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Four Weddings and a Funeral, 1994...
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/i...ZOBnO07j2oPTsd
Inspiration for this movie came when co-executive producer and writer Richard Curtis was flipping through some old diaries and realized that he had been to seventy-two weddings in ten years.
For several years after its release, this movie was the highest-grossing British movie in history, with worldwide box office in excess of $260 million.
Backstories were given in a deleted scene. Charles (Hugh Grant), Matthew (John Hannah), and Fiona (Dame Kristin Scott Thomas) were at university together, and Gareth (Simon Callow) was a lecturer. Scarlett (Charlotte Coleman) was found under Charles' kitchen table after a party and has lived there ever since.
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The Ipcress File (1965)
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/i...7WDbwEz0hOTcGJ
Harry Palmer is depicted as an accomplished cook, but when you see Palmer skillfully break a couple of eggs, the hands in the close-up belong to Len Deighton, author of the book on which this movie was based. Deighton was an accomplished cook and also wrote a comic strip about cooking for The Observer. The walls of Palmer's kitchen are full of these strips.
Palmer is the first action hero to wear glasses. (Sir Michael Caine is near-sighted in real life.) Caine chose to wear glasses because he expected this movie to be the first of a franchise, similar to the Bond movies. He feared being over-identified with the character of Harry Palmer, and so he wore the glasses so that he could remove them for other roles.
This film has a 100% rating based on 30 critic reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
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Excellent film! Far closer to the workings of MI5/6 than the fanciful Bond franchise. The first of the Harry Palmer trilogy, and IMO the best.
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Murder, My Sweet (1944)
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Audiences initially stayed away, thinking that "Farewell, My Lovely", its original title, was yet another Dick Powell musical. After the studio changed the title to "Murder, My Sweet", box-office receipts picked up considerably.
In a 1946 "Saturday Evening Post" article, Dick Powell wrote that the film was the result of his ten-year effort to escape musicals. Powell said that when he asked Charles Koerner for a "solid tough guy" character to portray, Koerner offered him the role of Philip Marlowe.
It was hard to get Mike Mazurki to tower over Dick Powell, because the former singer stood 6'2", with Mazurki--a former pro wrestler--only slightly taller at 6' 4-1/2". For many scenes, Powell had to stand in a trench.
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over to bluray now and a recent buy... Memoirs of an Invisible Man, 1992..
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/i...9Eu5Baj-qfSQ43
Carpenter called Chevy Chase "a director's worst nightmare" and "nearly impossible to direct", also saying the same about Daryl Hannah. According to Carpenter, Chase would complain non-stop about the film's tone and hated wearing the special effects, often prematurely removing his makeup and ruining hours of filming. At one point, Carpenter broke a clipboard in half over his knee in a fit of rage when Chase removed his makeup mid-take. Carpenter said that Chase and Hannah were "immune to any punishment from the studio, and they knew it, so they walked over me and everyone else on set and essentially told us we'd be replaced if we had any problem with them...it was like working with your boss's snooty children who would tattle on you if you didn't bend to their every will." Despite this, Carpenter ended up bonding and seeking comfort in Sam Neill over the troubling production and the two became close friends, with Neill agreeing to work with Carpenter again on In the Mouth of Madness (1994).
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Shooter (2007), 4k bluray..
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The large caliber rifle that Swagger owns, with which he is framed, is a Cheyenne Tactical M200 Intervention. It fires a .408 caliber projectile accurately out to and beyond two thousand meters. The CheyTac M200 is also available with a Long Range Rifle System, which consists of a laser range finder, magnifying scope with night vision capability, and a weather-sensing module, all of which interface with a PDA running ballistics calculation software.
