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daveyh's Replies
OP's saying she was a successful singer away from this movie though.
I do agree though that that was the point of it in this movie - that she was OK but not spectacular and not nightclub-headliner material.
I haven't heard any of her other work - maybe Priscilla Lane is a better singer than she sounds in this movie - maybe she deliberately dumbed her voice down for this movie to sound more average.
it's clear from the conversation had before young Tom and Matt come into the club (1915 I think, and also I think the first scene in which Tom's old enough to be played by Cagney) that Putty Nose was very much using them, rather than taking them under his wing or helping them or bringing them into the game, as others claim in his defence. And, as the last poster commented, the earlier scenes showed that he thought nothing of trying to rip them off.
Yes, Tom screws up the job by needlessly firing his gun, thus bringing the policeman's attention, who they then shoot, increasing the heat from the robbery to the point where it's every man for himself afterwards, and you could argue that Putty's promise to help didn't extend to cop killings. However, from the conversation I started this post with and from everything we see of Putty's behaviour, I don't believe Putty would have looked after them even if something minor and not their fault had happened (such as, say, a passer-by recognising them or the store owner coming back and things getting ugly).
And all those years later, on the night of the killing, he lies that he's got a girl in the house, proving to Tom that he's still scheming - how can he trust him - Putty could shoot them in the back as they're leaving if they did spare him.
While it's not for us to decide if someone did or didn't deserve to die, I think Putty was a dead man walking as soon as Tom hit the big-time and gained a rep as a feared and hot-headed bruiser and killer. Putty should have skipped town and stayed away the minute he learned that Tom and Matt were under Nails Nathan's protection and were very senior enforcers for Paddy Ryan's bootlegging.
He can't have been around the underworld and not known that.
and I agree with point 10 that it's the dumbest part of the book, in fact I'd say the movie did this better, with Tom going to Venice specifically to avoid being interviewed by the same inspector, who would undoubtedly recognise him.
Also think Marge's hostility and suspicions towards the end work better because it just adds to the tension.
I recently posted a new thread, not realising there was already this one from years ago.
The difference very early on that surprised me was that Tom had actually met Dickie on a couple of occasions (when Dickie still lived in America) and that Greenleaf Sr actively seeks him out having been recommended to him as the man for the job of bringing his son home.
Another change is that in the book Tom does bear a resemblance to Dickie - they're the same height and have a similar shaped jawline/chin and so look almost identical from the nose down. In the movie, that's not the case, I guess because they had to go for the best actors rather than the best lookalikes!
Just to add to your Marge point, it's actually a complete reversal because in the latter parts of the book (in Venice and when Sr Greenleaf is there) she's a lot nicer to Tom and concedes that Dickie is dead, whereas in the movie her hostility only begins when she arrives in Venice as she suspects Tom. In fact, in both mediums, her finding Dickie's rings proves to be the confirmation she needs (in the book, that he has either run away and changed identity or committed suicide, in the film that Tom has killed him).
Lastly, the book's ending is quite an anticlimax, whereas the film's ending is a lot darker.
and that's just how sitcoms are done over here. 6 episodes, and then after a couple of series, they either quit while they're ahead or go stale. Even a "long running" sitcom like Only Fools and Horses - it's quite misleading because they stopped making series after about 1990 and then just did some rather lacklustre Christmas specials (with 3 very obvious exceptions), therefore only making I think 10 episodes for the last 13 years of the show's "run".
In the US they have teams of writers who pick up the mantle for different episodes, and can get away with filler/bottleneck episodes if it's in the middle of a good 15-20 episode series. Friends, Fraser, its predocessor Cheers, Seinfeld etc. ran for years, 20 odd episodes per series without the quality slipping or the essence of the show being lost despite different people (often ones who had nothing to do with the creation or inception of the show) writing throughout. Maybe we English should have tried it.
Although not a sitcom and not aimed at adults, Grange Hill ran for 30 years, pushing 20 episodes each year, and that's one of the few shows that did use different writers etc because each series was so long. And I don't think any lack of continuity or dip in quality showed as a result of them doing this. So it does work.
