The Cinema Thread

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Re: The Cinema Thread

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Cactus Flower

:lol: :clap:

1969 rom-com with a whole series of screwball misunderstandings. I was already going to write that Goldie Hawn was brilliant (and so sexy) in her first major film role, then saw that she won the Academy and Golden Globe Awards for Best Supporting Actress. She could have just as easily been called the lead and was indeed nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, but maybe she wouldn't have won.

Ingrid Bergman, yes Ingrid Bergman (still hot at 54), was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.
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Quatermass and the Pit

Not bad for 1960s SciFi. Not at all about climate, but had this prescient gem:

Space professor: "If the Earth was threatened say by massive climate change, what would we do about it?"

Palaeontologist: "Nothing, go on squabbling as usual."
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Race (2016 film) - Jesse Owens story, start of college through the Munich Olympics.

:clap:

The Lookout (2007 film) - "genuinely suspenseful and affecting noir due to the great ensemble cast and their complex, realistic characters"

:clap:
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Bulletproof Heart (film)

Very strange, very good.

Eddie the Eagle (film)

Could have been way hokey, but they pull it off.
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Conviction (2010 film)

Pretty good movie, Hilary Swank always delivers. Even more amazing is the true story it's based on:

After 18 years in prison, 'It's great to be free'
Ex-inmate savors the world outside


Then, 6 months after his exoneration:
Man Wrongly Imprisoned Dies

September 19, 2001

MIDDLETOWN, R.I. (AP) - A man freed from prison this year after serving nearly 20 years for a murder he didn't commit died Wednesday from injuries he suffered in a fall.

Kenneth Waters, 47, fractured his skull Sept. 6 when he fell from a 15-foot wall while taking a shortcut to his brother's house after a dinner with his mother....
Crap.
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Feel old yet?
Eunice Gayson, the first Bond girl, has died aged 90

"Bond, James Bond." Those immortal words were first spoken by Sean Connery's secret agent to Eunice Gayson, who has died at the age of 90, in the first 007 film Dr No.

Gayson played Sylvia Trench in the 1962 film that would become part of one of the world's biggest film franchises. Bond's suave self-introduction was, in fact, him mimicking Trench, who had just introduced herself as "Trench, Sylvia Trench" at the poker table....
That's interesting.

Image
Eunice Gayson

Eunice Gayson (17 March 1928 – 8 June 2018) was an English actress best known for playing Sylvia Trench, James Bond's girlfriend in the first two Bond films (Dr. No and From Russia with Love). Originally, Gayson was to be cast as Miss Moneypenny, but that part went to Lois Maxwell instead. She was the first official Bond girl.

... Gayson was originally to have been a regular in the Bond film series, but her character was dropped. Gayson's voice in Dr. No and From Russia with Love was overdubbed by voice actress Nikki van der Zyl, as were the voices of nearly all the actresses appearing in the first two Bond films, though Gayson's real voice can still be heard in original trailers for Dr. No.

As the first female to be seen in Dr. No together with James Bond (Sean Connery), she is officially the very first actress to have played a Bond girl on film....

Decades later, Gayson's daughter appeared in a casino scene in the 1995 Bond film GoldenEye....
RIP

That led me to:
Nikki van der Zyl

Monica "Nikki" van der Zyl (born 27 April 1935, Berlin) is a German voice actress known for providing the voice of Honey Ryder in the movie Dr. No. She also revoiced all the other female voices in that same movie, except those of Miss Moneypenny and Miss Taro. Van der Zyl also worked as a dialogue coach who assisted Gert Fröbe, whose English was limited, for the movie Goldfinger....
No other actress in the world has replaced:
Eunice Gayson
Ursula Andress
Claudine Auger
Jane Seymour
Anita Ekberg
Raquel Welch
Jacqui Chan :D
Lulu and many others whose names I don't recognize.

Seems weird to me. I'm guessing that 1960s-70s sound tech was poor, and that it was cheaper to use van der Zyl than to bring the main actress into a sound studio.
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Yeah, it’s longish, but I couldn’t stop smiling the whole time.You won't be sorry.


