Literary allusions found in recent movies and tv shows?

Question

Well...please make them recent and straight forward enough that anyone would know what they were alluded too...like shakespeare or...any other poet or some famous authors...or characters in plays or books

heres one i know: 'don't kill the messenger!'-what tv show says this and what does it allude to?

Answer 1

I watched Tin Man on the SciFi channel. It alludes to the Wizard of Oz.

Don't kill the messenger means that if someone is warning you or telling you what someone else said, don't get mad at him.

The all too human tendency to blame the bearer of bad news was recognized almost 2500 years ago by one of the great tragedians of ancient Greece, Sophocles, whose plays supplied Sigmund Freud with a wealth of material from which to frame his theories of psychological development. According to Wikipedia, the expression "Don't kill the messenger" was uttered by a messenger in the play Antigone.

Tuesday night on Fox News, a poll was reported that revealed that 70% of the American respondents believed that we will be in a full scale war with Islam within the next 20 years. Yet, at the same time, President Bush's approval ratings hover around the 40% mark. While some will claim this is because we were misled into the war, or that the war has been and is being waged incompetently, I am not persuaded that these possibilities explain the seeming contradiction.

Answer 2

http://www.wikipedia.org

It's been a long time since I watched TV, and I can't recall the quote's origin that you mention... so I'll just go on with what I saw in Wiki.

There is "Beowulf," now in a different kind of story as a movie of the same name. The first "Beowulf" has an unknown author, we just know he or she wrote an epic poem about a hero named Beowulf, a different story.

There is "The Golden Compass" movie, taken from a book now the same name in the U.S., but originally titled "Northern Lights" by Philip Pullman.

There are countless references to and movies made about Dracula and vampires in general.

The very first novel put out about a vampire was by John Polidari (Polidori?), in 1819, called "The Vampyre."

It was followed in 1897 by the much more successful "Dracula" by Bram Stoker.

Anne Rice also wrote a lot about vampires, starting with "Interview with a Vampire," published in 1976.

These vampire novels spawned many TV and particularly movie adaptations, interpretations, and on.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" may still be on TV for all I know; I believe it must be on some channel or other.
The movie "Blade" is a popular vampire take.
The movie of "Interview with a Vampire" was liked by a lot of folks, but I thought there was some misguided casting.

However I'm sure a lot of young people know a lot more about this than I do, so I leave it to them.

Oh, except that there have been many forms of Shakespeare made into movies, from Gibson's Hamlet to "West Side Story" and on and on.
This was kind of fun; thanks.

Answer 3

The episode of the Simpsons where Lisa poses as a college student to hang out with the gymnast girls has a good one. They go to here a poet at the Kafka Cafe and there is a giant bug on the sign.