On Rosalind's Favorite Film Scenes

Rosalind Little has a very short media attention span. She does not like albums. She prefers singles. She is well aware that this is not very indy cool of her, and that it implies she has shallow musical tastes. So be it. She just likes to listen to a good single again and again and again until she knows the words and can scream them like a fifteen year old. Is that so wrong?

I have more patience for films. I can enjoy an entire film easily. Yet I also have a certain fondness for the art of a good film scene. Think about this carefully. What are your favorite scenes in movies?

Think specifically of the scene itself: its mood, its dialogue, its beginning, middle, and end.

As I make a quick list, I notice that some of my favorite films, and some of the best films, don't make the cut. They are brilliant overall, but there's not one standout scene that is really amazing, that takes your breath away.

I also notice that early and opening scenes of films are especially close to my heart, because they can have such tremendous forward momentum, such an irresistable energy.

Of course a film can have a superb opening scene, one that makes your heart race, and still not be a very good movie. The film Contact (1999) is a good example of this. But the criteria isn't that the film be good. Just think about the scene.

Some of Rosalind Little's All Time Favorite Scenes in Movies:

- The opening of Contact: the long pull away from earth into space in which you hear snatches of radio broadcasts from the present into the past. I could watch this four hundred times in a row. (And have.) It's fascinating. It makes a sub-par film worth watching.

- The opening of Rushmore. Clearly an amazing, amazing scene, from a filmmaker who is a master of amazing scenes. The math problem, and then the montage of Max's activities. Over the one of the best soundtracks of all time.

- The opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Come on, it's a classic. It still gets you going.

- The scene in which Cole tells his mother his "secret" while in the car in The Sixth Sense. Creepy, tender, beautifully observed. The dead bicyclist out the window. Toni Collette's hand over her mouth as Cole tells her about her mother's message for her. Lovely scene.

- The scene in E.T. when Michael and Gertie meet E.T. for the first time. I mean, maybe I'm showing my generational bias, but does anybody make movies with such natural performances from children anymore? Do kids ever curse in films anymore? This scene is just spot-on, just perfect. If you've not watched it for a while and think of E.T. as being sentimental kids' mush, you should watch this film again. Gertie's sarcasm, Michael's Yoda impression, Elliot's anxiety: it's wonderful.

- Oh, and the bicycle chase in E.T. The one with the guns still in it. I dare you to watch it, watch the kids take off flying and the music swell, and NOT to start to get excited. I dare you.

- When Marty walks into downtown Hill Valley in 1955 in Back to the Future. Mr. Sandman is playing. As he picks up the newspaper and sees the date, the music turns ominous. This one always takes me back to the first time I saw the film.

- The sword fight between Jack and Will Turner in the beginning of the first Pirates of the Carribbean. This is the scene that clued me in that this movie was going to be better than I thought it would be. Funny, well-choreographed, charming. And both these men are so hot. I mean really. Rosalind Little is but a mortal heterosexual woman.

- The sword fight between the Man in Black and Inigo Mantoya in Princess Bride. Which is obviously cited in the Pirates of the Carribean fight. Another classic, at least for a certain age group. Love it.

Maybe I can think of more. Let me mull it over.

On Naming Trends

Is there anything more fascinating than naming trends? What on earth makes people up and decide that they are going to start naming children Braden and Madison and London and Neveah?

That last one is "heaven" backwards, if you didn't catch that. It was one of the top 1000 most popular names for girls in 2006. Which I know because I frequent the Social Security names database, which is SERIOUS fun.

But not quite as fun as The Baby Name Wizard Name Voyager, which lets you look at a graph that changes baby name trends over time. So you can see the spectacular fall of names like Walter, and the spectacular rise of names like Kaylee, and the spectacular rise and fall of names like Erin.

I mean, this IS fun, right? Fun if you are me.

The name Madison for girls, which is currently the third most popular name in the country, seems to have been created by the 1984 romantic comedy "Splash." After the movie's release, the name Madison started climbing the charts. It was virtually unheard of before. Did you know this? (Apparently this same story is related in the book Freakanomics, which I've not read.)

In that movie, the main character, a mermaid played by Darryl Hannah, names herself after the Manhattan street she is on: Madison Avenue. Tom Hanks' character makes some joke right afterwards like, good thing we weren't on 39th Street, or something like that.

Yeah, funny, okay ... but seriously. The screenwriters really might have placed her on another street, given her a different name! What if she was on Mott Street, and called herself Mottie? Would that be a top-ten name now? Okay, that's hard to imagine. But what if she'd named herself Mulberry, Macdougal or Park? Or if she'd named herself Manhattan or Brooklyn? Would those be the third most popular names in the country today, and Madison virtually unknown?

Or maybe it wasn't the character in the movie that did it. Maybe it was the name Madison itself, something slightly feminine sounding (connoting Madeleine), with certain high-class associations, and yet slightly offbeat. Maybe the movie just served as the jumping off point.

Either way, Madison was a name that nobody ever heard of thirty years ago. Now it's more common than Mary or John in elementary schools.

There tends to be this tendency to assume that it is only recently that people started making up names for their children. That names before had been unchanging and constant. That it's only been lately that people saddled their children with monikers like MaKayLa and what have you. But this overlooks the fact that it was once acceptable to name children Epaphroditus or Birdadorothea or Hezekiah. That people would name children after any old favorite author or friend or virtue.

In my research lately, I came across an 18th century woman named Experience. I mean, come on. That was probably a bad name even at the time. Not only do opportunities for off-color jokes abound, but what the fuck was her nickname? Expie?

That said, it is the case that Rosalind Little tends to gravitate to the nineteenth-century names. She is not especially drawn to johnny-come-lately names like Brianna and Logan. They seem like suburban cookie-cutter names to her. She prefers Emma, Jacob, Hannah, Olivia and Andrew. They seem weightier, more substantial.

Yet she is not alone, as those are all top-ten names for 2006. My taste in names might seem individual to me, but it's really part of some national trend. Who understands broad subtle cultural change like this? Not me, folks.

So for my husband and me, the quest in naming a daughter became about finding a name that had roots, history and tradition, but finding one that other people weren't using in droves. We were drawn to lovely names that had been forgotten in recent years. The nursing home names. Ruby and Nora and Stella and Alice. And Lucy, which is what we named our dear girl.

A good compromise, right? And yet in doing this, in looking for possible names, we were told by baby naming books that we fell into another trend: "antique revival names." We shared this in common with other urban and college-educated types. So how unique is it possible to be? Individual taste is a myth. You can't escape the impact of culture.

Rosalind Little is Taken With Regis and Kelly

I am taken with Regis and Kelly. I know that some of you might find them to be too cheerful, or cloying, or insincere.

But you're wrong. I know this because they are my friends. Seriously. I watch them every day. Before my daughter Lucy was born, I watched them at the gym, and would become infuriated if I were five minutes late and missed the beginning. Since Lucy's birth, I record them on the Tivo and watch them whenever I get a spare moment.

It doesn't matter as much to me if I see the guests; what matters is the banter. I like to hear where Regis went to dinner last night; I like to know what Kelly watched on TV and how her daughter's dance recital went. I am comforted by the consistent connection with other people's lives.

Does that disturb you? Like, it's what happens when you take an impulse that used to be aimed at real relationships and you aim it at freaking talk show hosts, all disconnected and commercial?

Or maybe you're just jealous because I'm Regis and Kelly's best friend and you're not. Everybody wishes they were Rosalind Little.