Amazing replication of late50s Brooklyn and early60s Berlin. We see the Wall being built!
The first half is primarily a courtroom drama rather than a spy story, with finely worded intellectual debates about the rights of the accused. Seems to me we were just reliving many of these same debates a few years ago, so despite the history lesson it is living breathing ripped-from-the-headlines stuff. (sorta like how MASH was a critique of the Vietnam War, safely transposed to the Korean War).
The Coen Brothers names are listed prominently as cowriters, which surprised me (even their most serious movies are a bit cold and inhumane, whereas this story very carefully respects the humanity of all involved). Turns out they just rewrote some dialog near the end. The real writing was done by someone I've never heard of, Matt Charman, who seems to be writing a few of these history films. It makes sense, with such a wordy film, that there would have been a need to make the back-and-forth a bit more dynamic, especially as we get to the crucial negotiations for the spy exchange, and them sniggering Coen twins are good at dialog.
Wikipedia points out some liberties with the actual history. Of those, the only one that can't be excused on grounds of tightening real life randomness into a 2hour story is the lawyer's background. In the film, Tom Hanks' character is a fast-talking, fast-thinking insurance lawyer who tells the CIA where they can go, so it's a surprise when they "volunteer" him in the second half . The real historic person actually worked as a lawyer for the CIA in WWII while it was still called OSS. But I guess Hollywood always prefers the myth of the rugged individualist, so that got changed.
The final scene on the bridge (it is history, so I'm not giving spoilers), with its lighting and staging and pacing, you know what that all looks like? what classic Spielberg film climax is he himself repurposing, from fantasy to reality decades later? it's the climax to Close Encounters! somebody oughta do a megamix of the two scenes.
"I don't think that's Gary Powers! what is that thing? could it be? is it ... an extraterrestrial alien? oh wait, it's just all this over-lighting messing with my eyes, it is Powers after all. Huh, that was weird"
I myself rode my bicycle over that very bridge in summer of 1990, a few months after the Wall came down. I had stayed in an apartment in Magdeburg the night before and rode all day to Berlin, with the goal of catching a Roger Waters (ex-Pink Floyd) concert in two days time. If I hadn't been racing to get to my destination, I shoulda spent more time appreciating that bridge, as I knew its historic significance even then. But it was getting dark fast and I still needed to find a place to stay in Berlin that night, so I just kept on moving. But there were no snipers in the guard-posts that day, justa crazy longhaired tourist from Vancouver bicycling to a rock concert.
_________________________________________________________
(EDIT: got that writer's name wrong, it is Matt Charman)
A good review of a good movie. Nice.
But Mark Rylance played the Russian spy Abel (he was a spy in Oslo for a while), you may have seen him as BFG and in Dunkirk too. Rylance isn't listed as a writer.
duh whoops, good catch Number24, I did some sloppy copy and pasting.
The writer's name is Matt Charman.
And yes, after reading up on the film's development, my thought its his name should've been much bigger than the Coen Brothers, if all they did was rewrite some dialog. I guess their name alone is enough to draw in the viewers, but according to Wikipedia, it was Charman who came up with the story, pitched it, wrote the first draft, then incorporated the Coens' suggestions into the final draft. Shame on me for not even getting his name right.
Weird I watch the same movie this afternoon. Some interesting twists funny to see the Colonel ended up lecturing on intelligence in the homeland, while Capt Power ended up as a chopper pilot before his demise. Those tow plus Tom Hanks character must have been the top 3 most unpopular people in the US at the time.
Cheers :007)
My name is Bond, Basildon Bond - I have letters after my name!
Deborah Kerr plays an inexperienced governess who minds two young kids in an expansive country estate, she sings them a few mimed songs and all is right... oh hang on, it doesn't go like that, Deborah Kerr is a novice nun who sets up shop in the Himalayas but it all goes pear-shaped... no that's not it either.
Kerr is cast according to type anyhow, and this is a very odd 1961 black and white spooky tale, hard to believe it's one year before Dr No, then again as it holds up very well, maybe not. Some real moments to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. The finale didn't quite work for me, as I was expecting something else, and I'm not sure how it fully resolved, but generally this was really weird stuff.
With a bit of luck I'll see the 2006 adaptation of Miami Vice this afternoon. Heard varying opinions on it but since Michael Mann's behind the camera, it can't be all bad.
