A little essay I wrote over on Everything2 for the edification of the reading public. It's about shaving, philosophy, and Whit Stillman: http://everything2.com/node/1964635
This tape is as named. It is designed to be listened to in conjunction with a US presidential debate. The first five songs are portraits of typical politicians and the things typical politicians say -- every day, as part of their jobs and their election campaigns. Then there's Radiohead's "Electioneering" and R.E.M.'s "Ignoreland", which are two all around great songs about politics that are so beautifully angry. (These lines from "Ignoreland" sum it all up: "If they weren't there we would have created them. Maybe, it's true,/But I'm resentful all the same. Someone's got to take the blame"). Finally to wind us down from all this vitriol and raw anger, we have Mates of State's "Get Better" which contains the lovely refrain "Forget all your politics for a while/Let the color schemes arrive" and the encouragement that "Everything's gonna get lighter, even if it never gets better". The Owls' catchy "Channel" doesn't have anything directly to say on politics, but it continues on the same theme as "Get Better".
Link
Track listing:
1. Cream - Politician
2. Pixies - Mr. Grieves
3. Madness - Mr. Speaker Gets the Word
4. Kinks - Mr. Churchill Says
5. Leonard Cohen - The Captain
6. Radiohead - Electioneering
7. R.E.M. - Ignoreland
8. Mates of State - Get Better
9. Owls - Channel
Since I haven't posted one of these in a while, I have two of them.
The first one, titled "My Counter-Culture Crush", is inspired by a recent crush of mine. The crush's identity doesn't matter, but what I'm struck by is her distinctive taste and aesthetics. I mean, she doesn't play "Wipeout" on the drums or hand out the Bhagavad Gita, like Ben Fold's Kate, but she might as well. Apparently, this phenomenon of stylish crushes is a pretty obvious concept for songs, since I've noticed there's a bunch of these songs out there, and that they are all quite the same in terms of sentiment, only the detail of the particular counter-culture the crush seems to belong to changes -- Disco, Rock'n'Roll, Mod, or Punk for the BMX Bandits; Beat for Talulah Gosh; Punk again for The Math & Physics Club; Ben Fold's crush seems to be a Burnout; Supergrass have always been attracted to the plain weird; and the scuzziest of all countercultures, Eurotrash, for Cracker -- this one has to be a joke.
The second one, titled "Thanks for the Music", is a set of songs by some great artists that are dedicated to their musical heroes and influences. Stevie Wonder, gives a general ode to jazz and big band music, but focuses on Duke Ellington. Paul Westerberg of The Replacements doesn't hide his love of Big Star's Alex Chilton. David Bowie writes a loving song that starts out praising the power of Dylan's protest songs ("words of truthful vengeance"), but then seems to veer and focus on a persistent fan, whom "a couple of songs from your old scrap book could send ... home again". Regina Spektor paints an impressionist picture of Lady Day singing the blues in a smoke-filled room, bringing a tough audience to tears. Finally, The Boo Radleys reference the Beatles in "The White Noise Revisited", but it is about the therapeutic effect of listening to music -- really listening: letting it permeate you, feeling it deeply, and meditating.
As my new, post-muxtape, mix-tape solution (http://stencil.homedns.org:8181/) allows me to have multiple tapes on, I will upload over the next while all of my earlier mix-tapes.
I just came back from watching a matinee at the local non-profit -- "American Teen". It's a great documentary about high-school seniors from a town in Indiana. I forgot how big high-school basketball is in Indiana. I think they could have put it together better, but the material they had for this film was golden. My instant response to this Game Theory song lyric, "All you kids in your teens may not mean to, but you all impress me". So yeah, I recommend it.
In other news, muxtape seems to be in legal troubles with the mafIAA, so I'm looking into other solutions for my mix-tapes. Try this for the Game Theory song mentioned above.
