There’s a brilliant scene in Tamara Jenkins’s fantastic new movie The Savages in which Laura Linney, as a fastidious aspiring playwright, is bickering with her older lover, a married man named Larry (Peter Friedman). Larry declares that their relationship reminds him of The Blue Angel, and he condescendingly explains, “You know–Marlene Dietrich? Von Stroheim?” Linney’s character scowls viciously and says, “Von Sternberg!”

If only poor Larry had read The Snob Cheat Sheet for Confusing Similarities (pp. 30-34 of The Film Snob’s Dictionary), he wouldn’t have gotten himself into this mess.