From the IMDB:
If I recall correctly, the phrase is used in the words that appear onscreen right at the beginning of the movie. The antebellum South of plantations, magnolias, cotton, chivalry, and, um, horrible oppressive slavery… is a time that’s truly gone with the wind.
I’m pretty sure it was originally titled “A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away…” 
Gen. Sherman as Darth Vader, eh?
Snakes on a Plane!
“I find your lack of Federalism disturbing.”
Gracias Alias!
C’mon, Really? You don’t get it? :dubious:
The Phantom Menace is Senator Palpatine, aka Darth Sidious. He’s orchestrated the entire conflict, and he’s doing it to advance his own political career. No one knows his double-identity, nor does anyone but the top-ranked Trade-Federation guys realize that he’s directing their side. He’s a menace, and because no one knows it, he is a Phantom Menace. Whether the Trade Federation wins, and owes him one, or the Jedi win, and the Chancellor gets unseated, his career advances. By the end of the film he’s the new Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, and no one suspects a thing. It’s actually pretty clever.
For that matter, the Attack of the Clones, like Revenge of the Sith, is kinda neat in that they are trying to establish a parity with the old trilogy titles. Also because AotC acts as a kind of misdirection. We already knew there was a “Clone Wars,” and that they were a bad thing in the eyes of most people. The title reinforces our expectation of clones being evil, when in fact they’re not. They’re just soldiers devoted to serving their master.
Shortly after The Phantom Menace came out, The now sadly-defunct Boston Comics News (aka Editorial Humor) ran a cover picture of people at a screening, looking at Hank Ketcham’s Dennis the Menace wearing a Phantom of the Opera half-mask.
Here are the lyrics to the folk song.
Oleanna is the land where you kick back and everything takes care of itself. Tenure, perhaps.
Okay, it’s part of the elaborate, flowery, scene-setting description at the beginning of the movie, but it’s still a metaphor that doesn’t carry any intrinsic meaning. You only think you know what it means after having seen it.
Which is not necessarily a bad thing, I guess. If a movie is good enough; if its characters, setting and situations are truly definitive, then the movie completes the title and not the other way around. It becomes the name for something that didn’t have a name before. My favorite movie could probably be accused of that, too.
But I think “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” would’ve sounded redundant.
A fight for Justice is the UK title, it had a different title in the US. It’s an almost totally forgettable movie, notable only because Bill Clinton has a part in it. It’s about a teenage girl dying of cancer. At no time in the movie is there any kind of legal dispute or grave injustice that needs to be righted.
The Postman Always Rings Twice.
Legend has it that James M. Cain’s manuscript was rejected 13 times, and when he submitted it to a 14th publisher in 1934 he suggested this title for the hell of it, even though the story has nothing to do with mail delivery. But it’s enigmatic, and the story sold. There was a time when residential customers did get mail twice a day, and the postman would ring the doorbell to let you know he’d made his delivery. If you missed getting something in the mail in the morning, you had another chance in the afternoon.
There have been two Hollywood versions of the story, one made in 1946 with John Garfield and Lana Turner, the other in 1981 with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange. (There is an earlier, Italian version of the story made in 1943 by Visconti called Ossessione.)
Only the 1946 version attempts to explain the title; John Garfield’s character uses the postman’s ringing twice as an analogy to justice. You can miss the postman once and he’ll catch up to you. You might be able to get away with one crime, but the system will catch up to you the second time around.
Great (albeit meaningless) title. Ridiculously overblown explanation.
As you were.
[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
Not to mention The Spanish Prisoner, which has neither a prisoner nor anyone from Spain…
Ooh! Ooh! I know this one! Apparently, it’s a well known con game or scam. “The Spanish Prisoner” is similar the well-known Nigerian e-mail scam, where someone claims to have money trapped in a foreign country and needs YOUR help to get it out. It goes something like, “my (friend/husband/brother/cousin) is unjustly imprisoned in Spain, and with them their fortune. If you help me get them out (presumably by investing YOUR money) then we’ll reward you with riches.”
Or something like that.
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. I’ve always wondered about that. I wouldn’t describe Blondie as particularly good. Tuco is no oil painting, but he isn’t especially ugly. Angel eyes is certainly bad, though. What I have always suspected is that the title is a phrase taken from literature, perhaps Spanish, and obscure to English speaking audiences.
Wouldn’t A grave full of dollars be a better title?
yeah I’m still waiting for someone to explain what “Reindeer Games” are.
Re: Reindeer Games
My guess is that the producers knew they had made a steaming pile of crap, so they just attached a title that vaguely corresponded to the events in the movie.
“Uhhhhh, let’s see, it’s Christmas, Ben Affleck, some casino. Uhhhh…REINDEER GAMES!”
“I like it!”
Here’s a couple:
His Girl Friday and Sideways.
I have an inkling that the phrase “his girl Friday” is a colloquial term from before my time.
I interpreted Sideways as a description of the way Miles was moving through life. He couldn’t get over his previous marriage, couldn’t get his book published, etc. He wasn’t moving forward. Can anyone back me up with this, or am I way off? Perhaps it’s a reference to something from the book that didn’t appear in the movie.
From dictionary.com