This tape is intended for the noble purpose of venting. These are all songs about jerks -- all different kind of jerks ("The people who were cruel to those that don't deserve, the people who talk too much, the people who don't care, the people whose lives are going nowhere, the people who just give in, the people who don't fight, the people I don't like", as the first track partially lists) -- and about what makes them so abominable. Some paint portraits of specific jerks and were picked because they evoke specific jerks I know, others are general in hating pretty much everybody ("Kiss Off" and "You Should All Be Murdered"). These songs are invariably angry, intensely angry. This is, in most situations not a very productive sentiment I find, so the purpose of tape is not to ferment it but instead to help put it behind you and out of your systems. It even serves, at least for me, to examine and subdue the jerk within: "Books Written for Girls" is a song that always hits me hard because the jerk in the song reminds me a lot of myself, and it makes me fear how easy it would be for me to unwittingly be a jerk to people, and "Screw You" is a song about how everybody is a jerk in a jerky world.
link.
Track listing:
1. Another Sunny Day - "You Should All Be Murdered" (4:39)
2. Spoon - "Johnathan Fisk" (3:16)
3. Ben Folds Five - "Sports & Wine" (2:58)
4. Violent Femmes - "Kiss Off" (2:56)
5. Elton John - "Screw You (Young Man's Blues)" (4:43)
6. Garbage - "Stupid Girl" (4:19)
7. Bob Dylan - "Masters of War" (4:35)
8. Joan Jett - "Fake Friends" (3:17)
9. Camera Obscura - "Books Written for Girls" (5:14)
This is a weird one. I started out trying for a more cohesive theme (whose identity doesn't matter any more), but it sort of expanded into an amorphous glob of a theme, with recurring ideas being the insular nature of the ego and the importance therefore of being at ease in your own head, sunsets and thoughts at sunset, insomnia (or hypnagogic consciousness of emotions specifically), and others. So it didn't end up that cohesive, but I really love and am proud of what came out. The lyrics on all songs are particularly good in this one, and mesh well with each other (for example, the first song talks about "your ghost" being your "one sympathetic companion" and then the second song has this great line, saying "How much did we give the ghost up/When we learned how to get where we're going"). So, since I think the lyrics are really important for grokking this mix tape, I'm going to reproduce them here. Link.
( Track listing and lyrics )
Subtitled: "A fantasy of deindustrialization"
I've been away in Germany, busy as hell, but now I'm in Israel with nothing but time. So here's a belated mix-tape.
The title is stolen from this Cat and Girl, and this mix tape is dedicated as a tape to take along with you for just that kind of journey. Track listing below, link to playable version here.
Chapter 1:
* Tramway - Maritime City (3:15)
* Ivy - Get Out of the City (3:10)
Chapter 2:
* Pixies - Wave of Mutilations (2:05)
* R.E.M. - Find the River (3:50)
Chapter 3:
* Camper Van Beethoven - Flowers (3:00)
* Talking Heads - (Nothing But) Flowers (5:36)
* XTC - River of Orchids (5:53)
I guess the loose plot line I was going for here is a protagonist having enough of the city (Chapter 1), leaving it and going into the wild (Chapter 2), and then drifting into some sort of psychedelic fantasy of a deindustrialized world where flowers are growing out of the toppled remnants of fallen civilizations (Chapter 3).
P.S.: Cat and Girl has its own muxtape up of songs mentioned or referenced in the comic: http://catandgirl.muxtape.com/
One of the great things about British bands, and in particular those of the britpop wave of the '90s, is the excellent quality of the B-side tracks on their singles. This mix tape has my 5 favorite B-sides from the 5 biggest acts in britpop:
1. Radiohead - India Rubber (B-Side on both Fake Plastic Trees and High & Dry for some reason)
2. Suede - My Insatiable One (B-Side on The Drowners - these two songs plus "To the Birds" comprise one the most perfect singles ever released)
3. Pulp - Ansaphone (B-Side on Disco 2000 - Pulp are a great band that were awesome way before britpop and got huge riding the britpop wave; they are easily the most instinctively creative britpoppers)
4. Blur - Inertia (B-Side on There's No Other Way)
5. Oasis - The Masterplan (B-Side on Wonderwall - this one's such a classic, it's hard to believe it never got released on a proper album)
link: http://emonk.muxtape.com
PS: Is playback on muxtape not working for anyone else?
