Today's Featured Link

...is Ebert's Glossary of Movie Terms, a very funny list of movie cliches from a guy who's seen a lot of movies.

A couple of my favorites:

Del Close's Rule

Never share a foxhole with a character who carries a photo of his sweetheart.

Myth of the Seemingly Ordinary Day

The day begins like any other, with a man getting up, having breakfast, reading the paper, leaving the house, etc. His activities are so uneventful they are boring. That is the tip-off. No genuine ordinary day can be allowed to be boring in a movie. Only seemingly ordinary days—which inevitably lead up to a shocking scene of violence, which punctuates the seeming ordinariness.

I was also highly amused by this one...

Cooter Rule, The

When the young good-looking hero goes back to his boyhood farmhouse, he'll inevitably have a fight at the dinner table with an older, less attractive brother. The fight is usually about abandoning the farm and "Spitting on Daddy's memory" or the hero's annoying use of correct grammar. The hero storms out of the house, and sits down on a fence in the backyard. He is followed by his sweet, long-suffering sister-in-law. She says, "Trap, you're gonna have to forgive Cooter/Hunter/Trip/Billy Bob. He loves you. He don't mean nothin'. It's just his way, is all."

...because my first reaction was, "Whoa! That was a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode!"