Animal House actually has a few subtle moments. I didn’t catch this one until years later: in the scenes where Eric Stratten finds an obituary of Fawn Leibowitz, a girl at a nearby girl’s college. He goes to her dorm and pretends to be her boyfriend, and then wrangles a date with her roommate out of sympathy. Later, when they’re making out, he tells her “I used to touch Fawn this way.” She replies “I know.” He looks surprised, and she says “She told me.”
She was telling him that she figured out his scam, but was going along with it anyway. In the back of my mind, I had always wondered why Eric seemed so shocked by this, but it finally came to me.
When the guards casually shoot prisoners the person behind the one intended for execution falls to the ground as the round passes through the body and in to them.
The owner’s manual for my car (2001 Pontiac Grand Am) says to start the engine, pop it into neutral, and then proceed to deice/desnow the car. The idea is that it gives the engine some time to warm up (though I understand that’s only really a problem if the temperature is REALLY cold, like 10 or 20 below, to where the oil becomes a bit thicker and needs to be warmed up considerably), also, it allows the car’s HVAC system to help you with the deicing by warming up the interior, causing the innermost part of the ice on the windows to melt a bit and letting you just slide big chunks of it off instead of fighting every step of the way.
That said, our squadron’s First Sergeant sent out an email telling us that leaving the car unattended and running is A) Illegal in some parts and B) A great way to be helpful to some potential car thief who doesn’t want to bother hotwiring the car - all he has to do is break a window and put her in gear. That said, I think some cars can be started remotely without the key in the ignition, but leave the steering wheel and transmission locked.
Interesting, I always figured she didn’t know she was being scammed - just thought a good looking guy showed up on her doorstep. I thought she completely bought into his story and was trying to scam HIM, by lying that she and Fawn had discussed him, and Fawn had said nice things, and it was because of those nice things she was willing to fool around so quickly. Nice girls didn’t just put out, she had to have a reason - hence HER scam. I thought his shocked look (knowing there was NO WAY Fawn had mentioned him) meant “huh, girls lie too.”
Speaking of Animal House, (I agree wigth Glory’s interpretation, FWIW), it took me a few viewings to notice that the black case that held Otter’s giant dildo earlier in the movie (“She’ll take this seriously”) is the same one that he holds up and points to as he enters the courtroom later in the movie.
I always wondered if that might be the reason he hands back the pistol—and if so, how much significance there was in Vasquez was giving him a weapon in the first place.
That’s kind of the whole point of why it bugged me - Fargo was supposed to be a truly cold place, and the movie was set in winter, and what people do who live in truly cold places in winter is start their car first then scrape it. Idling is against the law here, too, but there is an exception for letting your car warm up a bit so the oil circulates before driving.
Something I didn’t notice in the otherwise mediocre ‘Behind Enemy Lines’ the first time I watched it, when the hero is walking out of the city in disguise he walks past the enemy general who has been looking for him and they both casually acknowledge each other!
I thought that this was a little spark of genius in an otherwise massively over the top movie because it was so subtle and true to life.
Just before I moved to the states there was a BttF marathon on TV and as I was watching for the however many zillionth time, I noticed that one of the little clocks strewn about Doc’s home (in the opening scenes of the movie) there’s a figure of a man hanging from the big hand of one of the clocks (like the ending scene with Doc trying to get the electric cable plugged in). In the same viewing, I also (like Annie Xmas) noticed for the first time that the name of the Mall had changed from Twin Pines to Lone Pine. It took me until this weekend’s marathon to finally catch the scene in which he knocked down one of the pines.
And this isn’t really anything unusual, but I have a semi-uncommon classic car, and it’s always neat to see one in a movie. Hey! There’s a 1960s Buick Riviera.
This has always tickled me: in Jaws, when Chief Brody finally manages to tie the knot, he says, “Hey, I got it!” It’s such a natural human exclamation ('course, then the shark strikes). Geez that quote is 35 years old now, and I still think of the Chief whenever I say it.
This is more of an error or just showing differences in pronunciation between the US and UK, but in ‘Easy A’ a plot point is the protagonist getting sent to the principle for calling someone a ‘twat’ in class. Later on when she is discussing it with her parents they ask her what word. She gives them the ‘T’ and tells them to ‘Think British’, as the word is used more over there (and probably comes from there).
The thing is, Brits like me got really, really confused by what she said in class. She called someone a ‘twot’. No-one in the UK would pronounce the word that way. It is always a hard ‘a’ to rhyme with ‘cat’. The best swear words use hard consonants and short vowels; shit, fuck, twat, cunt. There’s no messing with those words. You spit them out rather than wobble. I honestly after the scene with the parents had to hit the net to see exactly what she had said as I was so confused.
Turns out it is quite common and “L Word” and “Rescue Me” were given examples of the same usage in American TV.
For Brits that want to see it, here’s a low sound quality YouTube link:
In the movie Stakeout, with Richard Dreyfus and Emilio Estevez, their characters are killing time by playing a trivia game of movie quotes. Estevez’ character gives Dreyfus the quote, “This was not a boating accident”. Even though Dreyfus’ character in Jaws, Matt Hooper, said the quote in the movie Jaws, Dreyfuss didn’t recognize the quote.
I recognized this right away, but apparently many people missed it. I’ve also read (don’t know if it’s true), but Estevez and Dreyfus were playing this game in some down time on the Stakeout set. Estevez DID give the line to Dreyfus, and he really DID miss it. Someone thought it would be a great idea to put that in the movie, and I, for one, am glad they did.
despite the fact that he was the actor who said it in Jaws.
In Easy Money, Rodney Dangerfield and his buddies are trying to find a place to eat. They get to one place as soon as it closes. While they are discussing where to go, you see “Open 23 Hours” on the marquee in the background.
How do people warm their cars up then? Isn’t it more of a safety issue to have cars traveling the roads that haven’t warmed up enough for the windows to stay clear? Not to mention make sure the vehicle is warm enough that the driver isn’t shaking so hard they’re not able to properly control the vehicle.