Mystified by the original and I intend on seeing it in full (having only seen parts of the first season) but this will have to do for some time now to get my fix.
TrainSpotting
since Boyle's supposed to be directing Bond25, I decided to watch his filmography, one by one. This is actually the only one of his I've seen before.
Spotted three Bond references, all by SickBoy, all in the first half. I'm going to dig up one of our BondReferences threads and try to transcribe them all, as its now suddenly relevant. We oughta have them available at a glance for research purposes.
First one is also the very first dialog spoken after Renton's opening monolog, while SickBoy is injecting a young mother with heroin. Something like "Gooldfingerr is better than Doctoorr Noo, but booth are betterr than Diamoonds Arr Fooreverr, as can be toold froom its rrelatively puir boox office rretoorns"
(excuse my attempts to render the accent, but this movie may actually need subtitles, and these are my kinsfolk!)
SickBoy has good reason to be a BondGeek. The actor Jonny Lee Miller is in real life Bernard Lee's grandson!
And that nasty piece of business Begby is played by one of ours, Robert Carlyle (Renard from the World is Not Enough)
_____________________________________
EDIT: the second reference is the general discussion Renton and SickBoy have about inevitable decline, naming both the Name of the Rose and the Untouchables, then both characters imitate Connery's shibilansh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a94jraWNG-g
The third is SickBoy pontificating on Ursula Andress and Honour Blackman, then revealing he keeps his works in the heel of his shoe, Goldfinger-style. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG-r9jKcu7E
so far I cant find that first scene online, just the opening monolog/credits.
_____________________________________
DOUBLE EDIT: here's part of the film's first Bond reference, but there's more after this clip cuts off. The scene ends with Renton saying SickBoy lacks moral fibre, to which Mother Superior responds "yeh but he knoows a loot aboot Sean Coonery" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbNwSqw-cfE
First time for this Tarantino film. I expected Christopher 'Blofeld' Waltz to pop up but of course he was in Django Unchained and you can't have him playing a bounty hunter twice really. Some regulars show up and it's cool that only after I recalled that Michael 'Falco' Madsden was in Reservoir Dogs with co-star Tim Roth. Samuel L Jackson gets the call of course, and he must the best at delivering the dialogue.
It's the dialogue that makes a Tarantino film an action film.
Like Django Unchained, it starts in such a way that you might think 'Hmm, I could take my elderly mother to see this, a bit of salty dialogue but with flair and intelligence, some lovely elegaic scenery and so on.' Then it develops a bit and you think, right, no way could I take her to see this...
And like a lot of his films, it does tend to deliberately splinter off at some point into nonsense, as if to say, yeah, well I can't really be bothered to pretend I actually believe in these movies, or hey I'm bored, let's take this into another genre. Inglorious was a prime example of this...
I should have seen this at the cinema as a lot of it is elegant compositional shots, where you need to see the detail. OHMSS was a bit like that at times, it suffers on the small screen.
One scene where a guitar gets smashed, has a
Genuine look of shock from the actress playing it.
As it was supposed to be switched for a prop one
..... but wasn't they destroyed an antique guitar.
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
I didn't care for HATEFUL 8 either. Too self indulgent for my tastes. I wish he'd make something lean and mean like JACKIE BROWN again, but I fear that his ego won't let him make that kind of film anymore.
I thought the point, and part of the joke, was it was so self indulgent. The joke is on the viewer for watching all 4 hours of a squeaky door.
wuddabout his quarter of Four Rooms and Death Proof? those count too!
I cant do this ranking thang, but if I could I would place Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill at one and two - they're just too entertaining, and his films are always better with a prominent female lead (to balance out all the macho posturing maybe) Jackie Brown is good to see him demonstrate he can tell a straight story if he chooses, but... Tarantino is one filmmaker I want to see aggressively break the fourth wall, over and over, utterly demolish any last illusion of suspension of disbelief, and shamelessly draw the audiences attention to the role of the storyteller.
I would count this against any other filmmaker, but with this one, that's what I'm paying for and want to see happen.
