uninvited" with Ray Milland. Things like "... dazzling, people had to wear sunglasses" ... or "... it dies at dawn ... " and how well the lines were used and directed!
 
Some films that ... stand out for the incredible word'ing category, and it is something that these directors have always been known for, anyway:
 
The Seventh Seal -- Ingmar Bergman's film
Los Olvidados -- Luis Bunuel
The Phantom of Liberty -- Luis Bunuel
Ghandi -- David Lean
Brazil -- Terry Gilliam
Blade Runner -- Ridley Scott
Ladyhawke -- Richard Donner
Dr. Strangelove -- Stanley Kubrick
 
And now the lesser known list ... Nikita Mikhalkov has some dandies. The director of the film "Beyond the Rain" (film won the Oscar for best Foreign Film) had some incredible lines. The early Wajda films had some amazing lines.
 
French Films are known for their "lines" and their "diction". The film "Ridicule" is insane, and it speaks in an old dialect that does not translate to sub-titles, by using olde English, and it loses out on the translations. But the line emphasis works great all the same. It can get kinda bad for the French when it is a comedy attacking American anything ... it tends to go over board, but it is also funny. But they have a way of shaking you to the core ... so you smile, laugh and then get hit in the butt at the same time.
 
It is difficult to leave behind English Theater. I can still hear Ian Richardson scream "I AM the REVOLUTION" and a calm Patrick Magee (as the Marquis the Sade) calmly says ... something like "... no, you are just another man, just another idiot, that thinks they can lead the people"  ... and his emphasis on "the people" is deadly. Few people, are stronger about "words" than the Royal Shakespeare Company, and some of its works. Ken Russell used all these folks and their ability for everything you can imagine ... and let me tell you that words out of Oliver Reed's mouth in "The Devils" are not ... words ... they are something else ... and then, of course, there is the line about blackbird in that film, that most of us will miss the political implications in both France and England.
 
These are just a few of them. And some of the popular crap ... like show me the poop ... just has no meaning for me ... it's plain, bland, and boring in the end. Empty words! 

outland144k
... 
I obviously did not care for the movie (though I loved Hopkins' Van Helsing and Waits' Rensfield).  Though I generally enjoy Oldman immensely, his Dracula was, er, toothless and thoroughly unfrightening (even with his turn as the aforementioned creatures).
...

 
There has never been a film that was tight and close to the book. Too much of it is in letters, and that is a problem for the Hollywood/Film traditions. It's a personal point of view, and leaves a lot open for interpretation. The novel, itself, is not clear, because the letters are not all from the Doctor at all ... and this makes it harder to understand and we have to rely on Van Helsing's explanations in conversation, although he appears to also be limited to what he is saying, as he is also trying to figure it out. 
 
There are very nice and very good bits in all of the films. I'm glad to see the sexual/sensual part finally get involved, since it has been a part of the Gothic stories since the 1800's starting with Lord Polidori's Vampyr and then Sheridan LeFanu's opus, Carmilla. No one has been able to show these properly, or define the sexual side of it well enough. I do think that Ann Rice has tried to bring the sexual side to it, but her best ideas are not in the popular novels she has, they are in her erotica works, that are far less well known, and covered up. I think her idea was to always try to marry the traditions, and lack of literary work on the genre, up to snuff and time, although it is impossible to know if there was no "pornography" 200 plus years ago, which is kinda silly of us to think that everyone was a _____________ and had no carnal knowledge or appetite.
 
All in all, film is not a good medium for these stories, because of its vast use of other ideas that have been for too long tied up inside our minds by many a religion and what not. I'm not even sure that the "deaths" were designed to be carnal and the end of life, since they all are simply hoping for a new life, an after life if you will, which our puritan minds can only devise as evil and malicious, which the only surviving stories we know tend to show ... and I think that is an intentional side effect of the whole thing. The other, the blood, guts and gore that came later, was mostly influenced by the French Revolution and its gory nature. It's public exposure, influenced all arts for many years.
 
I kinda see Bram Stoker's story as the "ending" of the "gothic" genre, which started with Ann Radcliffe (Mysteries of Udolpho)(might have the title mis-pelled!) and Horace Walpole (Castle of Otranto), who are usually given credit for it.
 
As I said, Ann Rice's part can be more sexual and interesting, although it obviously is a turn off for a larger public, that disdains such a thing, and I have always thought that the vampire stories were more of a cry for freedom from a socially bound concept, than anything else ... with the details all paralleling a lot of literature in the christian and non-christian world, and bound by psychic ideals, for which not many mystics even had words for it, although it is considered that a notorious guy in the 20th century, probably was the best translator of much of it, with his ideas on sexual magic, which is parallel with the opening of the mores in the 20th century.
 
It's an endless discussion ... that we won't see finished, ever!

outland144k
... 
What I do require is a demonstrated level of malevolence and cunning from the character and Coppola failed miserably in that.  This may be personal; perhaps someone who has viewed far fewer movies in the genre than I would have picked that up (I can't speak to that), but it certainly wasn't part of the movie for me.  
...

 
Coppola, for my tastes, tends to spread himself too far, in the typical Hollywood style, and the story/film ends up being about many things, and yeah ... it tends to distort the book quite a bit.
 

outland144k
Our society has, of course, brought in sensuality and sexuality, but has lost almost all of the subtlety that characterized, say, the works you mentioned.  It is interesting that you mention Ann Rice.  Since her conversion, I am not sure that she would say "her best ideas" are in her erotica (I am aware that she has renounced Catholicism, but she still considers herself "a follower of Christ"). 
...
So, to use the word "puritan" to describe almost anyone in our current situation is odd; the puritan society and ours have so little in common in terms of concerns and goals. 
 
...

 
I used the word as a "generic" term, because there really was not another word I could find.
 

outland144k
...
BTW, if you're interested in reading more vampire literature of the period, you may want to check out The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories.  It's a bit old now, having been published in 1987, but it contains not only The Vampyre and Carmilla, but also includes an excerpt from Varney the Vampyre, or, the Feast of Blood and, more interestingly, from a historical sense, Gordon and Byron's Fragment of a Novel.  ...
 

 
I have almost all of the original stories, and even taught a 2 day course on Gothic Literature in an English class. My history went, mostly from 1750 to 1925. It also included the odd things, like MGL's The Monk, which does not fit the vampire mode, but it fits all the other Gothic ideals and categories.
 
The latter stuff, including Ann Rice to an extent, is a bit too reactionary for my tastes and also a take on the 50's and 60's morality, which makes it harder to link to the older literary history. I have not seen the latter stuff much like the series with the kids (Anna Paquin and the like), to be able to find a bit more about it. I've started to think that too much of it was influenced by film and in some ways it has hurt the literary extension of the books, but I think the films/visual ideals will be the new "literature" of the time and place, and thus, literature and film and arts will marry a bit better, instead of looking like they are separating it.
 
The best book, about it all I have ever read, btw, is "The Romantic Agony" by Mario Praz, which is an exhausting book to read, but the amount of information will literally send you chasing for things to read.
 
Thanks for the comments as well.

As Good As it gets
 
You make me want to be a better man.
 
What if this is as good as it gets?