Should Movie Titles Be In Quotes

Back in the days when gladiators hacked away at each other, there was always the man who decided whether the defeated should live or die. The job is usually given to the Emperor in movies, but in fact any senior man could have been the designated thumbs-up-thumbs-down guy. The official title for this fellow was...the editor. (evil laughter in background)

I smile at my friends, but Mer and Rashmi and Josh are distracted, arguing about something that happened over dinner. St. Clair sees me and smiles back. "Good?" I nod.He looks pleased and ducks into the row after me. I always sit four rows up from the center, and we have perfectseats tonight.The chairs are classic red. The movie begins,and the title screen flashes up. "Ugh,we have to sit through the credits?" Rashmi asks. They roll first,like in all old films. I read them happily. I love credits. I love everything about movies. The theater is dark except for the flicker of blacks and whites and grays on-screen. Clark Gable pretends to sleep and places his hand in the center of an empty bus seat. After a moment of irritation,Claudette Colbert gingerly plucks it aside and sits down. Gable smiles to himself,and St. Clair laughs. It's odd,but I keep finding myself distracted. By the white of his teeth through the darkness.By a wavy bit of his hair that sticks straight out to the side. By the soft aroma of his laundry detergent. He nudges me to silently offer the armrest,but I decline and he takes it.His arm is close to mine,slightly elevated. I glance at his hands.Mine are tiny compared to his large,knuckly boy hands. And,suddenly,I want to touch him. Not a push,or a shove,or even a friendly hug. I want to feel the creases in his skin,connect his freckles with invisible lines,brush my fingers across the inside of his wrist. He shifts. I have the strangest feeling that he's as aware of me as I am of him. I can't concentrate. The characters on the screen are squabbling, but for the life of me, I don't know what about. How long have I not been paying attention? St. Clair coughs and shifts again. His leg brushes against mine.It stays there. I'm paralyzed. I should move it; it feels too unnatural.How can he not notice his leg is touching my leg? From the corner of my eye,I see the profile of his chin and nose,and-oh,dear God-the curve of his lips. There.He glanced at me. I know he did. I bore my eyes into the screen, trying my best to prove that I am Really Interested in this movie.St. Clair stiffens but doesn't move his leg.Is he holding his breath? I think he is.I'm holding mine. I exhale and cringe-it's so loud and unnatural. Again.Another glance. This time I turn, automatically,just as he's turning away. It's a dance,and now there's a feeling in the air like one of us should say something.Focus,Anna. Focus. "Do you like it?" I whisper. He pauses. "The film?" I'm thankful the shadows hide my blush. "I like it very much," he says. I risk a glance,and St. Clair stares back. Deeply.He has not looked at me like this before.I turn away first, then feel him turn a few beats later. I know he is smiling,and my heart races.

You're so cynical," Tiny says, waving his hand at me. "I'm not cynical, Tiny," I answer. "I'm practical." "You're a robot," he says. Tiny thinks that I am incapable of what humans call emotion because I have not cried since my seventh birthday, when I saw the movie All Dogs Go to Heaven. I suppose I should have known from the title that it wouldn't end merrily, but in my defense, I was seven. Anyway, I haven't cried since then. I don't really understand the point of crying. Also, I feel that crying is almost--like, aside from deaths of relatives or whatever-- totally avoidable if you follow two very simple rules: 1. Don't care too much. 2. Shut up. Everything unfortunate that has ever happened to me has stemmed from failure to follow one of the rules.

If you need some inspiration to push back against those sponsors, consider the case of George Lucas. When he was filming the original Star Wars, he wanted a bold launch for his movie. The Directors Guild of America protested. Most films at the time started by naming the writer and director in the opening title sequence—in this case, thanking the film’s creators rather than its sponsors. It was how things were done. Despite the protests of the Directors Guild, Lucas decided to forgo opening credits entirely. The result was one of the most memorable beginnings in movie history. And he paid for it—the Directors Guild fined him $250,000 for his daring. His loyalty was to his audience’s experience, and he was willing to sacrifice for it. You should be, too.