"Overall it seemed like it should have been called The Ricky Gervais Show" - actually one of the things that made it so watchable was the good ensemble cast/characters being given their own stories and development - Gervais probably had slightly more screen time than the rest but only the same as Steve Carell would have in each episode of the US version. Brent's one of those characters that's better in small doses. If it had just been 20-30 minutes of Brent goofing around it would have been unwatchable. He's possibly still in it too much for other people's taste, but try watching Extras, when his character is on screen pretty much the entire time. It's too much. Think that's one of the reasons the only other work of his I like is Cemetary Junction, in which he only appears a couple of times and only for a few minutes (as the lead's dad).
maybe they meant "nice guy" in inverted commas.
I'm surprised that there's not been a comment about how he asked out Dawn when she was still engaged to Lee. Twice.
While Lee, like Gareth, can also come across as a d**k and the audience are wondering what Dawn sees in him or why she's with him, that's completely Dawn's call to make.
He's lucky Lee didn't destroy him. Maybe that's what happens shortly after the cameras stop rolling.
"Solozzo himself was alert of him" - this.
It's actually because Michael goes against the earlier advice of "you relax, you make them relax" that he has to adjust his approach - he seems to let his emotions get the better of him and can't contain his disgust with Solozzo when he refuses to guarantee no more attempts on his father etc. and blurts out mid-conversation, maybe even while Solozzo's mid-sentence, that he has to go to the bathroom, almost as if to say 'i can't listen to anymore of this'.
Solozzo, who has been as friendly as he can towards Michael all night, is now more hostile than we've previously seen him - Michael's attitude has him so on edge that he frisks him even though the experienced police captain has already done so.
Therefore Solozzo would have been hyper-vigilant when that toilet door reopens, maybe with a hand ready on his own gun if Michael did "come out blasting" as originally advised.
If Solozzo did have some henchmen in there, it's off-camera and down to speculation.
Doesn't matter if there were or not, though, because Michael still had to deviate from Clemenza's plan because he'd put Solozzo on edge. And fair play to Michael, he adapts brilliantly.
presumably because it was too late, and I don't mean because their boss was already dead, I mean because Michael was in position to shoot them if they tried anything (the time they'd take to stand up and get their guns out, Michael, with his gun already in hand, would have shot - channelling his inner Biggie - 'while you're guns raising, mine is blazing')
I suppose they could have followed him out the restaurant, because, as Riraho says further down on this thread, "he makes a major production of flinging the gun down" so there's no way people will think he still has it (as Clemenza advised). Then again, as soon as he stepped out of the restaurant, the car came for him, so maybe it's a good thing for them that they didn't follow him out because if there were other Corleone people in the car, it would have been the end of Solozzo's hitters too.
I watched a documentary a while ago that suggested that a lot of the tension was stirred up by the media.
Easter weekend (which, for non-UK readers, is a 4 day weekend here) of 1964, a load of youths went to Clacton on Sea (a beach resort in Essex), some groups of "mods" and some groups of "rockers". Problem was, Easter was early that year, and the wintry weather was still going on. Consequently, a lot of the seasonal places that these kids would normally go to were still closed.
With nothing to do but wander the freezing streets, some of the visitors began committing acts of vandalism/criminal damage, couple of smashed windows etc as would happen in most city centres at the weekend, and a few dozen of them ran onto the pier which was still closed for the season - not that there was anything to break into there because there were no shows or anything on, what with it being closed! They were just doing it for a lark, as kids do - and this prompted the guy guarding the pier to call the police, who were ready to arrest them when they were done.
All in all, though, no group-related violence (or fighting of any kind) took place.
The newspapers, however, exaggerated the extent of vandalism/criminal damage that had taken place to say that the youths had been rioting, and worse still, wrongly stated that the mods and rockers had been fighting against each other.
The sensationalist headlines whipped up a frenzy, it made mods and rockers a national thing (instead of just London based and a cult/niche lifestyle), that everyone under the age of 25 had to pick a side etc
It meant that the next holiday weekend, both "sides" hit the coastal areas in numbers to "protect their own" against a potential onslaught by the other side. Both sides were on the defensive and also fired up on booze and/or drugs. So the large scale riots that happened were like a self fulfilling prophesy because such a big deal had been made out of some very minor disorder in Clacton a few weeks earlier that wasn't even anything to do with any mods/rockers rivalry.
exactly. A very awkward misunderstanding that could easily have been prevented if the patrolman Frank was shadowing had explained the situation before they went in.
Frank didn't know that it was free, and so ordered what he wanted thinking he'd be paying for it. The deli owner didn't know that Frank didn't know it was free, and thought he was taking liberties by requesting something other than the "free special" of the day.