Hateful Eight I quite liked. I do wish I saw it on the bigscreen. Or rather a big screen, because the film opened with limited event "roadshow" style screenings, like the old widescreen epics of the early 60s. overture, internmission, and souvenir programme. I think it was only presented that way in certain big cities, for a very short time. Considering how long certain other films are these days, I wish other directors would break their bladderbusting epics up the same way (I'm talking bout you, Peter Jackson). The cinema would sell more popcorn too, which is the whole point.
I liked the way the story implies Samuel Jackson is the "good guy" and Jennifer Jason Leigh "the bad guy", yet we never actually see her do anything bad except in selfdefense, whereas Jackson humiliating and murdering the old southern general was very bad indeed. Tricky how Tarantino did that, manipulating our expectations.
Also I think this is the only film without a hip retro mixtape soundtrack. Instead he uses an old rejected Ennio Morricone soundtrack (from The Thing) and has Morricone add new music to expand upon it. The world needs more Morricone soundracks, so that's swell.
one thing I can rank is the three main sections of Pulp Fiction. First third (including Travolta and Thurman's date) is so good that could be the whole movie, and itd be the best movie ever. Final third is a welcome reprise of the opening dialog ("Seinfeld with Guns") and includes the crucial bit where Travolta makes a repugnant mess of the car ... but lacks the thrill of the opening third, and quickly wanders astray. Middle section about Willis's character I've realised upon repeated re-viewings is a needless digression from the characters we care about.
By the way, that hardcover edition of Modesty Blaise Travolta reads in the bathroom ... I gotta exact copy of that!
This is a comedy about a very grim subject. Due to the nature of Stalin's regime the Politburo was ripe with paranoia, fear of having a different opinion than the majority, secrecy and lies. Knowing a bit of the time and er is a plus, but I Personally found the movie funny and reasonably correct. Bond girl Olga Korylenko is given the honour of unwittingly killing Stalin -{
caractacus, totally agree about Pulp, I'd rank it the same as-well.
The Willis part feels tacked on, as if Willis agreed and Tarantino wrote this part of the film just for being able to have Willis at his peak, but it has the sole purpose to keep you waiting on the rest of the storyline to unfold.
I've grown to like it, though it does mean the tragic end of Vincent.
It's more of an "Extra-Stage" sideline story than anything else.
About the soundtrack, Kill Bill's certainly didn't feel like hip mixtape. I think that while Bill is his best work as Tarantino, combining all of his passions into one film, Pulp is certainly his best work as a filmmaker.
Raise the Titanic. Hadn't seen it in years and still
Enjoy it. All old school special effects. The Titanic
Surfacing is still a movie moment, and the John
Barry soundtrack is really beautiful.
It is odd though how all the films made from the
Excellent Clive Cussler novels all seem to Flop at
The box office ?
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
Raise the Titanic. Hadn't seen it in years and still
Enjoy it. All old school special effects. The Titanic
Surfacing is still a movie moment, and the John
Barry soundtrack is really beautiful.
It is odd though how all the films made from the
Excellent Clive Cussler novels all seem to Flop at
The box office ?
The film lost so much money that producer Sir Lew Grade said it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic )
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
No Telly sadly Chris. You might be thinking of "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure"
Yep it lost a fortune at the box office. One example
of costs over running was, A model of titanic was too big for the water tank
so they had to spend a small fortune building another larger water tank
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
What I have always found odd is that up to the actual discovery of the wreck everyone thought it had sank as whole unit - hence the book Raise The Titanic - but it appears that it broke in two before sinking - didn't any of the survivors in the lifeboats relate this fact to anyone?
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
I find that odd too, I mean there are paintings of it going down but of course, quite a number of witness statements as to what happened. None had the 9/11 style thing of the tower of the vertical ship crashing into the spray.
Anyway, back to QT. Grindhouse, is that one of his? He produced it and it had the whole cinema package with an interval and so on, I saw it at Prince Charles. Of course Kurt Russell was in the QT one about the bloke in the car, hmm not great post Weinstein.
My Girl Sal
1942 musical but of the kind where the songs are staged rather than having folk break into song as part of life. Cabaret and A Hard Day's Night did this, and that's okay, but is it really a musical then? It may be corny but having folk burst into song when done right creates a flight of fancy, like entering a happy dream.
