Pajiba's 1st Annual Quote Appreciation Awards
By The Pajiba Staff | Posted Under Think Pieces | Comments (66)
The thing about movie quotes is that they’re more than just zingers or one-liners that elicit a chuckle or provoke a thought. Movie quotes, to many, are a form of secondary language — a means of communicating among movie geeks. Movie quotes are also a form of shorthand — drop one movie quote, and someone can tell a lot about you, depending on the movie you’re quoting, of course. Quote Napoleon Dynamite, and we know you’re a giant dork. Quote Jerry Maguire, and we know you haven’t been to the movies in a decade. Drop an obscure line from LoTR or Star Wars in the right company can you can gain instant respect. Drop a line from Kentucky Fried Movie in the wrong company, however, and you can get restraining order put out against you (or be accused of a hate crime). That’s the power of a movie quote, and I bet it’s singularly possible to have a half-hour conversation with someone else using only movie quotes and everything would be perfectly understood.
Last year, we published “The Other 100 Best Movie Quotes of All Time,” which was meant to be our alternative to AFI’s somewhat dull list of movie quote standards. Since that time, we’ve not only turned that post into a video, but the post has since become the most popular in the site’s nearly six-year history. As a staff, we’re also known for frequently using movie quotes (and song lyrics) as headlines and subheads in our posts and reviews, and it thus follows, that we’re something of an authority on movie quotes (well, at least Google thinks so).
To that end, we thought we’d create a new, pre-Oscar tradition on the site. Each Friday before the Oscars, the staff would compile what we thought were the ten best quotes of the previous year (if the Oscars can do it in March, so can we). And so, below, we give you Pajiba’s 1st Annual Quote Appreciation Awards. These are what we consider to be not just the ten best quotes of 2009, but the ten quotes most likely to be repeated in years to come, called back, or used as shorthand among movie quote friends.
There was one rule, however, and that was one quote per movie, otherwise In the Loop, Zombieland and Black Dynamite could’ve supplied enough quotes for three lists. And with that, here’s what the staff came up with, keeping in mind, also, that the brilliance of some of these rely heavily on the context of the movie, a context that we unfortunately cannot provide.
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Comments
Posted by: Yossarian at March 5, 2010 12:11 PM
I love the idea. The only foreseeable problem is that the true quotability of a movie can only be known after multiple watches on DVD. Hell, I haven't even seen half of these yet, and I haven't seen any of them more than once. But any effort to bestow the art of movie quoting with the recognition it deserves is appreciated.