Cinemaniac Reviews Twenty Questions (Part One)

In case you haven't noticed, I'm mostly marking time in the month of September. Here was a 20-question quiz that showed up a while back at Cinemaniac Reviews.

You get the first ten questions today, the next ten tomorrow. If you answer them on your blog, leave a link in the comment section. Or just answer them in the comment section.

I live for this kind of stuff.

1. What’s your favorite movie?
Ostensibly, Casablanca, but in the past few years, Katie-Bar-The-Door and I are much more likely to watch The Thin Man, The Thing From Another World and Rio Bravo.

2. Least favorite movie?
Endless Love, starring a young Brooks Shields. Worst. Movie. Ever. Or at least the worst I ever paid to see. I don't blame her though—I blame Franco Zeffirelli who despite helming this fiasco is somehow still allowed to direct.

3. Name one movie you loved upon initial viewing but eventually grew to hate (or vice-versa).
From love to hate? The Big Chill. On repeat viewings, I realized I loved the soundtrack, hated the story and characters.

From hate to love? Apocalypse Now. When I first saw it, I thought it a sprawling, self-indulgent mess with no ending. Maybe because I read and fell in love with the source novel, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (or maybe because I got smarter or maybe because I grew out of my teens), I came to love it (love it, I tells ya) as a commentary on just how thin the veneer of civilization really is.

4. Name your biggest “guilty pleasure” film.
I guess some would feel guilty about loving Used Cars, but I never feel guilty about my film pleasure. Why should I?

5. Favorite quote from a favorite actor/actress (must be a line from a movie)?
I could literally, I think, spend an entire day relying on nothing but movie quotes to communicate meaningfully with my fellow human beings, but back in the day I always got the biggest laugh for my imitation of an S.Z. Sakall line in Casablanca—falling spectacles included—"Honest?! As honest as the day is long!" (Pardon the colorization.)



This, by the way, is the line Katie-Bar-The-Door mentioned at dinner:



6. Favorite quote from a favorite actor/actress (must NOT be a line from a movie)?
"Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant."—by who else, Cary Grant

7. Three favorite movie scenes?
What, just three?
Off the top of my head:
The airport sequence at the end of Casablanca
The end of City Lights
The conclusion of the filibuster scene at the end of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
But ask me tomorrow and I'll tell you something different.



8. Four films that should NOT have won Best Picture?
What, just four?
Here are four of the earliest that I wouldn't have even nominated for best picture, in chronological order:
a. The Broadway Melody (1928-29), which won over The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Wind and Steamboat Bill Jr..
b. Cimarron (1930-31), which won over City Lights, Dracula and The Public Enemy.
c. Cavalcade (1932-33), which won over Duck Soup, King Kong, Trouble in Paradise, Dinner at Eight, The Bitter Tea of General Yen and M.
d. The Great Ziegfeld (1936), which won over My Man Godfrey, Dodsworth and Modern Times.

9. Top five of the year (currently)?
Well, I've only seen three movies released in 2012: Ted, Hit and Run and John Carter (of Mars). So Ted, Hit and Run and John Carter (of Mars).

10. Bottom three of the year (currently)?
Ted, Hit and Run and John Carter (of Mars).