Rosebud?
February 16, 2015 6:12 PM   Subscribe

 
Nothing for Kevin Smith? Not bad.
posted by goatdog at 6:38 PM on February 16, 2015 [1 favorite]


One for John Boorman but that doesn't have either a big Zardoz head or Seannery in his leather manties? Bad.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:47 PM on February 16, 2015 [2 favorites]


Rushmore => go-cart
posted by parki at 6:48 PM on February 16, 2015


He did not know the fares went up.
posted by davebush at 6:51 PM on February 16, 2015


The first three that came to mind for me were from:

1. The beach make-out scene in From Here to Eternity
2. Scarlett O'Hara standing under the tree and vowing never to be poor again, and
3. Lawrence of Arabia on camelback

Then I thought of King Kong on the Empire State Building, with Fay Wray.
E.T. and Elliot on bicycle, in front of the moon.
Robert de Niro in front of the mirror.
Marlon Brando beneath Stella's balcony.
George Bailey and his family standing next to the Christmas Tree.

Then I clicked through to see if they were there. But there is no list. And many of the ones shown don't appear to be all that iconic, but just screen grabs from various movies. Boo!

Now I want a list of the top 100 most iconic images from the history of cinema.

(Cary Grant being chased by the airplane would definitely be one of them...)
posted by darkstar at 7:09 PM on February 16, 2015 [3 favorites]


Like most lists, rankings, or subjective whatevers, most of the fun comes in disagreeing with the choices they went with. With some of the films, an image different than the one they chose immediately flashed in my mind, followed by the inevitable, "How could they not choose that?!" It seems like most of the ones with no room for argument are the films that really don't have much more to offer than the one iconic image.

I do think the whole thing would be improved by being a little more selective in the films selected, though.
posted by banal retentive at 7:12 PM on February 16, 2015


Uh, guys, this isn't a list or ranking, it's a database they keep adding to. There's more than one image for each film, they just picked one to be the title image, you click on it and there's a whole album.

I've been mining this site for a while to use as Facebook header images, it's great.

Also related: One. Perfect. Shot. (Blog) (Twitter) and film|captures. There's also the Movie Title Stills Database, just for title shots.
posted by JauntyFedora at 7:18 PM on February 16, 2015 [7 favorites]


None of these are iconic.

On the other hand, Anne Reinking in silhouette in All That Jazz.

Humphrey Bogart drinking and waiting for Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca.

Liza Minelli screaming under the train with Michael York in Cabaret.

Woody Allen and Tony Roberts in the long shot from Annie Hall ("Jew eat?").

The staircase shot from Vertigo.

The jets setting the jungle on fire in Apocalypse Now.

Charlie Chaplin eating a show in Gold Rush....
posted by musofire at 7:21 PM on February 16, 2015 [2 favorites]


This isn't a definitive list. From the about page,

I started this site as a resource for myself, and for whoever else might have use of it. I work in the film industry and spend a lot of time looking for stills/screenshots from different films as a reference point for framing, lighting, tone etc. I dont think I will be posting any thoughts on the films directly, I would prefer to allow the images to speak for themselves, but I would love to hear your thoughts and maybe we could get a conversation going in the comments section.
It's a collection of stills that the curator found striking and iconic. The "most" qualifier comes from the framing of the FPP.

Anyway, Argento's page is one of my favorites, Chaplin's is beautiful, Lynch, of course.
posted by codacorolla at 7:22 PM on February 16, 2015


musofire: None of these are iconic.

You're telling me none of the Kubrick screengrabs OP linked are iconic?

But anyways:

The staircase shot from Vertigo.


The jets setting the jungle on fire in Apocalypse Now.

posted by JauntyFedora at 7:31 PM on February 16, 2015


That shot from Fargo is maybe my favorite shot in any movie ever.
posted by aaronetc at 7:32 PM on February 16, 2015 [3 favorites]


  • Blue Velvet: Dorothy appears on Jeffrey’s lawn, nude and covered in bruises, like the famous snapshot of the nude girl burning from napalm in the Vietnam War.
  • Shot in Millennium Falcon, "That's no moon" from Star Wars.
  • "Offer he couldn't refuse" Marlon Brando's face from The Godfather.
  • Andy's outstretched arms in the rain, finally free after swimming through the sewer.
  • Russell Crowe's face after seeing his family killed in The Gladiator.
  • Rutger Hauer's releasing of the dove after the "Tears in Rain" speech.
  • Little girl in red coat in Schindler's List.
  • Shadow of mother in shower scene, Psycho.
  • "Bigger Boat" Roy Scheider with cig hanging from lips and chum bucket from Jaws.
  • Dodge Bullets from The Matrix
I could go on a loooong time.
posted by Monkey0nCrack at 7:35 PM on February 16, 2015 [1 favorite]


Tim Burton used to be a really talented director, so did Ridley Scott.

