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daveyh's Replies
there's a deleted scene in which Sonny takes a call from someone who can trace telephone calls, who confirms that on the days when Paulie had been off sick, he'd been receiving phone calls from a payphone overlooking Vito's office or where the shooting took place, something like that.
Not sure why that scene was deleted because it explains a lot and also shows how Michael calmly reasons with Sonny in order to be allowed to stay in the room where they're talking business, and also correctly calls it that Clemenza wouldn't have set the Don up (Sonny suspected it was either Clemenza or Paulie) - also quite prophetic considering it was then between Tessio and Clemenza for who'd sell the family out near the end, and once again Michael's hunch that it wouldn't be Clemenza is right
aside from my reply to stevew84, I've found far more relatable thing in Office Space than I have in The Office, even over 20 years later, so much of it is still relevant
sounds like Gareth from the English version. I worked with someone like that too (apart from the gun-nut part, and it was in the days before i-phones). And, like Gareth, he also seemed to know everyone who'd ever worked for the company.
Actually I got the impression Dwight seemed to like his guns too - remember he tested security by entering the building with a potato gun? Imagine if he was deranged?!
i'd never thought about that before - the only difference really would be that Jim lays it all on the line to Pam BEFORE the merger happens (although you could argue that Tim does initially "ask Dawn out" in the first series of the UK one, but I always consider his approach to her at the end of 2 to be the equivalent of Jim's approach at Casino night).
In fact, that aside, you could say that all of the UK office is covered in season 3 of the US version - the tension and uncertainty before the downsizing, the confusion as one branch looks to be downsized but then isn't, then the merger itself and the settling in of the new staff, and finally the salesman and receptionist getting together.
It's good to see so many people on here though saying what I've put in another more recent thread, that the show should have ended sometime during season 5.
interestingly, all 3 episodes you've mentioned are ones where they mostly did their own thing and didn't copy the UK version.
and even then there was the implication in the background that Ryan was out of resentment because Jim was now dating Pam (who'd turned Ryan down because of this) - the fact that Toby (another of Pam's unsuccessful suitors) was present and only willing to comply when this warning was given seems to add to this.
Leaving Charles Minor as the only one to dislike Jim and find him a lazy and unconvincing worker from a neutral, objective, strictly business point of view. And as others have already commented, even then, Charles Minor is portrayed as the villain of the piece and Jim the victim.
exactly, I think it's even shown quite explicitly at the end when they're waiting to get on the plane home and Michael angrily says to David on the phone "why did you have to move Holly?" or something like that.
I don't remember Michael realising that this trip was a job no-one else at corporate wanted to do, but if so, that would be yet another thing from Season 5 that would play into his decision to resign from Dunder Miflin.
[The rest of my post has very little to do with the question so feel free to stop reading at this point!]
Bringing Charles Minor to Scranton to effectively baby-sit Michael is the final straw. There'd also been the sudden and rather harsh decision to send Holly away as soon as David Wallace found out they were a couple (and Toby returning to Scranton would have been salt in the wound!), the increasingly underhanded and desperate tactics Dunder Miflin were using to stay in business (what he had to do in Price Family Paper clearly didn't sit well with him), and maybe this *beep* trip to Canada made him feel further undermined too, like he was the runt of the litter who'd just be sent on fools errands.
They didn't know how high he could fly
i'd have to watch it again, but I'm pretty sure he says it jokingly. They both know they're in competition for the job and they're just taunting each other and having banter beforehand
to be all classy and reply to my own post, having recently gone through Season 5 again, I'd say tipping point actually comes towards the end of Golden Ticket - the episode after Valentines Day.
Until the last few minutes, it's a brilliant episode, which gets ruined when Michael, unable to handle the fact that having Dwight take responsibility for the 'golden ticket' idea has backfired, bursts into David Wallace's meeting and admits everything. In addition to how cringey and awkward it makes the last few minutes to watch, it just seemed so stupid even for Michael Scott. For all his flaws and vanity and at times poor judgement, having reached the position he's in, he must have enough people skills and enough sense to realise that letting his boss know that he'd asked an underling to take the 'blame' for the idea to avoid what he thought would be negative consequences would be far far worse than having Dwight now take 'credit' and have a moment of glory for it.
