Home | v11 | v10 | v9 | v8 | v7 | v6 | v5 | v4 | v3 | v2 | v1 | Master List | Lightning Round | Awards | Participants | History | Rules

Chris E's Movie Clip Party - 11th Edition
11.03.07

( = vote for Audience Award )

WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER? [Chris]
opening titles

STRANGER THAN FICTION [Laura S]
Introducing Harold Crick

CARS [Xta]
Piston Cup featurette

ALL THE REAL GIRLS [MDA]
why haven't you ever kissed me?

MOLLY MAGUIRES, THE [Tod]
opening titles

GROUNDHOG DAY [Anne]
Jeopardy!

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (Cocteau) [Deirdre]
exploring the house

SPELLBOUND [Xta]
Harry

BEE SEASON [Laura S]
"cotyledon"

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD AND THE MONSTERS [Paul]
Opening

NORTH BY NORTHWEST [Chris]
kissing on a train

SERENITY [Tod]
getting back to the ship

SWEET CHARITY [Xta]
Rhythm of Life

QUEEN, THE [Laura S]
spotting a buck

HOLLYWOOD REVUE OF 1929, THE [Paul]
"Singin in the Rain"

DEVIL WEARS PRADA, THE [Deirdre]
Miranda's morning arrivals

GREAT ESCAPE, THE [Tod]
Independence Day

FUNNY BONES [Warren]
arriving for the talent auditions

PRINCESS RACCOON [Anne & Jim]
"People are a plague"

< intermission >

ENDURING LOVE [Anne]
hot air balloon

3 WOMEN [Jim]
beer mug

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND [Tim]
late night visit

SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND [Laura S]
"Maxwell's Silver Hammer"

SHAOLIN SOCCER [Harriet]
making steamed buns

SEVEN MEN FROM NOW [MDA]
Masters tells a story

GRADUATE, THE [Xta]
Getting a hotel room

THE HOST [MDA]
The monster appears

RADIO DAYS [Paul]
Bill Kern sports stories

THE HOST [Warren]
the monster takes the girl

VIVA ZAPATA! [Tod]
escorting the prisoner

INTERSTELLA 5555 [Warren]
the band is kidnapped

DINER [Tim]
Shrevie's records

LADY EVE, THE [Chris]
snuggling close

LOST HIGHWAY [Tim]
phone call at the party

KNOCKED UP [Harriet]
hotel room

DAMN YANKEES! [Deirdre]
Bob Fosse & Gwen Verdon

< intermission >

CLOCKWORK ORANGE, A [Paul]
opening

IDIOCRACY [Warren & Harriet]
introduction

CONVERSATION, THE [Chris]
eavesdropping in public

ENEMY OF THE STATE [Chris]
eavesdropping in public

STRANGER THAN FICTION [Jim]
articulated bus

CALAMARI WRESTLER, THE [Tim]
training sequence

GILDA [Chris]
i hate you

BEAVERS [Harriet]
Beaver love

IN THE COMPANY OF MEN [MDA]
Conference room chatting

CABARET [Laura S]
"Tomorrow Belongs to Me"

LIGHTNING ROUND
clips by Chris except as noted
THE BREAKFAST CLUB [MDA] "Can you describe the ruckus, sir?"
SPARTAN [MDA] "You don't want to go in the desert."
BACK TO THE FUTURE "You built a time machine?"
AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER Britney Spears
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK Swordsman
FATHER OF THE BRIDE [Anne & Jim] "Welcome to the '90s, Mr. Bond."
RIZE [Harriet] Miss Prissy
PRINCESS RACCOON [Anne & Jim] golden frog
AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER "How about no?"
STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, A "Hey, Stella!"
CARS removing the boot
STICK IT [Harriet] odd vault
TOMMY BOY [Tim] glass wall
I AM CURIOUS (YELLOW) [Deirdre] eating a sausage
SWEET CHARITY Rhythm of Life (ending)
WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION end title warning

WILD BUNCH, THE [Tod]
heading to confront Mapache

UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD [Warren]
truth serum / sleeping pills

WHALE RIDER [Paul]
Paikea speaks

PSYCHO [MDA]
the shower

ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY [Xta]
"Afternoon Delight"

- end -

Thanks again to everyone for coming out for another great night of great clips and great conversation. Thanks and welcome to Bettina and Martien. (They may very well launch a Hamburg edition in 2008...)

Extra thanks to everyone who contributed--this is one of the few parties that asks its guests to do so much advance homework. But without you this entire mad concept would collapse in on itself.

I love that eleven years into this I'm still learning about what makes a great clip--and still learning what it is we're even doing here.

I'd watched Anne's clip of the hot-air balloon accident from ENDURING LOVE several times on my laptop, and knew it would make a good kickoff to Act II. Little did I suspect that played on the (modestly large) television and through the stereo to a roomful of people that it would electrify the room. I can't recall a clip that created such an adrenaline spike (perhaps John Hurt's last meal in ALIEN, contributed by Sean in Year 5).

