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.”
“Maleficent doesn’t know anything about love, or kindness, or the joy of helping others. You know, sometimes I don’t think she’s really very happy.”
Pic of the Day: “Solo act?” “Yeah. Now.” “Now? Use to, what, work with the cat? Every time you’d play a C major it’d puke a hairball?” “I used to have a partner.” “What happened?” “He threw himself off the George Washington bridge.” “Well, shit, I don’t blame him. I couldn’t take it either, having to play ‘Jimmy Crack Corn’ every night. Although pardon me for saying so, but that’s pretty fucking stupid, isn’t it? George Washington Bridge? You throw yourself off the Brooklyn Bridge. Traditionally. George Washington Bridge? Who does that?”
Pic of the Day: “Miss Morris, I’m perfectly capable of fixing my own breakfast. As a matter of fact, I had a peanut butter sandwich and two whiskey sours.”
Pic of the Day: “Another book party?” “Oh! I didn’t see you sitting in the dark over there. Yeah! No actually, there’s a fire. I just got the call; they said maybe it’s arson. I’ve got to interview the marshal and see if it’s…” “Kylie, is he telling the truth?” “I… I don’t want to be put into the middle of this!” “Thanks, Kylie.” “Why is he wearing that bandit hat?” “His ears were cold. He’s not with us.”
Pic of the Day: “If you disobey the rules of society, they send you to prison; if you disobey the rules of the prison, they send you to us. Alcatraz is not like any other prison in the United States. Here, every inmate is confined alone… to an individual cell. Unlike my predecessors, Wardens Johnson and Blackwell, I don’t have good conduct programs, I do not have inmate counsels. Inmates here have no say in what they do; they do as they’re told. You’re not permitted to have newspapers or magazines carrying news; knowledge of the outside world is, ah, what we tell you. From this day on, your world will be everything that happens in this building.”
Pic of the Day: “Why did you call me at the office today?” “I had nothing to do. I wanted to hear your voice.”
Pic of the Day: “I know, we’re all gonna die. Everybody knows that. But I’m going to die today. Funny that… you know, to know. But the thing is, is that I’m still scared. Really scared. Nobody will mourn for me, no one will pray for my soul. Will you mourn for me? Will you say a prayer for me?”
Pic of the Day: “I heard a joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he’s depressed. Says life is harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world. Doctor says, ‘Treatment is simple. The great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go see him. That should pick you up.’ Man bursts into tears. Says, ‘But doctor… I am Pagliacci.’ Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.”
Pic of the Day: “What kind of beer do you like?” “Heineken.” “Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!”
Pic of the Day: “Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow.”
Pic of the Day: “Pop quiz, hotshot. There’s a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do? What do you do?”
Pic of the Day: “You wouldn’t be able to do these awful things to me if I weren’t still in this chair.” “But you are, Blanche! You are in that chair!”
Pic of the Day: “We have to live without sympathy, don’t we? We can’t do that forever. One can’t stay out of doors all the time. One needs to come in from the cold.” “I’m an operator, Control, just an operator.” “There’s a vacancy in Banking Section which might suit you.” “Sorry, I’m an operational man. I’ll take my pension. I don’t want a desk job.” “You don’t know what’s on the desk.” “Paper!” “I want you to stay, uh, out in the cold… a little longer.”
Pic of the Day: “In Vegas, everybody’s gotta watch everybody else. Since the players are looking to beat the casino, the dealers are watching the players. The box men are watching the dealers. The floor men are watching the box men. The pit bosses are watching the floor men. The shift bosses are watching the pit bosses. The casino manager is watching the shift bosses. I’m watching the casino manager. And the eye-in-the-sky is watching us all.”
Pic of the Day: “Colonel Von Luger, it is the sworn duty of all officers to try to escape. If they cannot escape, then it is their sworn duty to cause the enemy to use an inordinate number of troops to guard them, and their sworn duty to harass the enemy to the best of their ability.”
Pic of the Day: “You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed that’s what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant… oh, fuck it.”