This film is set in the 1890s and charts the career of songwriter Dresser played by Victor Mature. Sal is Rita Hayworth. Neither play likeable or interesting characters. Films about songwriters tend to stink because the plot is, oh, a song has come to me on the piano, then they sing it, then they perform it on stage, then you see the songsheets rolling off the press. That's it, but to beef things up the protagonists have to fall out in a petty sort of way.
No decent songs really and none at all for the first half hour. Show Boat it ain't. Nice colour though and still a rarity in 1942.
No Telly sadly Chris. You might be thinking of "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure"
Yep it lost a fortune at the box office. One example
of costs over running was, A model of titanic was too big for the water tank
so they had to spend a small fortune building another larger water tank
Anyway, back to QT. Grindhouse, is that one of his? He produced it and it had the whole cinema package with an interval and so on, I saw it at Prince Charles. Of course Kurt Russell was in the QT one about the bloke in the car, hmm not great post Weinstein.
Grindhouse was a "double feature", with Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror and Tarantino's Death Proof. I gather the dvd's (released separately) are different edits than how the "double feature" was first released in the theatre.
My Girl Sal 1942 musical but of the kind where the songs are staged rather than having folk break into song as part of life. Cabaret and A Hard Day's Night did this, and that's okay, but is it really a musical then? It may be corny but having folk burst into song when done right creates a flight of fancy, like entering a happy dream.
there's names for these two ways of incorporating music into narrative, diagetic and, er ... something else. I forget which is which. The Blues Brothers has it both ways, some songs are part of the Blues Brothers' stage act, in other places Aretha Franklin for example just bursts into song while scolding Jake and Elwood. And of course "the Peter Gunn Theme" plays while Elwood parks the BluesMobile, which is a third way of using music in narrative.
Films about songwriters tend to stink because the plot is, oh, a song has come to me on the piano, then they sing it, then they perform it on stage, then you see the songsheets rolling off the press. That's it, but to beef things up the protagonists have to fall out in a petty sort of way.
Reminds me of the Glenn Miller Story, with Jimmy Stewart ... the film spends hardly any time showing us how Miller came up with all those swell toons, and most of the plot is about how he met his wife. Musical biography written for audiences who aren't interested in music.
Much better is Young Man with a Horn , with Kirk Douglas, loosely based on the life of Bix Beiderbeck. There's a record smashing scene in that one that'll traumatize any record collectors in the audience.
My Girl Sal 1942 musical but of the kind where the songs are staged rather than having folk break into song as part of life. Cabaret and A Hard Day's Night did this, and that's okay, but is it really a musical then? It may be corny but having folk burst into song when done right creates a flight of fancy, like entering a happy dream.
there's names for these two ways of incorporating music into narrative, diagetic and, er ... something else. I forget which is which. The Blues Brothers has it both ways, some songs are part of the Blues Brothers' stage act, in other places Aretha Franklin for example just bursts into song while scolding Jake and Elwood. And of course "the Peter Gunn Theme" plays while Elwood parks the BluesMobile, which is a third way of using music in narrative.
Films about songwriters tend to stink because the plot is, oh, a song has come to me on the piano, then they sing it, then they perform it on stage, then you see the songsheets rolling off the press. That's it, but to beef things up the protagonists have to fall out in a petty sort of way.
Reminds me of the Glenn Miller Story, with Jimmy Stewart ... the film spends hardly any time showing us how Miller came up with all those swell toons, and most of the plot is about how he met his wife. Musical biography written for audiences who aren't interested in music.
Much better is Young Man with a Horn , with Kirk Douglas, loosely based on the life of Bix Beiderbeck. There's a record smashing scene in that one that'll traumatize any record collectors in the audience.
I'm not sure showing how a songwriter comes up with a song is always that interesting. For one thing, the audience if they know the song will be ahead of the songwriter which encourages a kind of contempt or something similar. If they don't know the song, they won't care anyway. I think Three Little Words was one musical that might have fell into that trap.
Imagine a Beatles musical based around how John and Paul came to write their some of their songs.... it's a bit literal it's not v cinematic because songwriting tends to be introspective. It's not suspenseful because you know how Yesterday is going to turn out... It's like going over someone's holiday photos.
I think "Shakespear in love" had a fun take on the Bard's creativity. They told a (mainly fictional) story full of referances and hints on how he got his ideas. Not very historically correct, but fun for the fans.
Comments
Amazing replication of late50s Brooklyn and early60s Berlin. We see the Wall being built!
The first half is primarily a courtroom drama rather than a spy story, with finely worded intellectual debates about the rights of the accused. Seems to me we were just reliving many of these same debates a few years ago, so despite the history lesson it is living breathing ripped-from-the-headlines stuff. (sorta like how MASH was a critique of the Vietnam War, safely transposed to the Korean War).
The Coen Brothers names are listed prominently as cowriters, which surprised me (even their most serious movies are a bit cold and inhumane, whereas this story very carefully respects the humanity of all involved). Turns out they just rewrote some dialog near the end. The real writing was done by someone I've never heard of, Matt Charman, who seems to be writing a few of these history films. It makes sense, with such a wordy film, that there would have been a need to make the back-and-forth a bit more dynamic, especially as we get to the crucial negotiations for the spy exchange, and them sniggering Coen twins are good at dialog.
Wikipedia points out some liberties with the actual history. Of those, the only one that can't be excused on grounds of tightening real life randomness into a 2hour story is the lawyer's background. In the film, Tom Hanks' character is a fast-talking, fast-thinking insurance lawyer who tells the CIA where they can go, so it's a surprise when they "volunteer" him in the second half . The real historic person actually worked as a lawyer for the CIA in WWII while it was still called OSS. But I guess Hollywood always prefers the myth of the rugged individualist, so that got changed.
The final scene on the bridge (it is history, so I'm not giving spoilers), with its lighting and staging and pacing, you know what that all looks like? what classic Spielberg film climax is he himself repurposing, from fantasy to reality decades later? it's the climax to Close Encounters! somebody oughta do a megamix of the two scenes.
"I don't think that's Gary Powers! what is that thing? could it be? is it ... an extraterrestrial alien? oh wait, it's just all this over-lighting messing with my eyes, it is Powers after all. Huh, that was weird"
I myself rode my bicycle over that very bridge in summer of 1990, a few months after the Wall came down. I had stayed in an apartment in Magdeburg the night before and rode all day to Berlin, with the goal of catching a Roger Waters (ex-Pink Floyd) concert in two days time. If I hadn't been racing to get to my destination, I shoulda spent more time appreciating that bridge, as I knew its historic significance even then. But it was getting dark fast and I still needed to find a place to stay in Berlin that night, so I just kept on moving. But there were no snipers in the guard-posts that day, justa crazy longhaired tourist from Vancouver bicycling to a rock concert.
_________________________________________________________
(EDIT: got that writer's name wrong, it is Matt Charman)
But Mark Rylance played the Russian spy Abel (he was a spy in Oslo for a while), you may have seen him as BFG and in Dunkirk too. Rylance isn't listed as a writer.
The writer's name is Matt Charman.
And yes, after reading up on the film's development, my thought its his name should've been much bigger than the Coen Brothers, if all they did was rewrite some dialog. I guess their name alone is enough to draw in the viewers, but according to Wikipedia, it was Charman who came up with the story, pitched it, wrote the first draft, then incorporated the Coens' suggestions into the final draft. Shame on me for not even getting his name right.
Cheers :007)
Deborah Kerr plays an inexperienced governess who minds two young kids in an expansive country estate, she sings them a few mimed songs and all is right... oh hang on, it doesn't go like that, Deborah Kerr is a novice nun who sets up shop in the Himalayas but it all goes pear-shaped... no that's not it either.
Kerr is cast according to type anyhow, and this is a very odd 1961 black and white spooky tale, hard to believe it's one year before Dr No, then again as it holds up very well, maybe not. Some real moments to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. The finale didn't quite work for me, as I was expecting something else, and I'm not sure how it fully resolved, but generally this was really weird stuff.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Mystified by the original and I intend on seeing it in full (having only seen parts of the first season) but this will have to do for some time now to get my fix.
since Boyle's supposed to be directing Bond25, I decided to watch his filmography, one by one. This is actually the only one of his I've seen before.
Spotted three Bond references, all by SickBoy, all in the first half. I'm going to dig up one of our BondReferences threads and try to transcribe them all, as its now suddenly relevant. We oughta have them available at a glance for research purposes.
First one is also the very first dialog spoken after Renton's opening monolog, while SickBoy is injecting a young mother with heroin. Something like "Gooldfingerr is better than Doctoorr Noo, but booth are betterr than Diamoonds Arr Fooreverr, as can be toold froom its rrelatively puir boox office rretoorns"
(excuse my attempts to render the accent, but this movie may actually need subtitles, and these are my kinsfolk!)
SickBoy has good reason to be a BondGeek. The actor Jonny Lee Miller is in real life Bernard Lee's grandson!
And that nasty piece of business Begby is played by one of ours, Robert Carlyle (Renard from the World is Not Enough)
_____________________________________
EDIT: the second reference is the general discussion Renton and SickBoy have about inevitable decline, naming both the Name of the Rose and the Untouchables, then both characters imitate Connery's shibilansh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a94jraWNG-g
The third is SickBoy pontificating on Ursula Andress and Honour Blackman, then revealing he keeps his works in the heel of his shoe, Goldfinger-style.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG-r9jKcu7E
so far I cant find that first scene online, just the opening monolog/credits.
_____________________________________
DOUBLE EDIT: here's part of the film's first Bond reference, but there's more after this clip cuts off. The scene ends with Renton saying SickBoy lacks moral fibre, to which Mother Superior responds "yeh but he knoows a loot aboot Sean Coonery"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbNwSqw-cfE
Roger Moore 1927-2017
First time for this Tarantino film. I expected Christopher 'Blofeld' Waltz to pop up but of course he was in Django Unchained and you can't have him playing a bounty hunter twice really. Some regulars show up and it's cool that only after I recalled that Michael 'Falco' Madsden was in Reservoir Dogs with co-star Tim Roth. Samuel L Jackson gets the call of course, and he must the best at delivering the dialogue.
It's the dialogue that makes a Tarantino film an action film.
Like Django Unchained, it starts in such a way that you might think 'Hmm, I could take my elderly mother to see this, a bit of salty dialogue but with flair and intelligence, some lovely elegaic scenery and so on.' Then it develops a bit and you think, right, no way could I take her to see this...
And like a lot of his films, it does tend to deliberately splinter off at some point into nonsense, as if to say, yeah, well I can't really be bothered to pretend I actually believe in these movies, or hey I'm bored, let's take this into another genre. Inglorious was a prime example of this...
I should have seen this at the cinema as a lot of it is elegant compositional shots, where you need to see the detail. OHMSS was a bit like that at times, it suffers on the small screen.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Genuine look of shock from the actress playing it.
As it was supposed to be switched for a prop one
..... but wasn't
Funny that you mention Trainspotting, been meaning to see it for a long time.
Care to explain?
I'd rank it a tad bit lower than Pulp, it being the top.
I cant do this ranking thang, but if I could I would place Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill at one and two - they're just too entertaining, and his films are always better with a prominent female lead (to balance out all the macho posturing maybe)
Jackie Brown is good to see him demonstrate he can tell a straight story if he chooses, but... Tarantino is one filmmaker I want to see aggressively break the fourth wall, over and over, utterly demolish any last illusion of suspension of disbelief, and shamelessly draw the audiences attention to the role of the storyteller.
I would count this against any other filmmaker, but with this one, that's what I'm paying for and want to see happen.
Hateful Eight I quite liked. I do wish I saw it on the bigscreen. Or rather a big screen, because the film opened with limited event "roadshow" style screenings, like the old widescreen epics of the early 60s. overture, internmission, and souvenir programme. I think it was only presented that way in certain big cities, for a very short time. Considering how long certain other films are these days, I wish other directors would break their bladderbusting epics up the same way (I'm talking bout you, Peter Jackson). The cinema would sell more popcorn too, which is the whole point.
I liked the way the story implies Samuel Jackson is the "good guy" and Jennifer Jason Leigh "the bad guy", yet we never actually see her do anything bad except in selfdefense, whereas Jackson humiliating and murdering the old southern general was very bad indeed. Tricky how Tarantino did that, manipulating our expectations.
Also I think this is the only film without a hip retro mixtape soundtrack. Instead he uses an old rejected Ennio Morricone soundtrack (from The Thing) and has Morricone add new music to expand upon it. The world needs more Morricone soundracks, so that's swell.
one thing I can rank is the three main sections of Pulp Fiction. First third (including Travolta and Thurman's date) is so good that could be the whole movie, and itd be the best movie ever. Final third is a welcome reprise of the opening dialog ("Seinfeld with Guns") and includes the crucial bit where Travolta makes a repugnant mess of the car ... but lacks the thrill of the opening third, and quickly wanders astray. Middle section about Willis's character I've realised upon repeated re-viewings is a needless digression from the characters we care about.
