Now Screening - What Are You Watching Right Now?

[struth]

Go ask Alice .

is that to do with white rabbit??

[walpurgis]

is that to do with white rabbit??

As from Jefferson Airplane, which is an allusion to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

[Barry]

Didn't help Keanu Reeves, but then I only liked the first part of the Matrix trilogy. And if there was a 'star' - it was Hugo Weaving. ()

[Pigmy Pony]

I’d agree, with one exception - The Matrix. Apparently Will Smith was offered the role of Neo before Keanu- I couldn’t imagine that... (Samuel L. Jackson also turned down the role of Morpheus which evened everything up after Lawrence Fisburn turned down Pulp Fiction!)

I agree too that The Matrix is the exception - the premise, the story, the effects, and the casting of the other characters.

I think the central character (Neo) had to be a sufficiently "blank" canvas as he moved through the story, and nobody can do blank like Keanu. A stronger or comedic personality would have skewed and ruined the whole thing, and in that way Will Smith would have been a terrible choice imo.

There is a new Matrix film around the corner, with Reeves and Carrie Ann Moss. I wonder what that'll be like. It's almost 20 years now since the first one.

[struth]

Defence Of The Realm, 1986. directed by David Drury, starring Gabriel Byrne, Greta Scacchi, and Denholm Elliott, with Robbie Coltrane in a supporting role.

[Barry]

Defence Of The Rhelm, 1986. directed by David Drury, starring Gabriel Byrne, Greta Scacchi, and Denholm Elliott, with Robbie Coltrane in a supporting role.

An excellent film. I have a copy somewhere.

[struth]

Classic western now, with The Searchers, 1956. Directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, Vera Miles, Jeffrey Hunter, Natalie Wood and Ward Bond.



The Searchers has been cited as one of the greatest films of all time, such as in the BFI's decennial Sight & Sound polls. In 1972, The Searchers was ranked 18th; in 1992, 5th; in 2002, 11th; in 2012, 7th. In a 1959 Cahiers du Cinema essay, Jean-Luc Godard compared the movie's ending to the reuniting of Odysseus with Telemachus in Homer's Odyssey. In 1963, he ranked The Searchers as the fourth-greatest American movie of the sound era, after Scarface (1932), The Great Dictator (1940), and Vertigo (1958)


The eccentric character of Mose Harper, played by Hank Worden, is loosely based on an actual historical personage called Mad Mose, a legendary half-crazy Indian fighter of the American southwest with a fondness for rocking chairs.

While on the desert locale, John Ford was stung by a scorpion. Worried about his investment, financial backer C.V. Whitney asked John Wayne, "What if we lose him? What are we going to do?" Wayne offered to check in on the "stricken" director. A few minutes later he came out of Ford's trailer and said to Whitney, "It's OK. John's fine, it's the scorpion that died."

[struth]

The Criteron Bluray version of Lost In America, 1985, directed by Albert Brooks and stars Albert Brooks and Julie Hagerty.






For the cross country across America shoot, thirty cast and crew were crammed into just two Winnebagos staying overnight in cheap motels. Actor-writer-director Albert Brooks has said: "We got about as far as Phoenix, Arizona before everyone stopped talking to each other."


Lost In America received mostly positive reviews from critics and holds a 97% rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on thirty-six reviews. The site's consensus states: "A satire of the American fantasy of leaving it all behind, Lost in America features some of Albert Brooks' best, most consistent writing and cultural jabs."[4] The film was a commercial success, though not a blockbuster. The film's script won the National Society of Film Critics award for Best Screenplay.

[struth]

Frenzy, 1972. The penultimate feature film of Hitchcock's extensive career. stars Jon Finch, Alec McCowen, and Barry Foster and features Billie Whitelaw, Anna Massey, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Bernard Cribbins and Vivien Merchant.





Variety also posted a rave review, declaring: "Ingeniously fresh story-telling ideas, stamped with the same mischievous, audacious and often outrageous mixture of humor and suspense that first made him and later sustained him, make the Universal release one of Hitchcock's major achievements."

[struth]

The Matrix, 1999. written and directed by the Wachowskis. Starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano.