Skandies runners-up — scenes

“You Make My Dreams,” 500 DAYS OF SUMMER — Only people who don’t have a silly bone in their bodies, and so should not be reading this site, could fail to love this scene — so impossibly giddy, scored to such a bouncy piece of 80s pop cheese, a feeling of literal head-over-heels love as the whole universe impossibly cooperates in the impossible. (And the “impossible” part we’re told right from the beginning — giving the scene and the whole movie a wiser undercurrent.)

The Kids in the Chatroom, ADORATION — Another encapsulation of the film in miniature — or at least one strand of Egoyan’s messy thoughts. The hero Simon writes a story that becomes an Internet when some revelations about it are made — and what happens in this scene is that Simon’s friends debate via face-to-face chat what he did, what it meant, and rebut each other and get angry at Simon, at those in the story, at each other until Egoyan explodes the screen with more and more mostly-anonymous talking heads saying stuff that eventually becomes indistinct noise. Welcome to democratic mediated reality. Speaking of which …

Rob’s tribute film, AFTERSCHOOL — Mike has the scene posted here after it placed #15 in the overall results, which I’m not sure comes across as even very good outside of context, and it makes Rob seem like a bigger asshole than he is. But again that’s a fair representation of the film as a whole, which is off-putting in some ways — stylized past the point of recognition, radically subjective. But the scene and the film wind up being both a subjective cri de coeur from a wounded soul and an objective cautionary tale about such souls.

Interrogating the two old ladies, THE BAD LIEUTENANT — PORT OF CALL: NEW ORLEANS — I’m pretty sure it’ll be outpolled by iguana-cam and the dancing soul, but this was the most batshit-funny scene in the film. From the start, with Cage doing an entrance from behind a door and then — well, a dada-insane bit of business that is so unexpected that even to describe it would be to spoil it by “goosing” you. And Cage growls over-the-top about being on 1 1/2 hours’ sleep as he interrogates a woman by playing with the tubes on another lady’s breathing machine — it’s like Jack Bauer played as a sick joke.

Taking the art teacher hostage, BRONSON — Now here’s an equally theatrical crime scene that is in every possible way the opposite of the TBL:POCNO scene. And yet, it’s a bit of a joke in the heart of the titular character who commits the crime, declaring with flair and panache that it was the capper to the REAL work of art that was his life of crime. Such a CLOCKWORK ORANGE Nietzschean act, which director Refn and actor Hardy indulge (they have to somewhat, lest the film be moralistic posturing), is aiming for my sweet spot.

The Boys Bloom, BROTHERS BLOOM — Mike has the scene posted here after it placed #18 in the overall results. An equally theatrical crime scene that is in every possible way the opposite of both the BRONSON and TBL:POCNO scenes — it’s like BUGSY MALONE set to a nursery rhyme. And the brilliance of Johnson’s writing is that he effectively hides his format — nobody realized until seeing it spelled out that the entire narration is in perfect rhyme and meter.

Ending, DRAG ME TO HELL — Hard to say much about without spoiling, obviously, except that it bumped the film up to clear “pro” vote from a marginal one (or even a “mixed”). Suffice to say that if you loved the ending of (click and drag to read) THE WAGES OF FEAR — this is just as sudden, just as pitiless and moral(istic?), and even more of a nawwwww—

Guitar sale, EXTRACT — This YouTube clip picks up the scene a minute or so into it, but you’ll get the point (you see the last minute of what previously had been going on). Hal Sparks in a Dana Carvey “Garth” mullet; two men pretending to do their job while really acting out something else, and the element that REALLY makes it work — the other customer in the background (this clip only has his last gesture). If only the rest of the film could have lived up to this, the opening scene.