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Forrest Gump (1994)
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Prior to filming, Paramount Pictures had cut the original budget by about $10 million, and were trying to force director Robert Zemeckis to cut out scenes they felt were unnecessary, like the shrimp boat or the Vietnam scenes. Zemeckis fought the studio hard to keep those scenes, and Paramount executive Michelle Manning was even sent to the set to supervise filming, and make sure the movie stayed within budget. Zemeckis eventually gave up part of his and Tom Hanks' salary to keep most of the scenes, and eventually agreed to cut out Forrest's running sequence. However, Zemeckis then simply ignored the studio's wishes, even receiving support from Manning. The running scenes were shot in secrecy without the studio's knowledge, and Tom Hanks' younger brother, Jim Hanks, doubled for him in many of them. According to Jim, "Tom had other doubles but they couldn't do the run", referring to Forrest's geeky stiff stride "that's a stupid Hanks thing." The studio eventually found out, but when they saw the raw footage, they relented. Only the scene at Monument Valley was still missing because the money had run out, and since the studio refused to pay for it, Hanks and Zemeckis did it themselves.
Produced on a budget of $55 million, Forrest Gump opened in 1,595 theaters in the United States and Canada grossing $24,450,602 in its opening weekend. Motion picture business consultant and screenwriter Jeffrey Hilton suggested to producer Wendy Finerman to double the P&A (film marketing budget) based on his viewing of an early print of the film. The budget was immediately increased, in line with his advice. In its opening weekend, the film placed first at the US box office, narrowly beating The Lion King, which was in its fourth week of release. For the first twelve weeks of release, the film was in the top 3 at the US box office, topping the list 5 times, including in its tenth week of release. After reissues, the film has gross receipts of $330,252,182 in the U.S. and Canada and $347,693,217 in international markets for a total of $677,945,399 worldwide. Even with such revenue, the film was known as a "successful failure"—due to distributors' and exhibitors' high fees, Paramount's "losses" clocked in at $62 million, leaving executives realizing the necessity of better deals.[62] This has also been associated with Hollywood accounting, where expenses are inflated in order to minimize profit sharing.[63] It is Robert Zemeckis' highest-grossing film to date.
Forrest Gump won Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Hanks had won the previous year for Philadelphia), Best Director, Best Visual Effects, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing at the 67th Academy Awards. The film was nominated for seven Golden Globe Awards, winning three of them: Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama, Best Director – Motion Picture, and Best Motion Picture – Drama. The film was also nominated for six Saturn Awards and won two for Best Fantasy Film and Best Supporting Actor (Film).
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The Maltese Falcon (1941)
https://dyn1.heritagestatic.com/lf?s...oduct.chain%5D
Director of Photography Arthur Edeson, who had a background that included Universal's monster films, used low-key lighting and arresting angles to emphasize the nature of the characters and their actions, such as the scene where Gutman explains the history of the Falcon to Spade, drawing out his story so that the knockout drops in Spade's drink will take effect.[14] Roger Ebert describes this scene as "an astonishing unbroken seven-minute take",[10] and script supervisor Meta Wilde remarked of this scene:
It was an incredible camera setup. We rehearsed two days. The camera followed Greenstreet and Bogart from one room into another, then down a long hallway and finally into a living room; there the camera moved up and down in what is referred to as a boom-up and boom-down shot, then panned from left to right and back to Bogart's drunken face; the next pan shot was to Greenstreet's massive stomach from Bogart's point of view.… One miss and we had to begin all over again.
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Small Time Crooks (2000)
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On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 66% based on reviews from 100 critics, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Woody Allen rises from his recent slump with Small Time Crooks. A simple, funny movie, Crooks proves Allen still has the touch that made his name synonymous with off-beat comedy." On Metacritic the film has an average score of 69 out of 100, based on reviews from 32 critics, indicating "generally positive reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B" on scale of A to F.
Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote: "In this sweet, funny wisp of a movie, Mr. Allen shucks off his fabled angst and returns in spirit to those wide-eyed days of yesteryear, before Chekhov, Kafka and Ingmar Bergman invaded his creative imagination." Todd McCarthy of Variety magazine called it a "Breezy, enjoyable romp gratifyingly zigzags in directions that aren't apparent at the outset and features some intriguingly personal subtext for longtime Woody watchers." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 3 out of 4, and wrote: "Dumb as they (allegedly) are, the characters in Small Time Crooks are smarter, edgier and more original than the dreary crowd in so many new comedies."
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Planet of the Apes - 1968,started watching last night, will finish tonight. Dreadful to think that the ending may actually prove prescient in my lifetime.