Paul McCartney Carpool Karaoke

The Late Late Show with James Corden
Published on Jun 21, 2018

James Corden heads to Liverpool for a special day with Paul McCartney spent exploring the city of Paul's youth, visiting his childhood home where he wrote music with John Lennon, performing songs in a local pub and of course driving around singing a few of Paul's biggest hits.
Comments:
I loved the carpool with rod Stewart but this tops any you have done absolutely amazing cracked a tear when you sung hey jude was emotional to watch this absolutely great video
Has history just been made?
it's 2018 and the Beatles are still relevant, amazing
let it be has so much more meaning to me now.
I can die happily now.
wow my heart.... this was everything
One of the best videos i've seen in my entire life
Could you imagine a tour of Liverpool with Paul McCartney? Best day of almost anyone's life.
James Corden gets and Emmy for this. How absolutely positive and joyful.
Very cool. Made my day.
This was the nicest thing I've seen on TV for a long time. Great show!
awesome! takes me back to when i was a kid and they were on the ed sullivan show on feb. 9, 1964! i was so excited! well done, sir paul.
That was AWESOME!
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Re: The Cinema Thread

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Weird, I have no idea why I put the Paul McCartney post in this thread, should have gone in Music or Idiot Box.

Red Rock West

Red Rock West is a 1993 American neo-noir film directed by John Dahl and starring Nicolas Cage, Lara Flynn Boyle, J. T. Walsh and Dennis Hopper. It was written by Dahl and his brother Rick, and shot in Montana and Willcox, Arizona.

The film was well received at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival, but deemed a cable and direct-to-video product by Columbia TriStar Home Video, which owned the North American rights. When Bill Banning, the owner of a San Francisco movie theater and a huge fan of the film, arranged for a theatrical release, the film gained a "buzz" and toured the U.S. as an art-house hit....

In his review for The Washington Post, Richard Harrington praised it as "a treasure waiting to be discovered". Writing in The New York Times, Caryn James called it "a terrifically enjoyable, smartly acted, over-the-top thriller". Roger Ebert praised it as "a diabolical movie that exists sneakily between a western and a thriller, between a film noir and a black comedy," and gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four. The film has a score of 95% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes indicating general critical acclaim.
Seems like Columbia TriStar screwed up.

Nicolas Cage has been in some real stinkers, but when he's in a good movie, it's really good. These come to mind:
Raising Arizona
Moonstruck
Wild at Heart
Leaving Las Vegas
Adaptation
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Re: The Cinema Thread

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Vrede too wrote:
Wed Jul 25, 2018 9:20 pm
Weird, I have no idea why I put the Paul McCartney post in this thread, should have gone in Music or Idiot Box.

Red Rock West

Red Rock West is a 1993 American neo-noir film directed by John Dahl and starring Nicolas Cage, Lara Flynn Boyle, J. T. Walsh and Dennis Hopper. It was written by Dahl and his brother Rick, and shot in Montana and Willcox, Arizona.

The film was well received at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival, but deemed a cable and direct-to-video product by Columbia TriStar Home Video, which owned the North American rights. When Bill Banning, the owner of a San Francisco movie theater and a huge fan of the film, arranged for a theatrical release, the film gained a "buzz" and toured the U.S. as an art-house hit....

In his review for The Washington Post, Richard Harrington praised it as "a treasure waiting to be discovered". Writing in The New York Times, Caryn James called it "a terrifically enjoyable, smartly acted, over-the-top thriller". Roger Ebert praised it as "a diabolical movie that exists sneakily between a western and a thriller, between a film noir and a black comedy," and gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four. The film has a score of 95% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes indicating general critical acclaim.
Seems like Columbia TriStar screwed up.

Nicolas Cage has been in some real stinkers, but when he's in a good movie, it's really good. These come to mind:
Raising Arizona
Moonstruck
Wild at Heart
Leaving Las Vegas
Adaptation
I'll give it a try. I always approach his movies wanting to find something like I found in Raising Arizona.

Cage is always good or plain god awful. Kinda like a great new college football coach (Pillsbury Dough Boy Terry Bowden – I mean you) who goes undefeated after inheriting someone else's team and gets millions in a multi-year contract before anyone realizes that he can't spot potential in high school players. Cage evidentially either can’t spot a decent script – or could be he just doesn’t care as long as the money is right.

Arising Arizona is in my top 5 list of movies I’ll watch at least a few minutes of anytime I notice it being on. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? is #1.
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billy.pilgrim wrote:
Thu Jul 26, 2018 4:07 pm
I'll give it a try. I always approach his movies wanting to find something like I found in Raising Arizona.

There are some similarities - good guy beset be a series of bad luck and unfortunate coincidences, complicated woman, bad guys, but not as wacky. I remember being blown away by Adaptation, may have to revisit.

He's like Jim Carrey - a lot of crap, the occasional amazing dramatic role.


.... Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? is #1.

Good choice. Best soundtrack ever.
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Vrede too wrote:
Thu Jul 26, 2018 4:34 pm
billy.pilgrim wrote:
Thu Jul 26, 2018 4:07 pm
I'll give it a try. I always approach his movies wanting to find something like I found in Raising Arizona.

There are some similarities - good guy beset be a series of bad luck and unfortunate coincidences, complicated woman, bad guys, but not as wacky. I remember being blown away by Adaptation, may have to revisit.

