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[struth]

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, 2003. First in the series...





From a Budget of $140m, it grossed $654.3m. Half a billion profit. no wonder they made 5.

Verbinski did not want an entirely romanticized feel to the film: he wanted a sense of historical fantasy. Most of the actors wore prosthetics and contact lenses. Depp had contacts that acted as sunglasses, while Rush and Lee Arenberg wore dulled contacts that gave a sinister feel to the characters. Mackenzie Crook wore two contacts to represent his character's wooden eye: a soft version, and a harder version for when it protrudes. In addition, their rotten teeth and scurvy skin were dyed on, although Depp did have gold teeth added, which he forgot to remove after filming. Depp also used a genuine pistol which was made in 1760 in London, which the crew bought from a dealer in Connecticut. A number of swords were built for the production by blacksmith Tony Swatton. The crew spent five months creating the cavern in which Barbossa and the Black Pearl crew attempt to reverse their curse, filling it with five feet of water, 882 Aztec coins, and some gold paint on the styrofoam rocks for more impressions of treasure. The crew also built the fortress at Port Royal in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, and Governor Swann's palace was built at Manhattan Beach. A fire broke out in September 2002, causing $525,000 worth of damage, though no one was injured.

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Farewell, My Lovely, 1975. directed by Dick Richards and featuring Robert Mitchum as private detective Philip Marlowe. The picture is based on Raymond Chandler's novel Farewell, My Lovely (1940), which had previously been adapted for film as Murder, My Sweet in 1944.






Critic Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, "These opening shots are so evocative of Raymond Chandler's immortal Marlowe, archtypical private eye, haunting the underbelly of Los Angeles, that if we're Chandler fans we hold our breath. Is the ambience going to be maintained, or will this be another campy rip-off? Half an hour into the movie, we relax. Farewell, My Lovely never steps wrong...in the genre itself there hasn't been anything this good since Hollywood was doing Philip Marlowe the first time around. One reason is that Dick Richards, the director, takes his material and character absolutely seriously.

[struth]

Absolute Power, 1997. directed by, and starring Clint Eastwood as a master jewel thief who witnesses the killing of a woman by Secret Service agents. also stars Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Laura Linney, Judy Davis, Scott Glenn and Dennis Haysbert.





When Eastwood first heard of the book being turned into a film, he liked the basic plot and the characters, but disliked that most of those he considered interesting were killed off. He requested that Goldman make sure that "everyone the audience likes doesn't get killed off."

[walpurgis]

Absolute Power, 1997. directed by, and starring Clint Eastwood as a master jewel thief who witnesses the killing of a woman by Secret Service agents. also stars Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Laura Linney, Judy Davis, Scott Glenn and Dennis Haysbert

Enjoyable movie.

[struth]

Enjoyable movie.

and here is another... Key largo, 1948. directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson and Lauren Bacall. The supporting cast features Lionel Barrymore and Claire Trevor.





The script was adapted from a 1939 play of the same name by Maxwell Anderson. In the play, the gangsters are Mexican bandidos, the war in question is the Spanish Civil War, and McCloud is a disgraced deserter who dies at the end.

Robinson had top billing over Bogart in their four previous films together: Bullets or Ballots (1936), Kid Galahad (1937), The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938) and Brother Orchid (1940), but the situation switched for the billing in this final film that Bogart and Robinson worked together on. In at least one trailer for the film, however, Robinson is billed above Bogart in a list of the actors' names at the end of the preview, and photographs exist of Robinson being billed above Bogart on some theatre marquees. In the film itself and in posters, Robinson's name is between Bogart's and Bacall's but slightly higher than the other two. In some posters, Robinson's picture is substantially larger than Bogart's, and in the foreground manhandling Bacall while Bogart is in the background.

The film was shot primarily at the Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank, in order to keep costs down. The beach and hotel exterior were constructed on the Warner Bros. backlot; the interior scenes were filmed on a sound stage; and the boat scenes were filmed in Sound Stage 21, a huge indoor water tank. Exterior shots of the hurricane were taken from stock footage used in Night Unto Night, a Ronald Reagan melodrama which Warner Bros. also produced in 1948. Filming took 78 days.

The boat used by Rocco's gang to depart Key Largo, with Bogart's character at the helm, is named the Santana, which was also the name of Bogart's personal 55-foot (17 m) sailing yacht.

[struth]

Dressed to Kill, 1980. directed by Brian De Palma. Starring Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson, Nancy Allen, and Keith Gordon.






Dressed to Kill was a box office hit in the United States, grossing over $30 million. It received largely favorable reviews, and critic David Denby of New York Magazine proclaimed it "the first great American movie of the '80s."

[struth]

Little Big Man, 1970. 51 yrs old now and still top 10 in my charts. directed by Arthur Penn and stars Dustin Hoffman, Chief Dan George, Faye Dunaway, Martin Balsam, Jeff Corey and Richard Mulligan.





The role of Chief Old Lodge Skins was initially offered to Marlon Brando, Paul Scofield, and Laurence Olivier, all of whom turned it down. The Little Bighorn battle scenes were filmed on location at Crow Agency, Montana near the actual battle site. Some of the town scenes were filmed in Nevada City, Montana, a town that by 1970 consisted predominantly of historic 19th-century buildings brought from elsewhere in Montana. All outdoor Indian scenes other than the Little Bighorn battle were filmed near Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Some interior and various footage was shot on Hollywood sets. All Indian extras were North American Indians, though Aimée Eccles, who played Sunshine, is actually of Chinese descent, and Cal Bellini, who played Younger Bear, is actually a Malay originally from Singapore.

[struth]

Another of my favs is this.. Avanti!, 1972. directed by Billy Wilder, and starring Jack Lemmon and the delectable Juliet Mills, who had to gain 25lbs for film.







The film is set on the island of Ischia, where some of the exterior scenes were shot, including a brief scene outside the morgue (the interior of which, as with all the interior sets, was designed by Italian production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti), at and around the port of Ischia.

[struth]

Classic comedy from 1957, with Basil Dearden's The Smallest Show on Earth, starring Bill Travers, Virginia McKenna, Peter Sellers and Margaret Rutherford, with support from Bernard Miles, Leslie Phillips, Francis de Wolff, George Cross, June Cunningham and Sid James..





The Bijou Kinema was not a real building; both the exterior and interior were sets. The exterior facade was constructed between two railway bridges in Christchurch Avenue, London NW6, next to Kilburn tube station. A replica at Shepperton Studios was used for close-up shots and interior scenes.

The Gaumont Palace, Hammersmith in London (subsequently called the Hammersmith Odeon, and now the Hammersmith Apollo) was used for the exterior shots of the rival Grand Cinema with interiors at the Odeon in Richmond.

Back projection shots of Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, in Staffordshire were used for the final scenes in the railway carriage.

The silent film shown in the film is Comin' Thro the Rye (1923) starring Alma Taylor. Taylor is among the uncredited viewers in the audience.

[struth]

Murder at the Gallop (1963) is the second of four Miss Marple films made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Stars Dame Margaret Rutherford.