A Pictorial History of the Movies
The Pic of the Day feature started a month into the blog. January 31, 2011. I know it was that day because that was the day the news broke that John Barry had died. And as a tribute to him, I posted an article in tribute to him, and put in an unofficial Pic of the Day from Goldfinger, with Sean Connery slapping a woman on the ass. And it made me think. I had a lot of screenshots (not nearly as many as I do now, but still, a fair number), I had a blog. Why not share them? So, the Pics of the Day began. The first was from The Third Man. And above, I put a quote from the film (the “cuckoo clock” speech). Three and a half years later, a new one has gone up every day since.
I don’t know the exact number, but I said originally I had “over a thousand.” Which was either me lowballing it, or that’s really what I had at the time. I’m sure I had close to 10,000. I can’t imagine it was that few. But at first, I was still recycling the same films over and over. And now, almost four years into the blog (and essentially because of it), I have over 50,000 screenshots. (That’s not an exaggeration. It’s really that many. The joke being that I added about ten thousand between when I wrote this article and when it went up. And I still haven’t fully sorted all of last year’s Fun with Franchises shots. So it’s going to even go higher than that.)
Anyway, with all of these Pics of the Day, I’m sure we’ve all seen my theme months. Christmas movies in December, Oscar movies every January and February. One month I did specialized studio logos (the Paramount logo made by buttons for Benjamin Button, etc). I did a horror month, a westerns month, a musicals month. I did the Disney films, the Bond films (twice. Once for the films, once for the songs). I did all the Best Pictures in a row. I did famous opening lines (“Rosebud”) and famous final lines (“The stuff dreams are made of”).
Now, I’m starting on my next theme: a history of the movies. (more…)
Pic of the Day: “Hello, James. Welcome. Do you like the island? My grandmother had an island. Nothing to boast of. You could walk around it in an hour, but still it was, it was a paradise for us. One summer, we went for a visit and discovered the place had been infested with rats. They’d come on a fishing boat and gorged themselves on coconut. So how do you get rats off an island? Hmm? My grandmother showed me. We buried an oil drum and hinged the lid. Then we wired coconut to the lid as bait and the rats would come for the coconut and… they would fall into the drum. And after a month, you have trapped all the rats, but what do you do then? Throw the drum into the ocean? Burn it? No. You just leave it and they begin to get hungry. And one by one… they start eating each other until there are only two left. The two survivors. And then what? Do you kill them? No. You take them and release them into the trees, but now they don’t eat coconut anymore. Now, they only eat rat. You have changed their nature. The two survivors. This is what she made us.”
Pic of the Day: “Search your feelings, Father, you can’t do this. I feel the conflict within you. Let go of your hate.” “It is too late for me, son. The Emperor will show you the true nature of the Force. He is your master now.” “Then my father is truly dead.”
Pic of the Day: “Are you okay?” “Peachy, Kate. The world’s my oyster, except for the fact that I just rammed a wooden stake in my brother’s heart because he turned into a vampire, even though I don’t believe in vampires. Aside from that unfortunate business, everything’s hunky-dory.”
Pic of the Day: “Do you realize we know less about the earth we live on than about the stars and galaxies of outer space? The greatest mystery is right here. Right under our feet!”
Pic of the Day: “What do you want, Mr. Quaid?” “The same as you; to remember.” “But why?” “To be myself again.” “You are what you do. A man is defined by his actions, not his memory.”