He's like Jim Carrey - a lot of crap, the occasional amazing dramatic role.


.... Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? is #1.

Good choice. Best soundtrack ever.

I don't think there's a scene in the movie that doesn't catch my attention when I'm flipping through the channels.

"Pete: You ruined my life!
Ulysses: I do apologize about that Pete."

Or

“They loved him up and turned him into a horny toad”

Every line is a classic

I read somewhere that Tim Blake Nelson had never sung before and they were going to dub over his voice but they liked him so much during rehearsals that he sang his own parts.
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I watched this:
Conrack

Conrack is a 1974 DeLuxe Color film in Panavision based on the 1972 autobiographical book The Water Is Wide by Pat Conroy, directed by Martin Ritt and starring Jon Voight in the title role, alongside Paul Winfield, Madge Sinclair, Hume Cronyn and Antonio Fargas. The film was released by 20th Century Fox on March 27, 1974....

The story follows a young teacher, Pat Conroy (played by Jon Voight), in 1969 assigned to isolated "Yamacraw Island" off the coast of South Carolina and populated mostly by poor black families. He finds out that the children as well as the adults have been isolated from the rest of the world and speak a dialect called Gullah, with "Conrack" of the novel's title being the best they can do to pronounce his last name....
Decently made, interesting setting, well acted, pretty formulaic - tender and tough inspiring teacher from the outside, rough kids in some fashion, skeptical families, oppressive bureaucracy unwilling to change. Coulda been To Sir, with Love, but with moonshine and mosquitos.

I wouldn't have posted here, but it is formulaic in another way. I linked from it to:
White savior narrative in film

The white savior is a cinematic trope in which a white character rescues people of color from their plight. Certain critics have observed this narrative in an array of genres of films in American cinema, wherein a white protagonist is portrayed as a messianic figure who often learns something about him or herself in the course of rescuing characters of color.

The narrative trope of the white savior is one way the mass communications medium of cinema represents the sociology of race and ethnic relations, by presenting abstract concepts—such as morality—as innate characteristics, racial and cultural, of white people, rather than as characteristics innate to people of color. In the praxis of cinematic narrative, the white savior usually is a man who is out of place within his own society, until he assumes the burden of racial leadership to rescue non-white foreigners and minorities (racial and ethnic) from their plights. As such, white savior stories "are essentially grandiose, exhibitionistic, and narcissistic" fantasies of psychological compensation.

...

Types of story

Inspirational teacher...

Man of principle ...
Nothing earthshaking there, I was thinking some of these things watching Conrack, though it's good to get reminded. Then, I scrolled downs to List of films. Holy crap, look at all of them! Avatar, Cool Runnings, The Green Berets, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Matrix, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Three Kings! That's not to say that they're automatically "bad" or should have been made differently, but my perspective has been broadened.
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Not sure that mine has. I'm seeing someone who picked an agenda and wrote an article.

Avatar was about a culture/race/species/whatever being exploited by another technicality more advanced group - They could have been anything. Some of these exploiters had a change of heart. In this case the hero was a disabled white man (helped by a woman of color) and the evil villain was a white guy. The hero could as easily been a disabled asian or african man or woman or ninja turtle and the story would have played the same.

Now, The Water is Wide: I never saw the movie (don't like voight) but read the book, his first other than short stories, years ago after reading all of his much better books. It's mostly autobiographical, it's real, it happened. The idea of a white savior is evident in the Galt character pushed by some Andy Randy type, but not here. This is simply one of life's stories about a time when truth often required a white person to stand up for people who our society deemed 2nd class.

I could go on, but not now except for this - does the wiki definition of White Savior mean that anytime a film has mixed races and one of the white guys is the good guy (even if he is helped by other races) that it is an example of a white savior film?

There is much more to context. I might even go so far as to defend Tarzan books and movies from this white savior badge. Sure the white Tarzan (friend of animals and natives) is defender of all that is good and even women too, but the bad guys are nearly always European and American.


And then, we can't leave out The Cisco Kid - the illegal Mexican immigrant who flaunts his back and forth illegal border crossings while saving white women and children from mean evil white men and crooked white sheriff Joe and deputy Clarke types.
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billy.pilgrim wrote:
Sat Jul 28, 2018 12:14 pm
Not sure that mine has. I'm seeing someone who picked an agenda and wrote an article.

Avatar was about a culture/race/species/whatever being exploited by another technicality more advanced group - They could have been anything. Some of these exploiters had a change of heart. In this case the hero was a disabled white man (helped by a woman of color) and the evil villain was a white guy. The hero could as easily been a disabled asian or african man or woman or ninja turtle and the story would have played the same.