Three New York City cuts on side A, then three California cuts on side B. http://emonk.muxtape.com
Side A
1. George Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue
2. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong - Autumn in New York
3. Simon & Garfunkel - The Boxer
Side B
1. David Ackles - Oh, California!
2. Joni Mitchell - California
3. Magnapop - California
I've been reading these sparring pieces in Radar magazine, one being a Gen-Xer hating on Millenials, and the other being a rebuttal by a Millenial that doesn't take no bullshit from no Gen-Xer. They're both pretty entertaining and get some good fair blows. So, for this mix tape I picked one song from every decade from the fifties through the aughts of bands trying to speak up for the young generation of that decade, usually to call bullshit on the crap the generation's getting. As you can see, it's a decades long tradition, and I'm not sure Marx got it right when he said that "all past history was the history of class struggles;" at least 50% must have been generational struggles. Here's the line-up:
'50s: Buddy Holly & The Crickets - Well ... All Right (2:14)
'60s: The Who - My Generation (3:19)
'70s: David Bowie - All the Young Dudes (3:32)
'80s: Game Theory - In A Delorean (3:12)
'90s: Smashing Pumpkins - 1979 (4:26)
'00s: Spoon - The Way We Get By (2:40)
And here's the link: http://emonk.muxtape.com/
My first Monday mix tape is aptly titled "Welcome to Monday." It's a melancholy one, so hold off on it for a different day if you're in an upbeat mood. The theme is the introduction to big-world living; causes being moving out on your own, moving to a different city, etc.; effects being disillusionment, missing friends/family, loneliness, or general melancholia and navel gazing. Enjoy listening. I'll put the track listing here also for archival purposes:
1. The Mekons - Learning to Live on Your Own (The Mekons Rock'n'Roll, 1989)
2. Ben Folds Five - Alice Childress (Ben Folds Five, 1995)
3. The Owls - Welcome to Monday (Daughters and Suns, 2007)
4. Camper Van Beethoven - The Humid Press of Days (Key Lime Pie, 1989)
5. Belle and Sebastian - The Fox in the Snow (If You're Feeling Sinister, 1996)
6. Counting Crows - Raining in Baltimore (August and Everything After, 1993)
I just found out about this site: muxtape
As a person who loves mix tapes, I think it's an excellent idea, and I like the spare design (unadulterated Helvetica, naturally). Hurray mysterious guy who put it together.
I deem it an excellent place for miscellaneous themed mix tape creations, and I resolve to upload a new mix tape every week, starting this Monday. In the meantime I've uploaded the mix tape whose track listing I've given here.
Enjoy: http://emonk.muxtape.com/
Gen-X is to Reality Bites as Gen-Y is to Juno? Does that mean Twee is finally set for its decline into passé and final oblivion? It's the end of an era, folks.
Steve Weinberg, 1979 Nobel Physics Laureate, gave a lecture today about the struggle between science and religion that was meticulously argued, insightful, and fantastically humanistic, and well worth me trying to summarize it here. He started his lecture in a historical vein: he noted that in the first days of the struggle (in the Christian/Western world) most opposition to science was made on the grounds of biblical-literalism, objecting to scientific findings that directly contradicted statements of fact that were made in scriptures. In those days, apart from that sole point of conflict, science and religion could coexist pretty peacefully, and many scientists were religious and clerics interested in science. That was because science made neither moral claims nor attempt a metaphysical description of the world, so the two lived in separate fields of concepts entirely. However, since that period, with the advance of science, more and more points of tension with the religious world-view were growing. Here Weinberg was careful to distinguish the theological component of religion (the component that makes claims on the existence of God, His various abilities, the creation of the universe and the role of humans in God's plan) with the moralistic component (the one that makes claims on what is good and what is bad behavior). Weinberg outlines four points of tension that science excites with the theological component: it produces findings that demote the anthropocentrism of traditional theologies; it eliminates the necessity of religion to explain the mysteries of nature; and two other points that I have managed to forget. However, since science makes only "is" claims and no "ought" claims, it has not interfered with the other component. It is not surprising then, Weinberg concluded, that most people who take science seriously and still call themselves religious do it on the grounds of the moralistic component of religion. That is, they defend religion on the grounds that it provides an outline of how to live a good life, not on the basis of its theology being true, which they either don't believe, don't believe strongly, or can't help but doubt. This kind of defense of religion on the merit of its effects is pretty patronizing -- saying us atheists should take on this thing not because it's true, but because taking its falsehood for truth would help us make better decisions -- but it is also pretty foolish. Most of the people who take this defense don't take their morals from religion, but simply use religion to justify their morals (which they fear would be washed out by moral relativism otherwise). He ended the talk by giving a kind of humanistic sermon remarking on how fighting for "big truths" gets in the way of the "little truths" by which we are saved from the tragedy of the human condition (such truths as: It is good to have a few friends whom you can trust and It is good to enjoy the beauty that is and try to add to it as best we can). He said that the lecture series of which this was the third and last installment is going to be the basis of a book he's writing. I can't wait to read it.
