(h/t Zach Harper)

(h/t Everything You Love to Hate)

Also, on a semi-related note, here’s the very-well-done Arrested Development action movie trailer from a while back that I forgot to post. The best part is obviously the Tobias chair kick at 0:54.

This is pretty much the best idea going. The Alamo Drafthouse (along with jeans-maker Levi’s) is showing nine different classic flicks in (or around) the locations where they take place. Some settings are more spot on than others — Jackie Brown in LA’s Del Amo Fashion Mall is perfection — but the whole concept is just fantastic.

I believe they have done this in past years as well, but this is the first I’m hearing of it and, I believe, this is the most ambitious, nationwide tour. (The 2008 lineup, for example, was all pretty local to Tejas.)

Here’s the full list of movies (each of which got one of the sweet “alt posters” shown above), dates and location:

August 6 JACKIE BROWN, at Los Angeles’ Del Amo Fashion Mall

August 7 DIRTY HARRY, at San Francisco’s Washington Square Park

August 8 THERE WILL BE BLOOD, at California’s Kern County Museum

August 8 CONVOY, at the Ft. Davis drive-in in Las Vegas, N.M.

August 13 THE BLUES BROTHERS, at Chicago’s Joliet Prison

August 14 ROBOCOP, at Detroit’s Russell Industrial Center

August 19 ROCKY I-III, at the Philadelphia Art Museum

August 20 ON THE WATERFRONT, at Hoboken’s Pier A

August 27 THE GODFATHER PART II, on a Manhattan rooftop near Little Italy

I’ve seen all except Convoy (which is playing in a double feature with Red Dawn, which is horrible) and would probably go to see any of the others if they were local. Rest assured, I will definitely be enjoying The Godfather II, easily one of the finest ten movies ever made, atop a roof in Little Italy. Vito-style.

Hell, I may even break my personal code of ethics and step foot into New Jersey to watch Marlon Brando fail at being a contender.

* … and Red Dawn

Pretty simple

Head over to his original post to see the graphs for Scorsese, the Cohen Brothers, Tarantino, David Fincher, Ridley Scott, William Friedkin and the Wachowski Brothers. All are muy neato.

But the three that were the most interesting to me were the three most extreme charts: M. Night Shyamalan (the initial subject of the discussion), Stanley Kubrick and Francis Ford Coppola. Honestly, it pains me to even write those three names in the same sentence, but it makes for a nice comparison when you compare M. Night’s 1929-stock-market-looking graph next to Kubrick’s unassailable career of acclaim next to Coppola’s inconsistency.

Ultimately, however, even though Coppola has made some hot garbage in his day, he will likely always remain in my top five of all time just on the strength of there being no more impressive four-movie run in cinematic history than The Godfather, The Conversation (which I honestly don’t even really like), The Godfather II and Apocalyspe Now. There might be three of the best ten films ever in there. Just unreal.

Along similar lines, good luck to any actor who ever wants to have a cleaner, more perfect IMDB page than John Cazale. Nice resume, buddy.

Also, Marsellus Wallace finds your lack of faith disturbing, Brett. (via Samblr)

Relatedly, Violent J Is John Goodman is apparently (and sadly) no longer being updated, but it’s still pretty great if you have not yet had the pleasure.

I, too, dabbled in pacifism once … not in ‘Nam, of course.

On Friday, July 2, Airplane! will celebrate its 30th anniversary. I personally — slightly — prefer Anchorman, but despite my modern leanings, Airplane! is easily the finest comedy ever made. Its gags, puns and sequencing are all perfectly done, sure, but what really sets it apart is that, unlike many of the other comedies that come off as Airplane! wannabes (as well as Anchorman), the Zucker brothers’ and Jim Abrahams’ comic masterpiece also has a fully realized and engaging plot throughout.

Patton Oswalt sums it up perfectly in this great New York Times piece about the anniversary.

“A lot of comedies in the last 30 years have wanted to be ‘Airplane!,’ ” said Patton Oswalt, a comedian and actor and the voice of the hero in “Ratatouille.” “But most of those movies took the wrong message from ‘Airplane!’ They were gag, gag, gag, gag, where ‘Airplane!’ is really structured, driving the story along all the time. In a weird way it’s like a Beatles movie. It looks like the easiest thing in the world, but there’s a lot of sweat and blood that went into it.”

Comparing Airplane! to a Beatles movie is a little insulting, frankly, but I get Patton’s point.

I really don’t have a lot else to add in celebration of this momentous achievement. If you haven’t seen Airplane!, go do that right now. If you have seen it, you know how great it is. And if you have seen it and don’t think it’s great, I hate you.

One thing I may as well point out for the uninitiated and confused, is that the silly name of this humble blog derives from this comedy classic. You see, during the flick, a young boy comes to tour the cockpit and meet some real-life pilots. And the pilot is really happy about this — something he reveals through a series of increasingly awkward inquiries. And, of course, one of the questions he asks is “Do you like movies about gladiators?” So since this was a movie blog and I had no other title in mind, we just defaulted to this line.

OK, that’s not the best story in the world, but it was a helluva lot better than the origin story you paid to see in Daredevil, so give me a break.

Luckily, the Times piece also offers some actually interesting background for us on how the whole Peter Graves/Joey-interaction thing came to be.

When the creators of “Airplane!” were lining up actors for their rollicking parody three decades ago, some of the straight-arrow character actors that ended up in the cast worried about the harm it might do to their careers. One of the most skittish participants: Peter Graves, the taciturn “Mission: Impossible” star who played the movie’s pilot, a kindly veteran who welcomes a little boy named Billy into the cockpit and asks questions like “Ever seen a grown man naked?”

“His agent got him the script, and he was totally turned off by it,” Jerry Zucker, who wrote and directed the film with his brother, David Zucker, and their lifelong friend Jim Abrahams, said recently during a phone interview with his erstwhile partners. “He thought it was tasteless trash.”

Mr. Abrahams interjected, his voice perfectly deadpan: “I don’t understand. What did he think was tasteless about pedophilia?”

That’s funny … Dustin once asked the cops the same thing.

Also, the fact that the no copy editors at the Times caught the error of this piece calling the kid “Billy” instead of Joey is appalling. Surely, worse than that whole Jayson Blair thing. Probably the yellow cake in Nigeria thing, too.

A copy editor? What is it? … It’s an archaic term for a professional who used to ensure that newspapers had accurate facts and grammar back in the 20th century, but that’s not important right now.