Film is visceral.
It's hollering for Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett in "Set It Off" or for Angelina Jolie in "Wanted." It's screaming when someone steps out from the shadows, it's knowing that Tony and Maria belong together ("West Side Story") and that Angie Dickinson should not get on that elevator ("Dressed To Kill"), it's rooting for Gale Sondergaard to kill Bette Davis ("The Letter"), it's the moment in "Terminator 2" when Linda Hamilton fixes the doctor with the look.
You also love the collage we debuted last week for "Film Classics of the 20th Century" and a number of you tried to identify everyone. Film experts Vernon and Bonita were the only two who managed the trick on Sunday before 10:00 pm Pacific Time. After that time?
C.I., answering e-mails at The Common Ills, identified the pieces of the collage. So if you e-mailed after that, you may have done it on your own or you may have cribbed from her answers.
Top row, Bogart and Lauren Bacall in Key Largo, Jane Fonda and Robert Redford in Barefoot in the Park, Danny De Vito and Billy Crystal in Throw Mama From The Train, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn from Desk Set, Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway (Chinatown), Simone Signoret and Vera Clouzot (Les Diaboliques), Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn (House Sitter) and Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost, (sort of second row follows), Meryl Streep, Bruce Willis and Goldie Hawn (Death Becomes Her), The Graduate (Anne Bancroft's leg), Cher (Moonstruck), Walter Matthau and Elaine May (A New Leaf), Jeff Bridges and Barbra Streisand (The Mirror Has Two Faces), Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal (When Harry Met Sally . . .), (sort of third row) Woody Allen (Love and Death), Bette Davis (Now Voyager), Apocalypse Now, Johnny Depp (Ed Wood), (sort of fourth row) Diane Ross (Mahogany), Dressed to Kill, Goodfellas, Jon Voight and Jane Fonda (Coming Home), Judy Garland (Summer Stock), Goldie Hawn (Wildcats), Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort (Harold and Maude), Keanu Reeves (and Patrick Swayze which you can't see at Third, from Point Break), (sort of fifth row), Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart and Katharine Hepburn (Philadelphia Story), Tatum O'Neal and Ryan O'Neal (Paper Moon), Michelle Pfieffer (Fabulous Baker Boys), Terminator 2, Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn and Diane Keaton (First Wives Club), Marlon Brando (Streetcar Named Desire), Tim Robbins (The Player), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas (Ninotchka), (next row) Diane Keaton and Woody Allen (Annie Hall), Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall (How To Marry A Millionaire), Fred MacMurray, Hattie McDaniel and Katharine Hepburn (Alice Adams), (and just above that) Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand (The Way We Were), Drew Barrymore (Firestarter), Winona Ryder, Christina Ricci, Cher and Bob Hoskins (Mermaids), Carole Lombard (My Man Godfrey), Jimmy Stewart (Vertigo), Meg Ryan (Sleepless in Seattle -- click on image if she's cut off above and you'll see it and Patrick Swayze), and (final row) Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner (Romancing The Stone), Jane Fonda and Jeff Bridges (The Morning After), Bette Davis (Dangerous -- her first Academy Award), Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell and Cher (Silkwood), (drop down a bit) Rosie Perez, Christian Slater and Marisa Tomei (Untamed Heart) and Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore (Ghost).
As C.I. explained, all the images came from the cardboard cases of videos. For those worried about the environment, we only used empty video cardboard. (A friend of C.I.'s is doing a visual exhibit and needed videotapes for it. He took the videos, the empty cases were then used by us.)
From that limitation, our second limitation was how many we could fit on the green poster board.
The feature this will be used for is a look back at great films from the 20th century. As a result, all displayed in the collage need to be from the 20th century. (That's in reply to a few of you who listed films from the last 13 years that should have been in it.) For those who felt your favorite film wasn't represented, C.I.'s favorite is Some Like It Hot, Jim's favorite is Raiders of the Lost Ark, Cedric's is the original Psycho, Marcia's is Grace of My Heart, Elaine's is The Apartment . . . Point being, those films didn't make the collage either. As Joe E. Brown tells Jack Lemmon at the end of Some Like It Hot, "Well, nobody's perfect."