The effect of sodium hydroxide, GOOD HAIR — Damn. By dropping this scene, I did something to GOOD HAIR that before this year I had never done to any film I gave at least an 8 grade — not given a single Skandie point in any category. (Like my hero Obama, I do ascribe to the “spread the wealth” philosophy.) Damn. As I said in my review, this was the scene I wanted to happen the minute I found out what the active ingredient in hair relaxant is. And then the white scientist has the exactly the same reaction at the end of Chris’s experiment.

Shave and a haircut, two fists, HUNGER — My actual choice for the best scene in HUNGER (it would not have been here, trust me) was declared ineligible for length’s sake, even though it’s as unified as any scene you’ll ever see. I decided to list this brutal scene instead, from “Act 1, Life inside the Maze” as a demonstration that, as we comfortable few are wont to forget, when you deal with obstreperous people, even treating them well sometimes cannot be done by acts of commendable civility.

Car bomb, THE HURT LOCKER — Mike has the scene posted here after it placed #12 in the overall results. Possibly the white knuckle scene of the year because Bigelow finds good excuses to spin things out, in the curiosity of a character for whom this is all, if not exactly a game, sufficiently routine not to be scared into a state of freedom from all excrement.

Job interview, OBSERVE AND REPORT — The scene in question begins about 4:10 into this general highlight clip and takes up the rest of its 6:30. The scenes in the first 4 minutes are generally very good, but what they can really do, for right here, is set up Rogen’s character and what makes this specific scene so hilarious. Rogen’s low-key assurance and bonhomie co-exists in the same body with some really twisted darkness and a soul-defining obsession. His character is trying to make a good impression, and by his own lights, he damn well is. (And the other scenes also have me kicking myself for forgetting short-listing Celia Weston for Supporting Female, though her highlight — “just beer” — isn’t here.)

Dillinger in the FBI office, PUBLIC ENEMIES — Mike has the scene posted here after it placed #17 in the overall results. It’s funnier really in concept than when you’re watching it, though that retrospective glance is probably the point. Even if it’s just a legend or myth, it’s the kind of “true myth” that points to something broader that really IS true. Could, say, Osama bin Laden show up at the Justice Department today and do this? In a mediated, post-McLuhan world … no. But Dillinger in the 1930s (or Bonnie and Clyde; both in real life and the Arthur Penn movie) … yes.

Bomb shelter, THE ROAD — The movie’s one sequence of lightness, of reverie, of security, and of something like what we recognize as a materially normal life (says Victor, typing during record blizzards that already have knocked out his electricity five or six times, albeit only once for more than a minute or two). Though I don’t consider that “happy feeling” per se why the scene is great and memorable, as if happy scenes are better than sad scenes — no, the reason this scene is great is the gap between the father’s relief and the boy’s incredulity at a world he knows nothing of. And the reason it comes to an end.

The Spinners vs. Muhammad Ali, SOUL POWER — Damn. By dropping this scene, I did something to SOUL POWER that before this year I had never done to any film I gave at least an 8 grade — not given a single Skandie point in any category. (Like my hero Obama, etc., etc. … What makes this scene stand out, in a film not short of great concert numbers, is that it shows the not-merely-historical link between the concert and the Rumble in the Jungle — in how much Ali learned from the great R&B stars (and they from him) in terms of the brash-talking persona, strutting his stuff in public, and dancing about the ring. Damn.

The meaning of the song, STILL WALKING — Dunno how well this scene, a quiet scene near the end, would really play outside of context, and cannot really describe what it’s about beyond the title. Let’s just say it’s a very low-key, almost-stifled, equivalent of the night quarrel in AUTUMN SONATA, where one character tells another what he knows and has thought about him for decades but never had reason or occasion to say before now.

Die Männer, A WOMAN IN BERLIN — I haven’t seen this since Toronto but I remember saying to myself every manner of “what the frack/this can’t have been true” (though it obviously was). I could hardly believe characters in this situation would say this. Or maybe it was just harmless “he doesn’t pay any attention to me” girl-talk, only with really really REALLY amped-up stakes that the women themselves hardly notice any more.