It was enough to help Anne walk away with the (newly dubbed, by unanimous consent) Miriam Engelberg Audience Award in a landslide, by the highest margin seen since we created the award.

Perhaps the biggest lesson from the night is a new understanding of the power of silence and anticipation. Early in Act I the image faded up on two figures in profile, not speaking to each other. This tentative, aching leadup to a first kiss, from the opening scene of ALL THE REAL GIRLS, was filled with more silence and stillness than dialogue or action, and emerged as the favorite clip from Act I. My suspicion is that in the first few years of the party this scene might not have played quite as well, when shock and spectacle and quick laughs were the best ways to make an impression.

Now, however, when we are met by silence and stillness, we find ourselves leaning forward, becoming more involved, because we trust that the peer who contributed this clip knows what he or she is doing, and that my attention to this moment of quiet will find itself rewarded.
Mike employed this powerfully here and in Act II, in the claustrophic confines of a covered wagon in SEVEN MEN FROM NOW.

Tod, too, went for the long game, with his Baxter-winning set of wordless long walks. While the destination in THE GREAT ESCAPE was a bit of a lark, Tod's three other clips placed the power of slow anticipation on brilliant display: the steady accumulation of peasants to the procession accompanying the imprisoned Brando in VIVA ZAPATA!, the slow exit in advance of the mine explosion in THE MOLLY MAGUIRES, and the relaxed walk to the final bloody showdown in THE WILD BUNCH. These last two each began with powerfully provocative setups--lighting a fuse, and loading rifles, that then juxtaposed sharply with the leisurely pace that followed.

Act I also included two mindbenders: Anne and Jim's gorgeous and surreal singing stage production from Seijun Suzuki's PRINCESS RACCOON, and Paul's unspeakably bad LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD VS. THE MONSTERS. And while I don't want to turn this award into a race to the bottom, this redubbed Mexican musical was like a dish from a another culture that looks so strange and smells so foul you can't understand why someone would even call it food, so it takes the prize for What the Hell Was That?

Act II was a bit of a powerhouse, with 8 of the 17 clips garnering a vote for the Audience Award. It also included the monstrous (if you'll pardon the pun) reveal of Warren's surprise second clip from THE HOST, in which it seemed as if the creature were rampaging through some other, different clip and movie, intruding into the party like the Energizer Bunny.

That brain-yanking turn from quiet domesticity to all-hell-breaking-loose made this a brilliant clip even without the fiendish setup, so with it Warren earned the Kurosawa award, for best foreign clip of the year.

Tim pulled out a near-Montalban in the confrontation from DINER between Ellen Barkin and Daniel Stern over Shrevie's record collection. And while Nick Hornby may have subsequently put a finer point on this particular aspect of the male character, this scene plays on its own like a self-contained short play. Barkin's performance grounds the moment with its emotional honesty, earning the clip this year's Jessie.

Bookending Act II was a clip Deirdre had me capture four years ago, of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon dancing a mambo in DAMN YANKEES! I remembered it after Christa and Laura contributed clips from SWEET CHARITY and CABARET, and added it to the mix. In editing I watched it over. And over. And over. I became fascinated by the near-robotic precision of Fosse's dancing, and, as Christa articulated, how much more Fosse-like could a dance number be? None. None more Fosse. As such, it earned the Harold & Fayard , for the best dance clip of the night.

Act III did offer a few key highlights, including Tim's clip from THE CALAMARI WRESTLER, in a fight preparation montage seemingly from a Japanese-language Sid & Marty Kroft production. Lunatic but brief, the clip earned the Pepe for best clip under 60 seconds in length.

Three of my clips offered classic cinematic kisses (or near-kisses). I have felt for a while that this was an overlooked category of clip, and I was glad that my contributions were not the only ones this year. Still, the quiet hand-kiss in Act I couldn't compare to the noisy, passionate love of two rodents in the night, as witnessed in Harriet's clip from BEAVERS. I've decided to add (and retroactively award Harriet) an award for Best Kiss. The award I'll name Il Bacio--"the kiss", in Italian--in remembrance of the final moments of CINEMA PARADISO (contributed by Christa in Year 2), in which we see the reel of censored cinematic kisses Alfredo had hoarded in his projection booth all those many years.

The final award was a two-fer, with the indelible shower scene from PSYCHO winning both the Montalban (Best classic scene) and the Teller (Best wordless scene). Brief flashes of this sequence show up in nearly every Academy Awards or CNN "History of Cinema" montage, but watching it in its entirety is a startling reminder of the power of simplicity and suggestion to unnerve and shock. Even now, nearly 50 years later, our brains are surprised at what we imagine we just saw--or didn't see...?

I've also developed two new reference lists, compiled with the help of Mike (who spent Saturday afternoon doing much of the data entry): by director, and by year of release. Hopefully these will help inspire you to fill in a few of the gaps.

No time like the present to get ready for year 12.

Home | v11 | v10 | v9 | v8 | v7 | v6 | v5 | v4 | v3 | v2 | v1 | Master List | Lightning Round | Awards | Participants | History | Rules