Tag Archives: Scott Glenn

The Set of 400: #8 – My Favorite School Bus Graveyard

Today! Because there’s gonna be nothing left in our graves except Clorox bottles and plastic fly swatters with red dots on ’em –

Nashville (1975)

Directed by Robert Altman (x5)

Starring Lily Tomlin (x3), Ned Beatty (x6), Michael Murphy (x7), Henry Gibson (x6), Keenan Wynn, Barbara Harris (x2), Shelley Duvall (x5), Keith Carradine, Ronee Blakley, Geraldine Chaplin (x2), Scott Glenn (x4), Jeff Goldblum (x7), Gwen Welles, Karen Black (x3), David Arkin (x3), Allan F. Nichols (x3), Cristina Raines, Bert Remsen (x4), Allen Garfield (x2), Robert DoQui, Barbara Baxley, Timothy Brown (x2), David Hayward, Dave Peel, Merle Kilgore, Elliott Gould (x4), Julie Christie

The last movie appearing on this list that isn’t my favorite of that given year (tune back in tomorrow for Fav ’75!), Nashville is something that has taken the better part of two decades to grow on me. The first time I saw any bit of it was in college – I was taking some half-assed screenwriting course at Keystone, and they would show illustrative clips along with the written pages, and the scene we watched was Sueleen Gay’s disastrous appearance singing at the gentleman’s club. While it might not make a ton of sense in a screenwriting class on the surface, figure, like most Altmans of the time the movie is improv heavy, so Joan Tewkesbury’s script was more filled with character beats and guideposts than concrete dialogue and heavily plotted scenes. Sueleen’s public singing debut, however, is relatively light on dialogue and heavy on doom, so it’s actually not a bad moment to highlight!

“I Never Get Enough”

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The Set of 400: #129 – My Favorite Waterloo Tube Station Espionage

Today! Because this is where is started for me. This is where it ends –

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

Directed by Paul Greengrass (x2)

Starring Matt Damon (x5), Joan Allen (x4), Julia Stiles (x2), David Strathairn (x3), Scott Glenn (x3), Albert Finney (x2), Edgar Ramirez, Paddy Considine, Daniel Bruhl, Tom Gallop (x2), Corey Johnson, Colin Stinton

The excellent Bourne trilogy concluded in a major way with Ultimatum – and then there were two more relatively unnecessary movies, one with Damon’s Bourne and one without, that you can basically ignore. In the continuing conversation of Best Movie Trilogies, people tend to start dropping franchises from the discussion once there is a fourth film. This, I feel, is wrong. Sure – if the movies are made one right after the other, and they all tie tightly together, maybe don’t count pieces of those as trilogies. But, a series that just splits an obvious third film in two (The Hunger Games, for example) – we can still call that a trilogy, no? Or if the fourth film is cash-in bullshit made way after the fact (Indiana Jones, Scream, American Pie – I’m not making judgments whether they’re good or bad trilogies here) or is basically unrelated (The Bourne Legacy, Mad Max) – we can ignore those, huh?

Please help me forget this

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The Set of 400: #174 – My Favorite Basket of Lotion

Today! Because his pulse never got above 85, even when he ate her tongue –

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Directed by Jonathan Demme (x2)

Starring Jodie Foster (x2), Anthony Hopkins (x6), Ted Levine, Scott Glenn (x2), Anthony Heald (x2), Frankie Faison (x2), Stuart Rudin, Brooke Smith, Tracey Walter, Diane Baker, Roger Corman, Charles Napier (x2), Brent Hinkley, Kasi Lemmons, Paul Lazar, Chris Isaak, Daniel von Bargen (x2), Harry Northup

Come on, you had to figure if I’ve got #255 Red Dragon on the list that Silence of the Lambs was on the way, right? And I think both of these movies work for largely the same reason – not too much Hannibal Lecter. See, when they move Hannibal to the center of the story – à la Hannibal – he’s sort of too much. It’s like the key to every great Muppet film – you reserve Miss Piggy for the second act. Hannibal Lecter is the Miss Piggy of the psychological horror genre.

Ah, what could have been

Buffalo Bill is a pretty interesting villain in his own right – not unlike the Tooth Fairy in Red Dragon – and the manhunt for him is equally compelling. The difference, quite obviously, is the Clarice/Hannibal interplay leading up to the finale. Where Will Graham and Hannibal had all this backstory between them – coloring everything that happens in Red Dragon – Clarice is coming at this whole thing a bit under-prepared, and so needs to navigate their relationship on the fly through this dicey kidnapping/murder investigation. Also, in Red Dragon, you know going in there’s no chance Hannibal is going to end up busting out at some point. While here… Continue reading

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