This Washington Post Magazine story by Gene Weingarten is going viral:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co
On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?
It really is a well enough written piece that spends, if not all of its words, most of them musing humbly rather than sensationalizing (not withstanding its terribly effusive praise of the violinist Josh Bell). But that's not why people are magnetized to it. Why then? I would like to propose a patronizing hypothesis: spiritual starvation. It makes sense, right? I can just see a person reading this being struck with the epiphany that he's been concentrated on wanting all the wrong things. Instead of security, respect, and status, gosh-darn-it, he should have been seeking out beauty! But, it seems to me, that's such a bullshit epiphany. It's just more wanting, more starvation, more frustration, rather than more satisfaction, more contentedness, more making one self more at peace. Hey, how much do you want to bet that Josh Bell's publicist agreed to all these to make all those beauty-hungries shell out for Josh Bell CDs? The piece is good on bringing in the views of Hume, Leibniz, and Kant, but I'd like to bring the views of Transcendentalist Emerson in his own remarkably germane words from Self-Reliance:
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility than most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another....To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius.
To all those people who were ecstatic about the piece, I would like to offer this alternative; that instead of saying 'ah -- this is what we should be looking for in life, this beauty,' to say 'we should try to avoid wanting so much in addition to what is there, including beauty, for we fail so to appreciate the tons that is there.' Especially what we can rely on ourselves and our friends for instead of on strangers. Here is another quote I read recently that seems relevant, about avoiding wanting, by J.D. Salinger in Franny and Zooey:
"What do you think you're doing with the Jesus Prayer? ... You talk about piling up treasure -- money, property, culture, knowledge, and so on and so on. In going ahead with the Jesus prayer -- just let me finish, now, please -- in going ahead with the Jesus Prayer, aren't you trying to lay up some kind of treasure? Something that's every goddam bit as negotiable as all those other, more material things? Or does the fact that it's a prayer make all the difference? I mean by that, is there all the difference in the world, for you, in which side somebody lays up his treasure -- this side, or the other? The one where thieves can't break in, et cetera? Is that what makes the difference? ... As a matter of simple logic, there's no difference at all, that I can see, between the man who's greedy for material treasure -- or even intellectual treasure -- and the man who's greedy for spiritual treasure. As you say, treasure's treasure, God damn it, and it seems to me that ninety percent of all the world-hating saints in history were just as acquisitive and unattractive, basically, as the rest of us are."
(If what I wrote seems disjointed at places, note that I was listening to The Americana Show on KTRU, and it is hard to write neatly while listening to song lyrics in syncopated rhythms.)
"Phases of the Moon" - A mini-mix CD I burnt for a friend:
1. Nick Drake - Pink Moon (1972, 2:06)
2. Big Star - Blue Moon (1978, 2:06)
3. M. Ward - Half Moon (2001, 2:30)
4. Camera Obscura - Lunar Sea (2003, 4:57)
5. Television - Marquee Moon (1977, 10:47)
(These are, with the exception of Marquee Moon, all twee guitar songs in the style of Nick Drake, that has been embraced and revived by a lot of indie poppers, and all happen to be both particular favorites of mine from these five artists and about the moon)
I'm in kind of a crappy mood, so I thought I'd write a post about it. Hey, isn't that what LJ is for?!
So I'm feeling sorry for myself right now, and what makes it worse is that it's completely unwarranted. I'm kind of ditching a party right now, but that shouldn't be a reason, because I had a good time last night with friends and drinking and good pizza etc., and I really have good reasons that don't feel like excuses to ditch this one party. It's that kind of melancholy, though, an anti-social kind, the kind when you feel sorry for yourself for not doing something you know you wouldn't have enjoyed anyway. But again, that is not the reason, cause, or excuse for this particular sour mood, just an attempt at descriptiveness. The melancholy is more general than that; it is mixed in with flashbacks to other melancholy moments and a retrospective gaze on my life's path and is complete with an unsettled feeling at the bottom of my stomach. These aforementioned flashbacks mainly involve me sitting in front of a computer at night time or afternoons for some reason. (I am suddenly reminded of watching a bunch of "Freaks and Geeks" episode on DVD, but that one was a better melancholy than the present).
