Well, Gwyneth Paltrow's first long soliloquy in Shakespeare in Love --
most of which I've suppressed from memory beyond the gushing "I want to
love" topic sentence -- comes close to being one of the worst lines in
any film of recent times. Fortunately the movie picks up quite a bit
after that bit of heavy handed stage business (tho her departure in the
end for a colony that wasn't to be settled for another 16 years is a
clunker of its own sort). The older version of Matt Damon (don't know
the actor's name) asking his wife "Tell me I've led a good life" at the
end of that film, followed almost immediately by the fullscreen US flag
shows that this problem of bad lines and the beginning and ending of
movies is perhaps more general and structural than we might imagine.
Ron Silliman
----Original Message Follows----
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1999 16:20:38 GMT
Subject: Re: Worst films
From: [log in to unmask] (Richard Caddel)
To: [log in to unmask]
Reply-To: [log in to unmask] (Richard Caddel)
What about worst lines from films? Here's a select few which have
carved themselves in my memory bank:
It took an afternoon to turn a page of history
- narration in Gone with the Wind
You came back - Why?
- Eli Wallack to Yul Brynner in The Magnificent Seven
Yonda is de Cassell ov my Fadder
- Tony Curtis in Taras Bulba, tho actually so many of Tony Curtis's
lines wd do...
any more? If you're looking for a link between this thread and the
Function of the List, how 'bout: these are the neglected banks of our
language; it's our Duty to rescue these phorgotten jewels and
refurbish them... and so on...
RC
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