The entire episode is ruined by this moment and I don't think the show ever recovers. In fact, this incident kinda sets the chain in motion for the rest of the series - David Wallace sends Idris Elba's character to Scranton to keep an eye on Michael, who now feels undermined and so quits.
Honestly, if the episode had just faded out with Michael left simmering while Dwight took the acclaim, it would possibly have been the best episode they'd ever made, which is some compliment consider how good the show had been up to this point
Ending with Jim interrupting Pam's talking head to ask her out at the end of season three, and Pam's look of undiluted happiness to the camera immediately afterwards, would have been something - leaving their 'happily ever after' to the viewer's imagination.
However, as other people have said, series 5 would maybe have been a better spot to finish on. In my opinion, all of 4 and the first half or 2 thirds of season 5 are really strong. I'd try to wrap it up there though, and not carry on to 7 when Michael left - In addition to (my opinion again) the quality going downhill towards the end of series 5, Pam just isn't the same when she becomes a salesperson and Jim also becomes more and more unlikable as the show goes on, can't quite place why. They even try to re-hash the Jim and Pam romance with Andy and Erin and it just doesn't work.
So maybe if Jim and Pam's wedding had somehow been brought forwards a series, they could have had Michael move away with Holly (which is what they ended up doing 2 years later anyway) and ending it there.
when I read the synopsis of Joker I thought it seemed familiar, then realised why. I didn't realise how much of a copycat film it was until I actually saw it - it's possible they put DeNiro in the Jerry Lewis role as an homage to its source material.
Interestingly, another very successful from the same time, La La Land, has a similar story to another of Scorsese's lesser-known earlier movies, New York New York
I thought it was very clever that the stand-up routine was OK but only OK. Like others have said in this thread, people were expecting it to be terrible and for him to completely bomb, but it was better than that.
At the same time, if he'd tried that same routine in the clubs or at an open-mic event, it might not have gone down as well. The studio audience had the mentality that 'he's made it to this show, he must be good', and that, along with the general feel-good atmosphere for the show, had them laughing harder than they would have had they seen this routine elsewhere.
Annie Hall maybe has more going on when you're watching both films for the first time, but for me Manhattan is infinitely the better of the two on repeat viewings. Think the talking heads and fantasy sequences in Annie Hall lose their appeal after they've been seen once and just seem kinda dated now.
By contrast, rather than appearing dated, the way it's shot in black-and-white makes Manhattan seem timeless. As the OP says the all-Gershwin instrumentals soundtrack helps too.
I just think there are so many good one-liners or reactions from Woody in Manhattan.
I also prefer it despite or perhaps because basically nothing happens. SPOILER ALERT the only change by the end is that Yale has officially left his wife to be with Diane Keaton's character. So they're back together and Issac and Tracey seem to have reconciled at the end too, so there's just a beautiful irony that they've gone through everything we see in the movie only to end up back where they were at the start. OK, Issac quits being a writer on the show to write the novel and consequently has to move to a smaller apartment, but that happens very early on.
A film about nothin', over a decade before the ultimate show about nothin' started, set in the same city too.
as for the impact it had on the music industry - well, I can only speak for the UK, but just over 18 months after the first Popstars experiment came Popstars - The Rivals, in which people would audition to be part of one of two groups, a girlband and a boyband - both would realise a single in December 2002, the winner being the one to achieve the Christmas number one.
Not the highest placed single, no, the Christmas number one. They anticipated that, regardless of the appeal of the group or the quality of the song, the power of the show and its affect on the public would see them top the charts even at such a competitive time. And they were proved right, as the winners did take top spot while the other group were number 2.
Since then, X Factor winners have topped the Christmas chart for I don't even want to think about how many years - barring one in which, thanks to an online campaign, a fed up alternative public bought or downloaded enough to help Rage Against The Machine achieve the festive feat. Even then, the X Factor winner merely took over at the top a week later.
The winners of Popstars The Rivals were Girls Aloud, and again, some of their members remain very active in the entertainment industry today.
the only culture shift I can think of since then, that did have an affect on the music charts, was the emergence of docusoaps and then "reality TV".
In the UK, a show called Popstars, in early 2001, in which a group would be formed from open auditions nationwide, the finalists being whittled down to the 5 members that would form the band HearSay. Their first single, Pure and Simple, wasn't exactly a blockbusting number - in fact, it was an inferior mashup of 2 songs released just 3 years earlier - All Saints' Never Ever and Oasis' All Around The World. However, it walked to number one because the show was so popular and the public so invested in this group, who soon petered out, although 2 members of the group - Kim Marsh and Myleene Klass - have reinvented themselves as presenters and continue to work on our screens over 20 years later.
