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jackronner's Replies
All salient points (see my post above). They did come up with (as did I and, I'm sure, you) a rationale for the low-tech creatures who we wondered "How did they fly from outer space, but relied on hand-to-claw combat to kill us?" But your point about just blowing up the ship with their apparently unlimited supply of explosives rather than "vaccinating" them individually, was another sore point for me. And why did they ALL wake up from their slumbers at the same time when toxin-ated? I'm sure the "smart" aliens wouldn't have wanted them to come to life and wreak havoc on the ship, and them. In sum, a waste of "time".
Zinnemann was wise to have Robert Bolt, the playwright, write the screenplay.
One of my favorite scenes is when Henry tries to impress Susannah York's scholarly Margaret with his halting, schoolboy Latin, and she eagerly, if unwisely, unleashes a torrent of fluent Latin in response. The look on Henry's face was priceless. His diatribe to Will against the cutting down of the English"Trees of Law" and warning against the "winds that would blow" I found even more powerfully acted than his address to Parliament. Masterful acting.
I've since learned that More, who was such an appealing hero here, as Lord High Chancellor he was also a somewhat prolific burner-at-the stake for Protestant "heretics", and sought to suppress the first English translation of the Bible, voicing his support for the burning of one of its distributors. It tarnished his image in my mind quite a bit!
First, it was a clever scene in that most of the audience was expecting her to use the pen against him, then they trick us when she turns it on herself. We realize she's willing to kill herself to deny him his child; how brave. But, NO! She's only feigned it to get him in close enough to attack him after all. He HAD to stop her, so she used it against him. She didn't even have to show him the wound and "blood" as you've complained about. It would've been cuter if we saw her purposely hit the "squirt" lever on the fountain pen to simulate blood, but all she had to do was jab her vein and bend over and scream, and he would still have tried to stop her. All this took place within seconds, too, so the depth and bloodiness of the wound isn't all that important. I would've gone for his jugular, however. More vulnerable and more deadly and area.
Yeah. Both die the same way, the cops know invisibility is real. Coincidenza??? But her cocky attitude at the end kinda suggested: "Prove it. It's all on tape." Unasked, and unanswered: Was she going to keep the baby??
The suit was shorting out when he was physically attacked.
Well, I'm pretty sure we saw her hide the suit she first discovered in her bedroom closet drawer, so it's quite doable (although she should've worn a tight hairdo or emerged from the bathroom with one to save time putting her "look" together). I was thinking: "Why stash it? Either put it on and go see-thru or take it with you - it was proof of her ravings, after all. But they may have been suggesting that she was an even longer planner than her hubbie, 'cuz it was right where she needed it in the end. I dug the hell out of this movie.
Current invisibility tech is predicated on a mosaic of screen/cameras that project the visible field to your rear through the screens in front - so you wouldn't "block" out the view. I was wondering about the power source, seemed almost as inexhaustible as the camera lights in The Blair Witch Projecct.
Just saw it for the 40th time and have to backtrack on one of the spilled drink scenes. He does NOT knock over his whiskey glass when he collapses as Sam leaves after the Paris flashback scene.
Yours is one of those "Yeah, what HE said" moments. You could almost hear the click of the "cry now" buttons Spielberg tries to push. Like you, love horses and heroes and choke up for kindness and soldiers' sacrifices; plus I generally like Spielberg [tho' thought Schindler's was also a bit "push buttonish". Almost amateurish in its hackneyed portrayal of war and noble animals, everyone but the horse acted as woodenly as the script, as if it was a carpenter rather than a director in charge. And nothing made sense: the poor farmer risks his last red cent to buy an impractical horse; even a city kid knows you can't plow a field BEFORE you remove the rocks; the farmer almost shoots the horse, his last remaining asset. And so on. I did amaze myself by not walking out; perhaps in some forlorn hope the last part of the film would redeem the treacle of the first part. Nope. In retrospect, I can't believe some of the positive reviews; did they seem the same movie?
Hmmmmm. Never thought of that; tho' he doesn't spill it (it goes into the wastebasket base first), it wasn't a glass with alochol like the others, one could argue that it signifies the end to the tortured "upset" of his life since Ilsa left him. Nice catch!
He was still anonymous to that point, and she could ID him.
There're character-building reasons for it, but at the end DaFoe leaves him, unarmed, to face the bad guys while he helps a wounded guy up the stairs. I can dig their boy scout intent overall, but here he seemingly stood no personal chance, and the whole idea of a rear-guard is to slow down and reduce the threat to his men, so you swallow your principals and pick up a gun.
Saw it when it came out. The most perfectly cast and written film ever. Even as a 16 yr old I knew I was witnessing greatness. But above all, the performances and relationship between Scofield and Hurt was astounding. If you see it again, when he rejects Hurt's desperate plea of "Employ me!!", with a totally frozen poker face and a ventriloquist's frozen lips , he punctuates his "No" with a simultaneous flare of his nostrils. The man could use his face like no other. And so rare to have a close-up facial mastery so vital in film when you were a stage actor. "I trust I make myself obscure."
It occurred to me watching it tonight that Orson Welles' performance was perhaps his best. So powerful yet natural.
Very effectively acted. I just saw it again tonight and it really stood out.
I had a strangely similar experience while tripping. I blew into my college dorm's TV room where about 20 people were watching the scene in Rebel Without a Cause at the planetarium's end of the universe show in the planetarium. I made the best ad lib of my life when I shouted: "I hope to hell you're not watching the news!!!!"
Some of them I quite liked, but after a point they began to pall. Somewhat like James Patterson, whom I first read before the movies started, and whose style I quite liked. Tho' I liked Along Came a Spider in both forms, after fame, his writing seemed to devolve, with a liberal sprinkling of exclamations points and every page. So I stopped reading him.
Ahhhhh. Thanks to you and Wiki for the clarity.
Yet she and he both had some credibility; enough to entice some large paper to shelter/aid them. As I said, the very string of killings, bombings, etc.and attempts on their lives lent credence to their assertions and would be a huge story. After all, they were on their own and pretty desperate. At least the should have had the papers turn them down to close off this point and make the film more credible.
BTW, remember Cary Grant's line in I Married a War Bride? He's purportedly a French officer marrying an American officer, but can't find a bed in the war bride dorm. The soldier/guard tells him he's from Yonkers, and Cary replies: "Yonkers? What are those?" A good friend of mine out here in California is currently visiting Yonkers. Mike Gallo. If you see him, say hello!
Thanks for the welcome, tho' I've been here a few months. Hadn't run across this problem before. Just looking for a little shelter from the storm that is the US nowadays.