Do you believe in love at first sight?” He made himself look at her face, at her wide-open eyes and earnest forehead. At her unbearably sweet mouth. “I don’t know,” he said. “Do you believe in love before that?” Her breath caught in her throat like a sore hiccup. And then it was too much to keep trying not to kiss her. She came readily into his arms. Lincoln leaned against the coffee machine and pulled her onto him completely. There it was again, that impossible to describe kiss. This is how 2011 should have ended, he thought. This is infinity. The first time Beth pulled away, he pulled her back. The second time, he bit her lip. Then her neck. Then the collar of her shirt. “I don’t know…,” she said, sitting up in his lap, laying her check on the top of his head. “I don’t know what you meant by love before love at first sight.” Lincoln pushed his face into her shoulder and tried to think of a good way to answer. “Just that… I knew how I felt about you before I ever saw you,” he said, “when I still thought I might never see you…” She held his head in her hands and titled it back, so she could see his face. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. Which made him laugh. “Absolutely,” he said. “No, I mean it,” Beth said. “Men fall in love with their eyes.” He closed his. “That’s practically science,” she said. “Maybe,” Lincoln said. Her fingers felt so good in his hair. “But I couldn’t see you, so…” “So, what did you see?” “Just…the sort of girl who would write the sort of things that you wrote.” “What things?” Lincoln opened his eyes. Beth was studying his face. She looked skeptical-maybe about more than just the last thing he said. This was important, he realized. “Everything,” he said, sitting straighter, keeping hold of her waist. “Everything you wrote about your work, about your boyfriend…The way you comforted Jennifer and made her laugh, through the baby and after. I pictured a girl who could be kind, and that kind of funny. I pictured a girl who was that alive…” She looked guarded. Lincoln couldn’t tell from her eyes whether he was pushing her away or winning her over. “A girl who never got tired of her favourite movies,” he said softly. “Who saved dresses like ticket stubs. Who could get high on the weather.. “I pictured a girl who made every moment, everything she touched, and everyone around her feel lighter and sweeter. I pictured you,” he said. “I just didn’t know what you looked like. And then, when I did know what you looked like, you looked like the girl who was all those things. You looked like the girl I loved.” Beth’s fingers trembled in his hair, and her forehead dropped against his. A heavy, wet tear fell onto Lincoln’s lips, and he licked it. He pulled her close, as close as he could. Like he didn’t care for the moment whether she could breath. Like there were two of them and only one parachute. “Beth,” he barely said, pressing his face against hers until their lashes brushed, pressing his hand into the small of her back. “I don’t think I can explain it. I don’t think I can make any more sense. But I’ll keep trying. If you want me to.” She almost shook her head. “No,” she said, “no more explaining. Or apologizing. I don’t think it matters how we ended up here. I just…I want to stay…I want.. He kissed her then. There. In the middle of the sentence.

