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Motorola Grand Classics

Motorola has commissioned an excellent animation to promote their sponsorship of a film festival or some damn thing. The title is “Great Classics”, and it moves sequentially through several decades and numerous classics.

Go watch it, then see how many references you can spot. I thought I saw (in order):

  • Misc. zoetrope strip.
  • Steamboat Willie (1928) [can’t be — too new]
  • Misc. Chaplin film
  • Metropolis (1927) [per Josh]
  • Fantasia (1940)
  • Citizen Kane (1941)
  • The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
  • Vertigo (1958)
  • The Great Escape (1963) [?]
  • The Graduate (1967)
  • Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
  • Saturday Night Fever (1977)
  • Tron (1982)
  • The Terminator (1984) [?]
  • Fatal Attraction (1987) [per Judy]
  • Gladiator (2000)
  • Lost in Translation (2003)

I’m getting the sequence all messed up in the early ones — I’m thinking maybe Frankenstein? Metropolis? And I’m not sure about Fantasia, and there’s some musical right in around there, and the reaching-arms opening title is JUST outside my conscious. But post-Graduate, I think I’m a lock, save for what the whole jumping-from-the-pot-to-the-dinner-table is invoking.

Thoughts? Additions? Corrections?

Update [Sat, 1:30a]: Josh has found an image that supports the Metropolis theory, and my mom says the cooked rabbit is right out of Fatal Attraction. She also thinks the musical is likely An American in Paris or similar.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 9th, 2005 at 12:50 am and is filed under Film.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

3 Responses to “Motorola Grand Classics”

  1. josh Says:
    December 10th, 2005 at 1:02 am

    Metropolis looks about right.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Metropolis-new-tower-of-babel.jpg

  2. Joel Says:
    December 10th, 2005 at 1:53 am

    Maybe not Steamboat Willie, but something like it, like “That Happy Anthropomorphic Mammal.” I think the bit when the rabbit is climbing the stairs, just before Metropolis, is definitely Nosferatu or some other creepy German Expressionist film (aside from yet more Metropolis). The musical thing is one of those Busby Berkeley numbers, which I thought Team Pink people were supposed to find so fabulous!. The hand thing kind of reminds me of the opening credit sequence in Seven Days in May, which is totally awesome, but that’s not exactly it. The Pink Panther, maybe? The part right after the TRON light cycles explode, when the rabbit emerges from the water, is totally and utterly Apocalypse Now. Even though that came before TRON. Maybe the chef thing is Titus, or Hannibal, or Soylent Green, but I haven’t seen any of those.

    You’ve got most of them…though I’m not seeing the Terminator reference.

    Perhaps there is a reference to Bugs Bunny in there, too.

    [Update] Is The Man With the Golden Arm the reaching hand one? That’s the one with Sinatra on a drug bender? I like how, when the arm is reaching for the rabbit, it makes a bunny shadow puppet.

  3. The heroic Mr Pech Says:
    December 10th, 2005 at 6:18 pm

    I would love to think the very end with the motorola logo is a Batman reference.

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