There had been a couple of earlier examples, such as S Club 7 having their own show on children's TV at the time of their first releases, to market their songs to their target audience. There was also a show in the USA, I think called The Band, that showed a boyband being formed and rehearsing and recording - I remember how the song goes better than I can remember the names, but I think the group A-Town or O-Town, something like that, and the song was called Liquid Dreams, which was a hit.
But these were to be short-lived successes, whereas the idea for the reality show - it reminds me of the bit in Batman Begins when he says "as a man, I can be taken down, but as a symbol....."
Likewise, from a management/company perspective, an artist or group can implode or fizzle out, especially a novelty act in this industry. But with a reality show, we can introduce new artists and groups under our branding every year, each act just replacing the last one.
It underwent a few name changes but ultimately settled under the umbrella of The X Factor & Britian's Got Talent for many years......
oh, and I forgot to add....maybe someone with more knowledge of American law can advise on this, but unless McCauley has been told about and agrees to the conversation being recorded, I don't think Hannah can. Well, he could still record it on the sly but it wouldn't be admisable in court.
Actually, back in 1995, it's not just a question of recording it on your phone like it is now. Unless Hannah was wired at the time (and I don't mean on cocaine) he'd have to get a tape recorder out and put it on the table so I don't think he could have recorded it covertly anyway.
the way it happens in LA Takedown, Hannah arrives in the car park of a strip mall that he's been told Neil's in, to carry on surveilling him. Just has Hannah's getting out of his car, Neil walks out of the place and they're both kinda caught off-guard as they spot each other at the same time, only a few feet away from each other.
Both men know who the other one is. Both know that each one is on to the other one. They just kinda stare at each other awkwardly, and Hannah asks if he can buy him a coffee, almost to break the silence and uneasiness of the moment, and it seems like a completely spontaneous act. Neil could easily have told him no, was probably expected to, but maybe because he wanted to do the opposite of what "the enemy" expected, he agrees to it.
Due to the calibre of the acting, the 2 scenes are no contest when compared side by side, the one in Heat possibly the most iconic moment of the film.
But the way it happens in LA Takedown seems far more plausable, being a spontaneous offer that Neil would agree to it, rather than have Hannah fly all over LA and then chase Neil down the freeway and pull him over just to chat - as the OP says, Neil should have been wary.
with the first point, I think it was to show how disciplined and calculated both men were. Just as McCauley was willing to walk away from a takedown when they'd almost completed the job and when he'd spent who knows how much money for the intel on the place, plus the man hours planning and preparing for the job, so Hannah was also willing to walk away from a guaranteed bust because it wasn't the offence they were hoping for.
The only problem was that, the way it happened, it showed that McCauley knew that they were on to him and would therefore change up. He's clever enough to do everything else that Hannah's observed and even admired at times, it stood to reason that they'd also be devious enough to be able to ditch the surveillance when the time came.
Had the crew been walking away from the job for any other reason (such as the vault being empty or not being able to break through or finding out there was another, unexpected alarm or whatever), fair enough, let them walk and wait for their next job. But the way it happened, Hannah really should have taken into account the fact that he'd tipped his hand and that Neil now knew that he was onto him.
enough's been said about the 2nd point already and I've nothing good to add.
killing Waingro on the spot would actually have been a lot better for them, it turns out. Especially since it was his first job with them, they hadn't even met him until a few minutes earlier, so the cops finding his body wouldn't be a risk because he had no ties to their group.
Waingro knew far more than the poor security guards, and would therefore be a danger to them afterwards, as it later proved. Never mind by way of an apology, just in terms of being practical it would have been better to get him then. They must have been confident of being able to do away with him shortly after the job, but their attempt to do so failed, whereas it would have been a lot easier to shoot him when masked up and with explosions and gunshots already being heard anyway.
it's not entirely clear how Waingro tracked Trejo down, and it's some co-incidence that he did so on the morning of the big heist.
Oh well, he did explain to Van Zant that there were a couple of moves he could make here. And he knew another big heist was imminent because Neil hadn't yet come after Van Zant, meaning he must be busy with something else.