Let’s take a look at one couple. Carol and Jim have a long-running quarrel over his being late to engagements. In a session in my office, Carol carps at Jim over his latest transgression: he didn’t show up on time for their scheduled movie night. “How come you are always late?” she challenges. “Doesn’t it matter to you that we have a date, that I am waiting, that you always let me down?” Jim reacts coolly: “I got held up. But if you are going to start off nagging again, maybe we should just go home and forget the date.” Carol retaliates by listing all the other times Jim has been late. Jim starts to dispute her “list,” then breaks off and retreats into stony silence. In this never-ending dispute, Jim and Carol are caught up in the content of their fights. When was the last time Jim was late? Was it only last week or was it months ago? They careen down the two dead ends of “what really happened”—whose story is more “accurate” and who is most “at fault.” They are convinced that the problem has to be either his irresponsibility or her nagging. In truth, though, it doesn’t matter what they’re fighting about. In another session in my office, Carol and Jim begin to bicker about Jim’s reluctance to talk about their relationship. “Talking about this stuff just gets us into fights,” Jim declares. “What’s the point of that? We go round and round. It just gets frustrating. And anyway, it’s all about my ‘flaws’ in the end. I feel closer when we make love.” Carol shakes her head. “I don’t want sex when we are not even talking!” What’s happened here? Carol and Jim’s attack-withdraw way of dealing with the “lateness” issue has spilled over into two more issues: “we don’t talk” and “we don’t have sex.” They’re caught in a terrible loop, their responses generating more negative responses and emotions in each other. The more Carol blames Jim, the more he withdraws. And the more he withdraws, the more frantic and cutting become her attacks. Eventually, the what of any fight won’t matter at all. When couples reach this point, their entire relationship becomes marked by resentment, caution, and distance. They will see every difference, every disagreement, through a negative filter. They will listen to idle words and hear a threat. They will see an ambiguous action and assume the worst. They will be consumed by catastrophic fears and doubts, be constantly on guard and defensive. Even if they want to come close, they can’t. Jim’s experience is defined perfectly by the title of a Notorious Cherry Bombs song, “It’s Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night that Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long.

All my films are about Hong Kong." Wong Kar Wai once told me, "even if they're set in Argentina." While many in the West saw Happy Together primarily as a love story, his compatriots saw it something more timely and relevant: Wong grappling with the meaning of the handover to China. They knew it wasn't coincidental that the film should open in Hong Kong one month before that historical transfer of power. Nor was it coincidental that it should begin with a shot of Hong kong passports and end with Tony Leung's Lai on a train in Taipei, not Hong Kong, heading into an indeterminate future as the soundtrack plays Danny Chung's cover of the pop song "Happy Together" --a title that could be read as predicting a successful union, or as a slash of bitter irony. Even the movie's defining image, the aerial shot of water rushing down Iguazu Falls, is layered with political intimations that cut in different directions. At once thrillingly spectacular and patently dangerous--Chris Doyle, who's terrified of heights, shot it while hanging out of a chopper--the roaring waters that combine in these falls are an expression of the inexorably rushing power of reunion that can be seen as both a symbol of great strength or the downward pull of destruction.

Dear KDP Author, Just ahead of World War II, there was a radical invention that shook the foundations of book publishing. It was the paperback book. This was a time when movie tickets cost 10 or 20 cents, and books cost $2.50. The new paperback cost 25 cents – it was ten times cheaper. Readers loved the paperback and millions of copies were sold in just the first year. With it being so inexpensive and with so many more people able to afford to buy and read books, you would think the literary establishment of the day would have celebrated the invention of the paperback, yes? Nope. Instead, they dug in and circled the wagons. They believed low cost paperbacks would destroy literary culture and harm the industry (not to mention their own bank accounts). Many bookstores refused to stock them, and the early paperback publishers had to use unconventional methods of distribution – places like newsstands and drugstores. The famous author George Orwell came out publicly and said about the new paperback format, if “publishers had any sense, they would combine against them and suppress them.” Yes, George Orwell was suggesting collusion. Well… history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Fast forward to today, and it’s the e-book’s turn to be opposed by the literary establishment. Amazon and Hachette – a big US publisher and part of a $10 billion media conglomerate – are in the middle of a business dispute about e-books. We want lower e-book prices. Hachette does not. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 and even $19.99. That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there’s no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out of stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market – e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can and should be less expensive. Perhaps channeling Orwell’s decades old suggestion, Hachette has already been caught illegally colluding with its competitors to raise e-book prices. So far those parties have paid $166 million in penalties and restitution. Colluding with its competitors to raise prices wasn’t only illegal, it was also highly disrespectful to Hachette’s readers. The fact is many established incumbents in the industry have taken the position that lower e-book prices will “devalue books” and hurt “Arts and Letters.” They’re wrong. Just as paperbacks did not destroy book culture despite being ten times cheaper, neither will e-books. On the contrary, paperbacks ended up rejuvenating the book industry and making it stronger. The same will happen with e-books. Many inside the echo-chamber of the industry often draw the box too small. They think books only compete against books. But in reality, books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more. If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive. Moreover, e-books are highly price elastic. This means that when the price goes down, customers buy much more. We've quantified the price elasticity of e-books from repeated measurements across many titles. For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000. The important thing to note here is that the lower price is good for all parties involved: the customer is paying 33% less and the author is getting a royalty check 16% larger and being read by an audience that’s 74% larger. The pie is simply bigger.

Director: Saravana Rajan Producer: Dayanidhi Azhagiri Written : Saravana Rajan Starring: Jai,Swati Reddy Music: Yuvan Shankar Raja Cinematography: Venkatesh S. Release Date: Jan 24, 2014 Editing: Praveen K. L, N. B. Srikanth Director Saravana Rajan’s debut comedy thriller ‘Vadacurry’ features actors Swati Reddy and Jai in lead role. ‘Vadacurry’ is produced by Dhayanidhi Alagiri with Yuvan Shankar Raja’s music. Bollywood actress Sunny Leone has shaken her legs for ‘Vadacurry’ Tamil film’s dream song with actor Jai in Bangkok. The shooting of the song was held in December 2013. It’s a dream sequence of Jai’s character in the ‘Vadacurry’ where, Sunny will be grooving with him. Sunny was given half-sari, bangles and anklets to portray a typical south Indian look in this song. However, the hot diva loved trying these accessories to shake her legs for her debut film in Kollywood ‘Vadacurry’. ‘Vadacurry’ Tamil movie’s cinematography is handled by Venkatesh. ‘Vadacurry’ team started rolling on floors from August 19, 2013. Interestingly, ‘Vadacurry’ Tamil movie’s music composer Yuvan Shankar Raja is cousin of director Saravana Rajan. Director Saravana Rajan has followed the steps of his tutor Venkat Prabhu in coining food names as title for his movie ‘Vadacurry’ that matched with Venkat Prabhu’s recent release ‘Biriyani’. The charming beauty Anusha Dhayanidhi has made a debut as costume designer in ‘Vadacurry’. Anusha Dhayanidhi has transformed the looks of female lead Swathi in ‘Vadacurry’ Tamil film. It should be noted that ‘Subramaniyapuram’ pairs, who had portrayed good chemistry have joined this comedy entertainer ‘Vadacurry’. However, ‘Vadacurry’ Tamil film is ready to be served on 24January, 2014 to give a punch of full-on comedy with its taste and essence.

I felt haunted, and borderline’s spirit wasn’t benevolent. To be borderline meant one was unstable, obsessive, dysfunctional, overly attached, simultaneously avoidant, and prone to outbursts fueled by anger. My borderline ghost, it seemed, should have been named Crazy—and in ways, it was. The representations of borderline characters in the media were from shows with the word “crazy” or its synonyms in the title; programs such as Maniac, movies called Fatal Attraction, Mad Love, and Shame. Every story was one I didn’t, couldn’t, aspire to; a narrative that portrayed borderline as an unconquerable, maddening disease where the sufferer was undeniably a “maniac.

I ask if he has any potential stories in mind. “Sorry Graham, I've not done me prep,” he then clears his throat. “I did have an idea for one called ‘The Death of Standards’.” I'm thrilled by the fact he already has a title for it. And what a title! He goes on to outline the bare bones of a story about a woman who works in local government. On her drive to work she perpetrates a hit and run. Upon arriving at the office, she rants to her staff about how hit and run drivers should be executed. Then members of her staff start behaving in the same odd manner: performing terrible acts then raging against those very acts. This sounds exactly like something I'd love to watch.