By the way, that hardcover edition of Modesty Blaise Travolta reads in the bathroom ... I gotta exact copy of that!
This is a comedy about a very grim subject. Due to the nature of Stalin's regime the Politburo was ripe with paranoia, fear of having a different opinion than the majority, secrecy and lies. Knowing a bit of the time and er is a plus, but I Personally found the movie funny and reasonably correct. Bond girl Olga Korylenko is given the honour of unwittingly killing Stalin -{
The Willis part feels tacked on, as if Willis agreed and Tarantino wrote this part of the film just for being able to have Willis at his peak, but it has the sole purpose to keep you waiting on the rest of the storyline to unfold.
I've grown to like it, though it does mean the tragic end of Vincent.
It's more of an "Extra-Stage" sideline story than anything else.
About the soundtrack, Kill Bill's certainly didn't feel like hip mixtape. I think that while Bill is his best work as Tarantino, combining all of his passions into one film, Pulp is certainly his best work as a filmmaker.
Enjoy it. All old school special effects. The Titanic
Surfacing is still a movie moment, and the John
Barry soundtrack is really beautiful.
It is odd though how all the films made from the
Excellent Clive Cussler novels all seem to Flop at
The box office ?
The film lost so much money that producer Sir Lew Grade said it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic
Yep it lost a fortune at the box office. One example
of costs over running was, A model of titanic was too big for the water tank
so they had to spend a small fortune building another larger water tank
It wasn't until 85 and the wreck was found that
We knew for certain it had broken in two.
Anyway, back to QT. Grindhouse, is that one of his? He produced it and it had the whole cinema package with an interval and so on, I saw it at Prince Charles. Of course Kurt Russell was in the QT one about the bloke in the car, hmm not great post Weinstein.
My Girl Sal
1942 musical but of the kind where the songs are staged rather than having folk break into song as part of life. Cabaret and A Hard Day's Night did this, and that's okay, but is it really a musical then? It may be corny but having folk burst into song when done right creates a flight of fancy, like entering a happy dream.
This film is set in the 1890s and charts the career of songwriter Dresser played by Victor Mature. Sal is Rita Hayworth. Neither play likeable or interesting characters. Films about songwriters tend to stink because the plot is, oh, a song has come to me on the piano, then they sing it, then they perform it on stage, then you see the songsheets rolling off the press. That's it, but to beef things up the protagonists have to fall out in a petty sort of way.
No decent songs really and none at all for the first half hour. Show Boat it ain't. Nice colour though and still a rarity in 1942.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
sure it does. Its the only one I've never seen, and my stoopid library doesn't have a copy.
there's names for these two ways of incorporating music into narrative, diagetic and, er ... something else. I forget which is which.
The Blues Brothers has it both ways, some songs are part of the Blues Brothers' stage act, in other places Aretha Franklin for example just bursts into song while scolding Jake and Elwood. And of course "the Peter Gunn Theme" plays while Elwood parks the BluesMobile, which is a third way of using music in narrative. Reminds me of the Glenn Miller Story, with Jimmy Stewart ... the film spends hardly any time showing us how Miller came up with all those swell toons, and most of the plot is about how he met his wife. Musical biography written for audiences who aren't interested in music.
Much better is Young Man with a Horn , with Kirk Douglas, loosely based on the life of Bix Beiderbeck. There's a record smashing scene in that one that'll traumatize any record collectors in the audience.
I'm not sure showing how a songwriter comes up with a song is always that interesting. For one thing, the audience if they know the song will be ahead of the songwriter which encourages a kind of contempt or something similar. If they don't know the song, they won't care anyway. I think Three Little Words was one musical that might have fell into that trap.
Imagine a Beatles musical based around how John and Paul came to write their some of their songs.... it's a bit literal it's not v cinematic because songwriting tends to be introspective. It's not suspenseful because you know how Yesterday is going to turn out... It's like going over someone's holiday photos.
Roger Moore 1927-2017