The Comedians [1967]
1. The Columbus statue on a completely empty boulevard.
2. He squeezes the headless chicken, rubs blood and feathers all over Philipot.
3. “Would you sit down or something? With you kneeling there it makes me feel like a priest.”
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country [1991]
1. “I find that remark … insulting.”
2. The boot doesn’t fit.
3. Federation-branded throw blanket.
Spartacus [1960]
1. A basket of green onions outside the kitchen door.
2. “This woman Varinia is in his house. All Rome knows about it. Malicious tongues even say that he’s in love for the first time in his life. I noticed a strange look in his eye when he first saw her.”
“It would take a great woman to make Crassus fall out of love with himself.”
3. Dirty cowhide foot coverings.
Hiroshima Mon Amour [1959]
1. Every morning at 4 o’clock, someone passes by her window, coughing.
2. Casablanca. An empty nightclub. A deserted bandstand. The only light seems to come from behind the bar.
3.”I will remember this affair as a symbol of love’s forgetfulness.”
Laura [1944]
1. Recurring visual motif: wall arrangements of groups of objects (masks, framed pictures, etc.)
2. When asked if he ever knew a woman who wasn’t a doll or a dame, Mark replies, “Yeah, one, but she kept walking me past furniture windows to look at the parlor suites.” Later, during a flashback, Lydecker walks down a snowy street past a department store with a parlor suite in the window.
3. She goes to the kitchen for a glass of milk, yet in the next scene it has disappeared.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon [2000]
1. Multicolored cave walls.
2. He grimaces and says, “I will have to order from a larger restaurant.”
3. The needle pulls on his skin as he extracts it from his neck.
A pal of mine gave me a small bottle of homemade blackberry shrub, which has inspired me to play around with it to make some cocktails. This experiment turned out quite nicely. A cooling sipper for sultry afternoons.
DOLORES GRAY
3 oz. unsweetened white grapefruit juice
2 oz. vodka
.75 oz. Aperol
.25 oz. blackberry cider vinegar shrub
.25 oz. honey syrup
Shake with ice, pour over fresh ice in a double old fashioned glass. Garnish with an orange peel and/or cherry.
The Trial [1962]
1. Shrouded statue.
2. “I have a physical defect. I’ll show it to you. Come with me.”
3. Stripy gauntlet.
Bonus: the second time Josef K. ascends the stairs to enter the court, there is a slow bass & drum rhythm track on the soundtrack that sounds very, very similar to the music of the Black Lodge’s waiting room music in the last episode of Twin Peaks. Coincidence? Something tells me no.
The Limey [1999]
1. Che Guevara t-shirt.
2. “It was just ’66. And early ’67. That’s all it was.”
3. Blurry windchimes snapping into focus.
Movie Crazy [1932]
1. “Come out of the closet, you cad!”
2. He sees the rabbit on the plate and suddenly thinks better of eating.
3. Funnel-snorkel.
