Pic of the Day: “I thought of that old joke, y’know, the, this… this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, ‘Doc, uh, my brother’s crazy; he thinks he’s a chicken’. And, uh, the doctor says, ‘Well, why don’t you turn him in?’ The guy says, ‘I would, but I need the eggs’. Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y’know, they’re totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and… but, uh, I guess we keep goin’ through it because, uh, most of us… need the eggs.” (45th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “I thought you came up here to have a nervous breakdown.” “Well, I’ve decided not to have one… if it’s all the same to you.” (80th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: ♫ “Oh, I come from a land, from a faraway place / Where the caravan camels roam / Where it’s flat and immense and the heat is intense / It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home / When the wind’s from the east and the sun’s from the west / And the sand in the glass is right / Come on down, stop on by, hop a carpet and fly / To another Arabian night.” ♫ (30th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “Ha! I could just see Little and Large prancing around Sheffield with their widges hanging out. Now that would be worth 10 quid.” (25th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “I didn’t heckle you, just woo-hoo’d you. It’s supportive.” “Okay, that’s a common misconception. Yelling anything at a comedian is considered heckling. Heckling doesn’t have to be negative.” “So, if I… if I yelled out like… ‘you’re amazing in bed’, that’d be a heckle?” “Yeah. It would be an accurate heckle.” (5th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “M, you’ve had a great run. You should leave with dignity.” “Oh, to hell with dignity. I’ll leave when the job’s done.” (10th Anniversary)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2021
2021 is like the flood after a storm. With the crazy year 2020 was, so much stuff was pushed in the hopes of finding an audience not fully burdened with the possible fall of democracy and a global pandemic and, as the year went on, they figured out how to keep working safely and things got back to being filmed. So we had not only all the stuff that was shot throughout the pandemic but also the stuff that was supposed to be released last year, which ended up giving us a real smorgasbord of films to pick from. And, for a change, I definitely didn’t feel worried I wasn’t gonna have enough stuff to put in my top ten.
One thing that will be interesting to look back on in regard to this year (much like last year) is what films people end up gravitating toward and/or discovering over time. Because with the shifting release schedule (most films this year either went day-and-date or went to streaming 30 or 45 days from their theatrical release date, as opposed to the 90 it used to be) and the already-present overabundance of content for people to watch, I haven’t gotten the sense that most people are aware of the a lot of these films. In the latter part of this year, I found myself as the only person in a theater to watch some of these choices. Which means that people either don’t know, don’t care or are waiting for the films to go streaming to see them (which is dicey for some of them because unless it’s a major title, it’s so easy to lose something in the shuffle). Which opens up a whole can of worms of questions in and of itself. But for my purposes here, I am curious to see what films end up later becoming hits when people actually get around to seeing them. And hopefully will do my part to get some people to watch a few of these.
One trend, though, that I think will be fairly uniform across the board for 2021: most people seem to be agreeing on the same crop of films as the best ones. Pandemic or no pandemic, the best filmmakers are still making the best films. (more…)
Pic of the Day: “Ethan, I saw it in you before the war. You wanted to clear out. You stayed beyond any real reason. Why?” (65th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “How’d ya die?” “I was in a coma.” “I’m sorry. How long were you in the coma?” “I really don’t know.” “Let’s play a game, Art. Elvis: living or dead?” “Living.” “Long coma, Art. Long coma.” (30th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: ♫ “See the line where the sky meets the sea? / It calls me / And no one knows / How far it goes / If the wind in my sail on the sea stays behind me / One day I’ll know / If I go, there’s just no telling how far I’ll go” ♫ (5th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “Next to me in the blackness lay my oiled blue steel beauty. The greatest Christmas gift I had ever received, or would ever receive. Gradually, I drifted off to sleep, pranging ducks on the wing and getting off spectacular hip shots.”
Pic of the Day: “Is this the ear you can’t hear on? … George Bailey, I’ll love you ’til the day I die.” (75th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “They’re just waking up! I know just what they’ll do! Their mouths will hang open a minute or two. Then the Whos down in Whoville will all cry boo-hoo! ‘That’s a noise,’ grinned the Grinch, ‘that I simply must hear!’ He paused, and the Grinch put a hand to his ear. And he did hear a sound rising over the snow. It started in low, then it started to grow… But this sound wasn’t sad! Why, this sound sounded glad! Every Who down in Whoville, the tall and the small, was singing without any presents at all! He hadn’t stopped Christmas from coming! It came! Somehow or other, it came just the same!”
PIc of the Day: ♫ “I feel it in my fingers / I feel it in my toes / Christmas is all around me / And so the feeling grows / It’s written in the wind / It’s everywhere I go / So if you really love Christmas / Come on and let it snow.” ♫
B+ Movie Blog 