I've been reading Stephen Chbosky's "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." I really thought I was going to enjoy this book, but I'm finding I'm not. I think it's insulting to introverts. First of all, the main character, Charlie, a high school freshman, whom the book is written as a string of letters from, does not write well. There's a convention in literature, under which if you have a character, who doesn't speak or write well under their characterization, and you have to present direct speech or writing of theirs, then you write well FOR them. It doesn't undermine the credibility of that character's portrayal just as much as the fact that another name than the character's appears on the cover as the author, because the convention exists and the reader knows it. Plus, it saves the reader the agony of reading bad writing! That agony is not spared the reader of "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." On to my next complaint about the book, the real one: I think it's insulting to introverts. Granted, the kid is fifteen; I was probably comparably stupid about the world when I was fifteen, but the author seems to chalk the kid's awkwardness to his being an introvert, not to his being fifteen. I don't know how the story is going to wind down, or what the moral will turn out to be (based on the title I'm guessing introversion will be lauded), but so far introversion doesn't seem to be getting a fair shake. I know, I know: I sound like the guy from "Metropolitan" who got insulted by "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie," because his expectations of at last there being a movie about how great urban aristocrats are were dashed, but damn it, that's my opinion!
That brings us to the topic of introversion. Is it ok? Is it not ok? I mean, it's wired into our brain: as a reflex, we think about our actions instead of acting out our thoughts -- how can it be that we're doing something not ok? But we're also not making it easy for extroverts to interact with us in a traditional social setting. Why should they make a special effort because of it? I used to be much more of introvert than I am now, just three years ago actually. Despite my reformation, I find that mornings are a time when I relapse into as bad an introversion as that one. I do not talk to my housemates before I leave or to anyone on the way to the bus or on the bus and I wallow in thought, and it takes me an hour after I get to the university to give in to the social environment and get out of my head. Which is a shame, because I like it in my head; I'm in my element there. So there you go: I'm glad I got over my introversion, but I like to revert to it very regularly, because extroversion is not my nature. I am a foreigner in the land of extroverts. I'm an Englishman in New York, as Sting says. (EDIT: I just found this great quote by Jonathan Rauch, who writes "Hell is other people at breakfast").
I'm glad to report that I feel much better after writing this long post. Thank you LJ!
Seeing as how Woody Allen pictures kind of stand as their own genre, I thought I'd make my next ranking list an epic:
(Ordered in descending order of indifference to the films' having been made. That is, the lowest film is the one, forced to choose, I'd have rather Woody didn't make. In this new reality, where Woody never made a film with Will Ferrel, the second lowest film would be the one I'd choose, und so weiter.)
1. Manhattan
2. Hannah and Her Sisters
3. Annie Hall
4. Crimes and Misdemeanors
5. Stardust Memmories
6. Interiors
7. Play It Again, Sam
8. Manhattan Murder Mystery
9. Oedipus Wrecks (short, part of New York Stories)
10. Everyone Says I Love You
11. Sweet and Lowdown
12. Zelig
13. Husbands and Wives
14. Another Woman
15. Purple Rose of Cairo
16. Deconstructing Harry
17. Shadows and Fog
18. September
19. Celebrity
20. Sleeper
21. Scoop
22. Anything Else
23. Broadway Danny Rose
24. Mighty Aphrodite
25. Take the Money and Run
26. Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask
27. Bananas
28. Radio Days
29. Bananas
30. Small Time Crooks
31. Curse of the Jade Scorpion
32. Melinda and Melinda
Yet to see: Match Point, What's Up, Tiger Lily?, Love and Death, A Midsummer's Night Sex Comedy, Bullets over Broadway
Top five lists seem to be the only way I ever get myself to update my journal lately, so I thought I might do an experiment: write about my own experiences in the form of a top five list. So yesterday, the day of the final grade assignment meeting for the course I'm TAing on, marked the last day of my first semester of graduate school. And wow does it feel good to have that under my belt. Grad school has been a very humbling experience, but in a remarkably good way.
