Now Screening - What Are You Watching Right Now?

[struth]

His Girl Friday, 1940 ..The Criterion Collection,Blu-ray.


One of the first films (preceded by "Stage Door" (1937)) to have characters talk over the lines of other characters, for a more realistic sound. Prior to this, movie characters completed their lines before the next lines were started. It is estimated that the normal rate of verbal dialogue in most films is around 90 words a minute. In this, at times its 240 a minute...

Ginger Rogers wrote that she was offered the role of Hildy Johnson. She read the script, but this was before Cary Grant was cast, and she turned it down. After learning that Grant was cast, she regretted it.

According to Ralph Bellamy, the line, "There's a guy in a taxi down at the court building looks just like that movie star, what's his name? Ralph Bellamy!"!" was ad-libbed by Cary Grant. Harry Cohn, the studio head, saw the dailies and responded in fury at the impertinence, but he let Howard Hawks leave it in, and it has always been one of the biggest laughs in the film.

[struth]

Heaven's Gate, 1980... bluray remaster. Director Michael Cimino.






Sir John Hurt spent so long waiting around for something to do that he made The Elephant Man (1980), then came back to shoot more scenes for this movie.

Wondering why they were paying so much to rent the land where they were filming, United Artists checked local records. The owner turned out to be writer and director Michael Cimino.

This is considered one of the most notorious screen disasters in the history of film. After struggling with personal movies that went nowhere, Michael Cimino finally got to make The Deer Hunter (1978), which brought him critical and commercial success and earned five Academy Awards. Afterward, United Artists was willing to allow him anything he wanted. According to Steven Bach's "Final Cut", Cimino got $11.6 million to make his next project, a western about a land war in Johnson County, Wyoming, featuring a first-rate cast. It went over budget almost immediately, mostly due to Cimino's insistence on absolute perfectionism. Stories abounded that he was tearing down sets for no reason, and hiring and firing crew members almost weekly. Many of the stories were exaggerated, but the cost ballooned to a then-astronomical $40 million ($125 million in 2020 dollars). When Cimino presented the movie to United Artists, it ran well over five hours. After some squabbling, he agreed to trim it down to less than three hours. The movie was a commercial and critical disaster that destroyed Cimino's career as a director. It nearly bankrupted United Artists, which merged with MGM. That year, MGM had a hit in For Your Eyes Only (1981). Cimino didn't work for another five years, and his career never recovered. When Waterworld (1995) was being made, its production encountered so much difficulty, and Kevin Costner received so much negative press concerning the shooting, it was called "Kevin's Gate".

Isabelle Huppert was cast as Ella over the objection of United Artists executives. Michael Cimino insisted on casting her, and threatened (not for the last time) to take this movie to Warner Brothers, and United Artists capitulated. Even afterwards, Steven Bach, at one point, told Cimino to his face, that his leading lady was so unappealing, that the audience was going to wonder why Kris Kristofferson and Christopher Walken "weren't fucking each other, instead of her". Cimino told him to go fuck himself.

[struth]

What's ironic about Heaven's Gate is that while the film takes many liberties with history, some of the things people criticize the film for were historically accurate. There was a roller skating rink in Johnson County, Wyoming around that time. The part where Nathan Champion writes a farewell note mentioning that he is trapped in a burning cabin, a scene which Roger Ebert called "ridiculous", actually happened. The residents of Johnson County did make movable breastworks out of logs and wagons to use in battle. Members of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association did offer to pay mercenaries $5 per day plus expenses and $50 for each person they killed. There's a photo of the real Frank Canton wearing a Cossack-style hat like Sam Waterston does in the movie. The wealthy cattlemen and their hired guns were rescued by the U.S. cavalry. The scene in the prologue set at Harvard where the graduates circle around a tree and rowdily compete to grab a wreath of flowers was based on a real Class Day tradition from the 19th century.

Heaven's Gate does contain historical inaccuracies. The movie exaggerates the number of people who were marked for death by the cattle barons and the number of people who were ultimately killed. In reality, only four people were killed during the invasion of Johnson County: Nathan Champion and Nick Ray, who were murdered by the invaders, and two of the gunmen hired by the cattlemen, who accidentally shot themselves with their own guns. While European immigrants did settle in the Great Plains, and there was nativist opposition to new immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe in late 19th century America, most of the residents of Johnson County, Wyoming at the time had been born in the United States. The music that plays during the roller skating scene is anachronistic, as it was first released in 1951. While Wyoming's Acting Governor and Senators might have had advanced knowledge of the cattlemen's plot to invade Johnson County, I know of no evidence that President Benjamin Harrison did. Many of the characters in the movie are named after historical figures, but bear little resemblance to their real-life counterparts. The real James Averill (sic) wasn't a wealthy Harvard graduate and U.S. Marshal. He was a small businessman who was born in Canada and lynched along with Ella Watson in 1889, a few years before the invasion of Johnson County. The real Nathan Champion never worked as a hired gun for the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. Instead he was one of the leaders of the independent ranchers opposed to the WSGA. The real Frank Canton wasn't from a wealthy, politically-connected family. He was a former outlaw born Josiah Horner who changed his name and became a stock detective for the WSGA and a Johnson County sheriff. The real William C. Irvine wasn't a reluctant participant in the invasion of Johnson County but an unrepentant defender of it.

[struth]

imo a superb film ive always liked. i know its not accurate but its a bit of film artistry and magic, and a good story(if not accurate).
It was pulled from viewing due to it being slated by audiences and critics alike. Much of that was down to the start of the Regan years where 'slagging off' America had become a dirty idea suddenly. if it had come out a few year earlier it would have perhaps been different. In later years it became a classic and perhaps rated as the 'Great American Film'.

ps, the remastered bluray is pretty superb.

[Macca]

I don't know about that. It is quite good but even so it's not good enough to be as long as it is.

[Pigmy Pony]

Worth sticking with Roy, one of the best things on telly ever. Well, very good anyway.

"I'm not in danger, I AM the danger!"

Bit late with this post. I'm referring to Breaking Bad of course.

[Macca]

Dunkirk (2017)

Fionn Whitehead is a young British soldier trying anything to escape the beaches, Mark Ryland has to take his little boat across the Channel and help with the rescue.

Another one where I'm not sure what to make of it. Very little in the way of characterisation, or dialogue. Not much story either and there's times that it looks a bit cheap, like a 1970s BBC production where they're trying to replicate a huge battle in Studio 2 with six people and ten bob's worth of scenery . It feels like a very empty film.

I did think it was a low budget production and so gave it a pass but I've since found out it cost $150 million.

Pass revoked.

Despite the massive box-office success and critical acclaim I can't rate it. Just about worth a watch but not one I'd ever return to.

In comparison the 1958 'Dunkirk' is a much better film, I've seen that half a dozen times and would happily watch it again.

[struth]

Death on the Nile, 2022...




This version of Poirot is implied to have been born much later than his literary counterpart, who was in his fifties at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. In this movie, Poirot is shown in the prologue as a young soldier in 1914, making him at least thirty years younger than Book Poirot.

[struth]

Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge, 2017...




The father of Captain Jack Sparrow was played by a Rolling Stone (Keith Richards), and in this movie, the uncle of Captain Jack Sparrow was played by a Beatle (Sir Paul McCartney).

The Latin inscription on the diary reads "Verum omna simul astra", which bluntly means "all the stars speak the truth always."

[Gazjam]