I watched Breakfast Club yesterday, so now I know where your avatar is coming from. Still can’t understand why it has such a high rating on IMDB, it was pretty boring and tame till the end. I expected more, especially from a 80s movie where there is usually fantastic elements.
“The Nightingale” (2019) This is a riveting yet graphically-violent movie from start to finish. The movie is, sadly, based on a historically accurate portrayal of the relationships between British soldiers, convicted prisoners serving their sentences as indentured servants in what is now known as Tasmania, and the native people who were being systematically removed from the land and murdered, in 1825. The movie could use a bit of editing, to be picky, but the scenery and acting are compelling, and the story about the true costs of violence, prejudice, and revenge is as relevant today as it was 200 years ago at the time this story takes place. Special credit should go to the two lead actors, Aisling Franciosi and Baykali Ganambarr, who respectively play a young woman who seeks revenge for the crimes committed against herself and her family, and the young native man she enlists to help her track the men she seeks through the wilds of Tasmania.
A travel-averse journalist chases her dream assignment where she soon finds herself mentoring a handsome B&B owner who wants to be a tour guide.
Snowkissed (2021)
Hmm, just watched a “making of” Jaws (1) documentary. Very interesting. Originally it was supposed to be more of a monster type movie where the shark would appear and go around eating/massacring people, but it kept malfunctioning so they ended up having more of an “Alfred Hitchcock” type movie with an “implied” monster. You saw the fin and maybe a shape, but that was all (until the end).
I think I need to see it again. Good thing I no longer live near the ocean.
In Peter Biskind’s book “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,” he quotes several people involved in Jaws with revealing details about how much was improvised as the shooting was going on. Spielberg reportedly disliked Peter Benchley’s original script.
Two other screenwriters were brought in to make major changes: a young John Byrum, and then the Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright Howard Sackler. Weeks before shooting began, Carl Gottlieb was called in to make more changes. The crew was so unimpressed by Spielberg’s results during review of the rushes that they took to referring to the movie as “Flaws.” The delays didn’t sit well with the actors, either. Robert Shaw allegedly said “It was a story written by committee, a piece of .” Richard Dreyfuss also said at the time that he thought it would turn out badly, according to Biskind.
But the cast and crew rose to the occasion, as did the director. Apparently, Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw were making up many scenes at night, which they would shoot the next day. Scheider said: “Because we had nothing to shoot, we had so much time that we became a little repertory company. You had a receptive director, and three ambitious, inventive actors.” The studio wanted the shark scenes to be shot in a tank to save money; Spielberg insisted that they be shot in the ocean, which increased the time and cost of production.
In the end, the production went way over the time of the planned shooting schedule and budget, and Spielberg thought the movie was a disaster that would end his career. He was wrong, of course, but part of the success was due to the unprecedented advertising campaign. Never before had the studios spent so much money on advertising before a movie opened, and never had they opened a movie on so many screens across the country. The amount of money spent on the production and advertising set a precedent that thereafter allowed the studios to re-assert their dominance over the creators, as it also put enormous pressure on them to avoid financing films that would not have a good chance of filling a great many theaters and selling a lot of tickets. As Martin Scorsese put it bluntly after Star Wars was released: “Star Wars was in, Spielberg was in; we were finished.”
The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) with Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, and more. This was on one of my movie channels last night and I happened across it. It caught my attention and I liked it very much. I never actually read the book so I don’t know how much it adhered to the original story, but the characters were engaging and the plot(s) moved along quite nicely.
I had no idea the name Uriah Heep came from this lol (I suppose that’s obvious since I said I never read the book)
now, our weekend will be Hitchcock.
just got 4 DVD’s from our library.
the good news is that his movies
are usually very short by
current standards.
which we
love.
of course, we watched The Birds.
more of a “character play”, really.
1. could the white hair vs. black hair be more obvious?
2. everyone wore their best even during this disaster.
3. at the end, they did what they should have done at the beginning…Get Out of There.
it is our opinion that this movie could stand a modern (CGI?) remake.
same plot, same characters, but updated. no telephone booth, for example.