Not a topic I'm expert on, but I think their point is that it was a white guy rather than those other options.

Now, The Water is Wide: I never saw the movie (don't like voight) but read the book, his first other than short stories, years ago after reading all of his much better books. It's mostly autobiographical, it's real, it happened. The idea of a white savior is evident in the Galt character pushed by some Andy Randy type, but not here. This is simply one of life's stories about a time when truth often required a white person to stand up for people who our society deemed 2nd class.

Agreed, you have to stay true to reality. I suspect their response would be that the autobiographical movie that got made is the one with a white savior figure. So, it applies to script choices as well as casting choices.

I could go on, but not now except for this - does the wiki definition of White Savior mean that anytime a film has mixed races and one of the white guys is the good guy (even if he is helped by other races) that it is an example of a white savior film?

I think they mean where THE savior is a white guy. I was struck by The Matrix being on the list, it somewhat fits your description. They say:
Neo (played by mixed-race actor Keanu Reeves who passes as white) who becomes The One to save humanity.... "the white messiah [who] has a racially diverse team of helpers". They say, "... the black characters—Morpheus, the Oracle, and Morpheus's crew members Tank and Dozer—are disciples who serve the white Messiah Neo."
I never knew that Keanu Reeves is mixed-race - white mom, very mixed-race dad including some white.

But they include a contrary view:
"On the whole, the quest... appears to be more a mission led by a black man and woman than one led by a white savior... the black characters are easily read as symbolic cultural touchstones and respective reminders of the civil rights and Black Power movements."
There is much more to context. I might even go so far as to defend Tarzan books and movies from this white savior badge. Sure the white Tarzan (friend of animals and natives) is defender of all that is good and even women too, but the bad guys are nearly always European and American.

Out of all of the Tarzan movies, they only include The Legend of Tarzan. They say:
Tarzan, raised by apes in Africa and then returned to England as Lord Greystoke, returns to Africa and fights the slave trade.
My memory is that in most of the Tarzan movies the black Africans are props if they appear at all, neither foes nor people being saved.

And then, we can't leave out The Cisco Kid - the illegal Mexican immigrant who flaunts his back and forth illegal border crossings while saving white women and children from mean evil white men and crooked white sheriff Joe and deputy Clarke types.

The Cisco Kid doesn't make their list. There are obviously hundreds or thousands of movies that aren't about white saviors.

Again, it's not all bad by any means, and it's not that all of the nonwhites are passive. Several on the list are black-positive classics: 12 Years a Slave, Amistad, The Blind Side, Cool Runnings, Cry Freedom, Django Unchained, Glory, The Help, Mississippi Burning, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc.
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So we watched Rampage. Hero was a combination of mixed-race strong guy (the actor formerly known as "the Rock"), a 50-foot albino gorilla (had to make him white, I guess), and second-tier heros, a black female and a white guy. Bad guys were a white couple, female and male, and in general the US military.

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O Really wrote:
Sat Jul 28, 2018 5:29 pm
So we watched Rampage. Hero was a combination of mixed-race strong guy (the actor formerly known as "the Rock"), a 50-foot albino gorilla (had to make him white, I guess), and second-tier heros, a black female and a white guy. Bad guys were a white couple, female and male, and in general the US military.
Was the albino gorilla the savior?
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Vrede too wrote:
Sat Jul 28, 2018 9:42 pm
O Really wrote:
Sat Jul 28, 2018 5:29 pm

Was the albino gorilla the savior?
As it turns out, yes. Literally.

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O Really wrote:
Sat Jul 28, 2018 9:50 pm
Vrede too wrote:
Sat Jul 28, 2018 9:42 pm
Was the albino gorilla the savior?
As it turns out, yes. Literally.
:lol: :!: I'll write Wiki and suggest they add Rampage to the 'white savior' list.

Just curious, out of all the choices available, how do the O Reallys settle on a movie with "The Rock" and a 50-foot albino gorilla? :P
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Vrede too wrote:
Sun Jul 29, 2018 9:58 am


Just curious, out of all the choices available, how do the O Reallys settle on a movie with "The Rock" and a 50-foot albino gorilla? :P
Well, sometimes we like mindless action films, but actually the choices available to us might not be as wide as you think. In many cases, they're limited to what's in a Redbox close to where we are. Sure, we can stream, but mobile internet can get a bit expensive if you stream a lot, so we don't stream many films. We rarely go to a real cinema. We've got a 60" screen with surround-sound and blu-ray. Doesn't sound so great to spend $20+ to sit in a meat locker with the possibility of some guy behind coughing and hacking down your neck. The only downside is that you have to wait a little after a film comes out in theatres. Nottaproblem.

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