Oh my. I have once more been “tagged” with a “meme,” and am compelled to…obey. Up to a point. MovieMan0283 did the deed in a comment in the thread for “A Nice Thing,” the rat.
The challenge, such as it is, is to concoct a gallery of cinematic images, adhering to a theme of the curator’s (as it were) choosing. One rule is that these images be screen caps and not production stills. That rule I am adhering to. Another rule is that I have to link to MovieMan’s own gallery over at his blog The Dancing Image, and also to the gallery on the blog of this meme’s creator, a fellow named Stephen who is in charge of a blog called Checking On My Sausages, which looks like a cool site despite, as Robert Wyatt might put it, its extraordinary name.
The rules do not, however, say that I have to identify the films from which the screen grabs come from, or reveal the theme that ties them together. The overt theme ought to be obvious, but the rest I leave up to you to figure out. So. Here goes.
I’m also supposed to tag five more bloggers, but you know me, I can’t really do that. Anyhow, enjoy.
Beautifully Bunuelian – and an eloquent critical response to “Inception”!
I guess Jim got it. I was going to say that the them was that the first two have guys with beards, but the rest don’t. Jim may be right, but I still think there’s something to that theory.
Don’t tell me that Inception ends with Leo jolting up from bed a bed which may or may not be in an insane asylum…
Bunuel in Bed?
Whoa- It was all a dream.
…or was it?
Great entries, Glenn! Oddly enough, and while the sleeping theme was obvious enough I didn’t get the Bunuel connection until reading the comments. Even though, and I kid you not, I said to myself as I scrolled through, Wow an awful lot of Bunuel films in here…
True story about Stephen’s site. I was once working in an environment where you’re not really supposed to be on the internet but the internet’s there. During a dull patch, I hit up my blogroll and came across his site. At that moment, inexplicably (and this is the only time this ever happened to me) literally dozens upon dozens of screens started popping up. I kept trying to X out but soon there were about thirty – forty windows open. And of course every single one of them proclaims boldly “Checking on my sausages”! Man, I thought to myself, if a manager walks by and sees them I am fucked!
I figured, given the erudition and inclination of my readership (I was just mentioning to a friend today that I could be the only film blogger who gets longer comments threads on Eastwood’s directorial career than a review of “Inception”) that myunstated theme wouldn’tbe unstated for long. What I was going for were Buñuel films, and points wherein their characters were awakening from a dream or dreamlike state. And they are, from top down:
Fernando Rey in “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (1972)
Paul Frankeur in “The Milky Way” (1969)
Jean-Claude Brialy (with Monica Vitti) in “The Phantom of Liberty” (1974)
Catherine Deneuve in “Tristana” (1970)
Dan Herlihy in “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” (1954) (And this is an interesting dream sequence, as it depicts him walking around within the dream, and then sleepwalking as he awakes in despair and collapses back on to his hammock)
Charles Vanel in “Death in the Garden” (1956) (Not awakening from a sleep, precisely, but coming out of a reverie of the “real” Champs Élysées and Arc de triomphe inspired by the postcard he’s looking at)
Alfonso Mejia in “Los Olvidados” (1950)
For some reason I thought the clip from Death in the Garden was from Phantom of Liberty. Wasn’t there a sequence where Napoleonic soldiers look at a photo around a campfire or something, or am I making that up? Another good one would be the woman waking up from the “hand” dream in Exterminating Angel…