There Will Be Blood was a beautiful movie, so was The Master. Just because of its look Dragon Tattoo is my favorite Fincher. Goddamn do I ever love everything about Brazil. I sort of wish I could live inside of Only God Forgives.

A cool thing you can do, since it's a relational database, is that you can find a specific movie by a director you like, click on the hyperlinked Director of Photography credit, and also get everything that they did. Or all of the movies in the database released in that year. Or an actor, as they appear in the tags.
posted by codacorolla at 7:35 PM on February 16, 2015 [2 favorites]


I've been mining this site for a while to use as Facebook header images, it's great.

Heh. I started scrolling through with that exact purpose, and ended up finding the image that's been my cover photo for several years.

Also, TheMovieDB (TMDB) has great "backdrop" images for most movies.
posted by schmod at 7:46 PM on February 16, 2015


Jennifer Connelly at the end of a pier in Requiem for a Dream.


Wait. Or was that Dark City?

No no no, maybe it was House of Sand and Fog?


(oh hey, and then I googled it and got an answer! i'm not the only one that noticed that apparently.)
posted by eyeballkid at 8:07 PM on February 16, 2015


(oh hey, and then I googled it and got an answer! i'm not the only one that noticed that apparently.)

Whatever the case, Dark City was first. And Dark City is awesome. Cue bombastic music.
posted by linux at 8:14 PM on February 16, 2015 [1 favorite]


Normally, I hate it when people respond to list-type things with "No [whatever]?" but:

No Ozu?
No Bresson?
No Dreyer?

When I think of beautiful, perfectly framed, meticulous shots, those are the first three directors that come to mind, and none of them are there.
posted by ernielundquist at 8:43 PM on February 16, 2015 [1 favorite]


Andersson and Ullmann in Persona. Novak lit by the green neon in Vertigo. A man in a tunnel firing a pistol into a limousine in Sneakers. Harry Lime's hand reaching through the Vienna street grates in The Third Man. I've got more but I'm on a phone.
posted by infinitewindow at 8:45 PM on February 16, 2015


These aren't the most iconic film images.
posted by mazola at 8:51 PM on February 16, 2015


Hmm. I'm sure it's far from the most iconic image, but they have the first one that came to mind for me: Marion and Indiana's shadow.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:58 PM on February 16, 2015 [2 favorites]


This collection seems more iconic.
posted by mazola at 9:31 PM on February 16, 2015 [1 favorite]


Why is "Poltergeist" one of the images for Spielberg? He didn't direct it.
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 12:28 AM on February 17, 2015 [2 favorites]


This kind of reinforces for me how effective the tiny bit of animation in IWDRM is. A still from Once Upon A Time In The West could just be a picture of a cowboy, but loop it and it instantly brings back how that first scene just slowly dragged on and on and on.
posted by doop at 12:39 AM on February 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


None of these are iconic.

None of them feature Russian religious paintings, which is the only meaning of the word 'icon' I can be arsed with.
posted by peterkins at 3:13 AM on February 17, 2015


Only Citizen Kane for Welles? Seriously?
And nothing from King Kong????

And, yeah, this is just a collection of frame grabs, and not really a collection of "iconic" images from the films. And, to be fair, that's pretty much how the site describes itself. Lots of great movies, though, including many that a lot of people these days have never seen.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:24 AM on February 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


Uh, guys, this isn't a list or ranking, it's a database they keep adding to. There's more than one image for each film, they just picked one to be the title image, you click on it and there's a whole album.

Well that changes things. I stopped at the title thumbnail. Thanks, JauntyFedora!
posted by mazola at 8:15 AM on February 17, 2015


My apologies for framing this post poorly.

It's a database of screengrabs from movies.
posted by gwint at 8:28 AM on February 17, 2015


A growing archive of stills from the best films ever.

Seems self-explanatory.

Nobody's going to agree on what the most iconic images actually are, but the post was framed with a question mark. I understand the desire to contribute in the face of an apparent omission, but a few comments went quite a bit further in argumentativeness.

Why is "Poltergeist" one of the images for Spielberg? He didn't direct it.

The page for the movie lists him under director, after Hooper, with a (rumored) at the end.

Just a sidebar, the Honest Trailer for Skyfall (which amused me as a fan, although it's not as good as Everything Wrong with Skyfall) points out that it's directed by Sam Mendes, "whose most famous action scene to date was this". Yes. It's funny because it's true.

(This is a potential competitor.)

Anyway, I really feel we're hitting this site's servers hard right now.
posted by dhartung at 3:26 PM on February 17, 2015


This person spends a lot of time looking for production stills that are readily available at the Academy Library? Why?
posted by Ideefixe at 8:56 PM on February 17, 2015


Wait! I've got one for Skidoo.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 7:53 AM on February 18, 2015


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