1. I am almost never ever the smartest person in a room any more. Neither am I the geekiest, the least social, the most heady, or the most into the Pixies. It feels great how physics grad students are so much like me -- a physics grad student. When I just came here, it seemed like everybody was a bit crazy or out of touch, but what it turned out to be is that the group of grad students here is the unique type of social group when you can be quirky with impunity. I need to investigate and exploit this property more next semester.
2. All physics all the time is messing with my brain. Seriously, put a group of physicists together and they will turn every conversation into a physics topic. Our days are filled with physics classes, physics assignments, teaching physics, reading up on physics, going to physics talks, talking about physics research that when the day is over we hang around and crack physics jokes and make physics puns and invent mock physical models of random conversation topics. I cannot wait to get back to Israel for winter break and hang around with some non-physicists for a while.
3. I have become a lot more tired than I used to be. During the semester there were none but three talks that I went to and did not nod off during. Falling asleep on the morning bus to campus and only waking myself up a couple stops after the one I needed was a regularity. It does not feel like I'm sleeping less until the symptoms hit.
4. Cooking for myself is manageable and surprisingly enjoyable. First time I'm living away from home and not on a campus meal plan. I probably should have gone off the meal plan for my last year of undergrad, I don't know why I didn't. I'm having trouble however keeping things fresh, and have to throw out stuff often because I've let them sit in the fridge for too long. Meat especially. While we're on the subject of food -- the north east has really terrible Mexican food (especially for someone coming from Houston) and for a college town, it's surprising that Ithaca doesn't have any good pizzerias. But these guys do really know how to make good sandwiches. I never considered sandwiches to be a type of food that can be really good, but my mind's been turned on that. The Reubens and Lindseys and Sweet Rachels I have had here are remarkable.
5. Quitting television is proving a good decision. I have not watched the tube in four months now, and it feels rather great. I am not missing it at all. Since the West Wing ended last year, there are no more shows I feel compelled to follow, and even if I did, there's the internet. I guess I miss The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and feel a bit out of the loop for not catching them, but that's a small price to pay for all the time that I have freed up and can use for ... doing more coursework or prepare for my sections and read Gravity's Rainbow on weekends. I do miss TCM a lot, though, but that doesn't count as television.
That was the most I've written in a long while not a bout physics (well, it was not mainly about physics, anyway), so I guess I'd sign off.
What are the top five movie quotes that happen to be the last words spoken on screen and sum up the film perfectly? Working with memory and imdb as my primary sources, I strive to answer that question in the following list. I am sure I've left off some obvious ones, so please chime in.
1. "Forget it Jack: It's Chinatown" (Chinatown, Polanski)
2. "My thoughts drift back to erect nipple wet dreams about Mary Jane Rottencrotch and the Great Homecoming Fuck Fantasy. I am so happy that I am alive, in one piece and short. I'm in a world of shit... yes. But I am alive. And I am not afraid." (Full Metal Jacket, Kubrick)
3. "Nobody's perfect." (Some Like It Hot, Wilder)
4. "Not everybody gets corrupted. You have to have a little faith in people." (Manhattan, Allen)
5. "...Tom is not a nobody. Tom has secrets he doesn't want to tell me, and I wish he would. Tom has nightmares. That's not a good thing. Tom has someone to love him. That is a good thing... Tom is crushing me. Tom is crushing me. Tom, you're crushing me!" (The Talented Mr. Ripley, Minghella)
I guess films with denouement are kind of automatically disqualified... Oh well!
Also-Rans:
"Silencio." (Mullholland Drive, Lynch)
"I guess the secret's not being you, it's being ME. True, you're not too tall and kind of ugly, but what the hell? I'm short enough and ugly enough to succeed on my own."
"Here's looking at you, kid. " (Play It Again, Sam, Allen)
"I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m not very good at that anymore. But, um, if that’s what you’re thinking, I mean you, you probably should. I mean, you know if you can wake up, you should, because you know someday, you know, you won’t be able to. So just, um … But it’s easy. You know. Just, just wake up." (Waking Life, Linklater)
"In his final appearance on the great stage of life - you can applaud if you wanna - Mr Joe Gideon." (All That Jazz, Fosse)
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