#PayClassicsForward, Year 3

For the third year in a row, Aurora at the delightful blog Once Upon a Screen is offering her #PayClassicsForward challenge. Taking off from “The 12 Days of Christmas,” the challenge is to offer a dozen movie “gifts,” mostly from movies that are not as heralded as others. (Click here if you’d like to read Aurora’s explanation of this premise, as well as her list for same.)

Challenge accepted!

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One great new silent movie

London Symphony  (I can’t plug this beautiful movie enough. Click here to learn more about it and purchase it.)

 

Two movies about movies

The Stunt Man (1975)

Cinema Paradiso (1988)

 

Three immortal movie comedy teams

Laurel & Hardy

The Marx Brothers

Monty Python

 

Four men whom, if I were a woman, I’d love

Humphrey Bogart

Charles Durning

Paul Newman

Gene Wilder

 

Five onesies

One A.M. (1916)

One Week (1920)

One, Two, Three (1961)

101 Dalmatians (1961)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

 

Six movies that mainline me with happiness

Way Out West (1937)

The Palm Beach Story (1942)

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

Stop Making Sense (1984)

Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

 

Seven documentaries

Hearts and Minds (1975)

Gap-Toothed Women (1987)

4 Little Girls (1997)

Z: A Magnificent Obsession (2004)

The Aristocrats (2005)

Inside Deep Throat (2005)

Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau (2014)

 

Eight musical numbers in non-musicals

“The Country’s Going to War” in Duck Soup (1933)

“Trail of the Lonesome Pine” in Way Out West (1937)

“Knights of the Round Table” in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

“Seems Like Old Times” in Annie Hall (1977)

“The Inquisition” in History of the World Part I (1981)

“Straight and Nappy” in School Daze (1988)

“Banana Boat Song” in Beetlejuice (1988)

“When You’re Alone” in Hook (1991)

 

Nine movies so bad, they’re great

Earth vs. the Spider (1958)

Plan Nine from Outer Space (1959)

Mame (1974)

Empire of the Ants (1977)

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978)

King Kong (1976)

Jaws 2 (1978)

Showgirls (1995)

Big-Ass Spider! (2013)

 

Ten movie lines

“I don’t use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.” – Clifton Webb, Laura (1941)

“That’s one of the tragedies of this life — that the men who are most in need of a beating-up are always enormous.” – Rudy Vallee, The Palm Beach Story (1942)

“Don’t you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You wouldn’t marry a girl just because she’s pretty, but my goodness, doesn’t it help?” – Marilyn Monroe, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

“Hitler…there was a painter! He could do an entire apartment in one afternoon, two coats!” – Kenneth Mars, The Producers (1968)

“It’s all in the mind.” – George Harrison, Yellow Submarine (1968)

“Can’t you see, this is the last act of a desperate man!” – “We don’t care if it’s the first act of Henry the Fifth.” – Cleavon Little and John Hillerman, Blazing Saddles (1974)

“Help! Help! I’m being repressed!” – Michael Palin, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

“If you need me, just call. You know how to dial, don’t you? You just put your finger in the hole and make tiny little circles.” – Rachel Ward, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982)

(Berating his wife about using the term “nest egg”) “And don’t use any part of it, either! Don’t use ‘nest’, don’t use ‘egg.’ If we’re in the woods, you can point, ‘A bird lives in a “round stick”! And you have ‘things’ over-easy with toast!” – Albert Brooks, Lost in America (1985)

“There’s always a bigger fish.” – Liam Neeson, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)

 

Eleven performances by an inanimate object

Dorothy’s ruby red shoes, The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Rosebud, Citizen Kane (1941)

The falcon, The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Paul McCartney’s guitar, I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978)

The Ark of the Covenant, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

The television set, Poltergeist (1982)

Pee-Wee’s bicycle, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985)

The suitcase, Pulp Fiction (1994)

The red violin, The Red Violin (1998)

Wilson, Cast Away (2000)

The sorting hat, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)

 

Twelve worthy sequels

The Godfather Part II (1974)

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

Psycho II (1983)

Aliens (1986)

The Color of Money (1986)

Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)

Batman Returns (1992)

Addams Family Values (1993)

Toy Story 2 (1999)

Spider-Man 2 (2004)

Rocky Balboa (2006)