And even then, the owner could have given Frank the nice lean beef and explained the situation, that in future you take what's on offer, instead of giving him the fatty beef out of spite.
Like another poster has already said, it was his first taste of "corruption" and shows that some of his colleagues were more interested in using their position to literally get a free lunch than they were in doing their jobs properly. And it shows that no-one wins because often this free lunch wouldn't be what you wanted.
also the way he talks after being shot (and throughout the movie, to an extent) reminded me of the way Michael talks after McCluskey breaks his jaw, before he gets it fixed
thanks, I wanted to ask that too! Also, the park where all the corrupt cops have that big outdoor meeting and you can practically see into the stadium in the background - where is that?
if he hadn't been so disillusioned after the mayor's office proved to be a bust, he might have gone with the other suggestions (including the Times). It's a pity Tony Roberts didn't suggest this option first, but I guess his friendship with the guy at the mayor's office influenced him to opt for that at the beginning.
Serpico only reaches out to him about going to the times when he does out of sheer desperation. Like he says, in case anything should happen to him. And it's a nice touch that Tony Roberts is now playing down the impact it might have, in complete contrast to his bragging earlier in the movie.
and it doesn't help that in S5, the Homicide offices has so much more screen-time than in the other series - between McNulty being back there and then the whole fake-serial-killer story, Kima working murders on her own, and Bunk working back on old cases relating to Marlo, so really it needed a change of scenery for other scenes more than any other series, and instead we got more of the same
i found that to be my experience with the entire latter part of Season 5. I'm not normally a binge-watcher and can happily wait for the next episode, but with this I was going through episode after episode because it was so intense.
I thought I might get more out of it on second viewing, because I wouldn't be impatient to find out what happens next/how it ends, and could therefore relax and enjoy the show, maybe catch stuff that I missed first time around or appreciate bits that foreshadowed what would happen later. Instead I found it to be rather flat and there's enough recent posts on here poking holes in some of the goings on towards the end.
In fact the only part of all 5 seasons I enjoyed more 2nd time around was the early part of season 2 (prior to the introduction of Saul). That aside, I've never known a show be so much less satisfying second time around, especially when it was so enjoyable and gripping on first viewing.
he was civil with him at that first meeting, even wishing him well at the end. I guess the 2nd encounter, when Benny wanted Steffi to be sent over to him, offering champagne in exchange, Carlito let his pride get in the way. Conceding to this would feel like letting Benny take advantage - while he was happy to tolerate/be civil towards him, he drew the line at having to show respect towards him. He more or less said those words himself. "moves a couple of ounces, I've supposed to respect him?!" or something to that effect
Going off the figures people are saying here, the 30k he pockets after that thing with his cousin and the pool table would be worth at least 100k in today's money. While not exactly enough to live off forever, it would certainly be enough to move to another city and keep him going for a few months, maybe even a year, while he figures out what to do. Instead he invests almost all of it into Saso's club because that world is all he knows (hell, Kleinfeld was willing to front his 25k investment for that anyway).
Basically instead of using that "found money" to go straight and get away from the old life and the old temptations, he buys into a club owned/run by someone who's at least connected to the street in Saso, frequented by gangsters and invested into by his mob lawyer and associates. It was always going to drag him back in, especially since he seemed to be spending almost every night there.
They were preoccupied with Vincent Tag, who they'd just gunned down. Still, Benny must have been using one hell of a silencer.
Even if Benny hadn't been there, I also wonder how likely it would be that the Miami train would still leave given what had just happened
I hadn't really thought about that before, but yeah, in 2 they extended to the docks and general port area, and like you say in 4, they had the school. OK, in 3 the political offices maybe weren't as exciting but at least it was an upmarket change of scenery. But in 5, the journalists, their clothes, their bosses, and the office itself were kinda interchangeable with the Homicide unit. It could even have been filmed in the same room! You even have Gus drinking in a cop bar by the end of it (ironically played by one of the original actors from Homicide!).
I think because it was only a 10 episode series, there wasn't time to flesh out the characters enough, and i've read elsewhere that that, combined maybe with David Simon's bias from his own experience as a journalist, caused the Baltimore Sun staff, especially Templeton and the bosses, to come across as caricatures .
It's a shame because Gus and the guy who does the story on Bubs were kinda cool and I'd like to have seen a bit more depth to them. But the fact that I can't tell you his name speaks volumes. The only other one I could name was Alma.