When life imitates art

A moment of self-disclosure: I love dark-humor movies. I've been a Coen Brothers fan for years.

My husband says our biggest point of difference is the kind of movies we like to watch: He likes it when lots of people you don't know very well die quickly in loud explosions, while I prefer to see someone I've come to care deeply about die a slow and exquisitely painful death.

That's his take, anyway.

My son, God bless him, has inherited my taste in dark, yet witty movies. So it's no surprise that he and I end up spouting lines from The Hudsucker Proxy or No Country for Old Men.

Apparently, we're not alone. (See the No. 1 movie phrase from 2007 after the jump)

The terminology trend organization Global Language Monitor has just released its annual survey of phrases from the movies that have most influenced the English language.

Javier Bardem's "Call it, Friendo" was ranked the No. 1 catch phrase of the year, from the Coen Brothers' Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men (Bardem's crazy villain Anton Chigurgh says it as he tosses a coin to see if someone will live or die).

At my house, we use that ominous line for minor annoyances. Very un-Methodist, I know. But good for a laugh.

Quoting movie lines probably started back in 1939, with Clark Gable's famous line from Gone with the Wind: "Frankly, my dear . . . " Ever since then, we've all repeated such memorable phrases as Clint Eastwood's "Make my day," Renee Zellweger's "You had me at hello," and even Arnold Schwarzenegger's "I'll be back."

And who can forget young Haley Joel Osment's "I see dead people"?

This year, Bardem's phrase beat out Daniel Day-Lewis' "I drink your milkshake" from There Will Be Blood -- YouTube videos notwithstanding.

Rounding out the top five are:

Quirky phrases from Juno, such as "doodle that can't be undid."

"Madness? This is SPARTA!" -- that spectacular line from 300 comes in particularly handy when we're on deadline here at the UMR newsroom.

And then there's, "I'm not the guy you kill; I'm the guy you buy off" from Michael Clayton.

I plan to use some Hollywood-speak while at General Conference in Fort Worth.  

I'm thinking Jack Nicholson's plaintive lines from Mars Attacks! -- as war is about to be launched between earthlings and aliens -- would be especially fitting: "Why can't we work out our differences? Why can't we work things out? Little people, why can't we all just get along?"

Comments

[Amy Forbus]

For weeks now, my husband has been threatening to make a milkshake for me so he can drink it up. And we haven't even seen the movie...

[Art Russell]

So that I don't sound too terribly trivial, I'd like to say for the record, that I also like movies where LOTS of people I care about die in a big explosions. The demise of the enire population of the planet Alderaan in the original "Star Wars" for example. One minute Happy little Aleraanians running around everywhere, and the next POOF! Death by Death Star. I mean it, I really liked those folks.

[Ken Lowery]

This reminds me of a great moment early on in the old computer game Sam and Max Hit the Road. Our "freelance police" receive a bomb in the mail about to go off, so Max tosses it out a window.

"Don't worry," he says to Sam, "There's no one we know or care about out there."

[John of the Dead]

My favorite episode of "The Twilight Zone" ever: a down-on-their-luck young couple gets a visit from a mysterious stranger with a simple offer. They are given a black box with a glass lid. Inside the box is a big, red button. They are told that if they press the button, they will be given $1 million, but that someone they don't know will die. They agonize over the decision for most of the episode, and finally decide to push the button. Shortly, the mysterious stranger returns with a briefcase full of money. He gives them the money and takes back the button. As he leaves, he tells them, "I'll be certain to give this button to someone you don't know."

oooooWEEEEEEooooo

Oh, and how coould you leave off the most quotable movie ever, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail?" Inexcusable! "The Big Lebowski" is also great, but the language is... salty.

[Robin Russell]

Monty Python! How utterly thoughtless of me.
One of our favorite lines when we're feeling puny: "I'm not dead yet!"

And yes, that exquisite Twilight Zone episode. A much, much classier version of mental torment than today's overly graphic Saw or Hostel flicks.

[Ken Lowery]

I'll throw another one on the fire:

The comic book series 100 Bullets. It's crime fiction, and the premise is this: People who have had a great wrong done to them in their lives are approached by a shady Man in Black who calls himself Agent Graves. Graves gives them an attaché case with indisputable evidence pointing toward the one person responsible for the shape their lives are in. Also in the case: an untraceable gun and 100 untraceable bullets that you cannot be arrested for having or using. So, what do you do?

Good stuff, good stuff...