Now Screening - What Are You Watching Right Now?

[struth]

A pirates life for me.....Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, 2003.





Its directed by Gore Verbinski and stars Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, Geoffrey Rush and Orlando Bloom.

Because of the quick schedule of the shoot, Industrial Light & Magic immediately began visual effects work. While the skeletal forms of the pirates revealed by moonlight take up relatively little screentime, the crew knew their computer-generated forms had to convince in terms of replicating performances and characteristics of the actors, or else the transition would not work. Each scene featuring them was shot twice: a reference plate with the actors, and then without them to add in the skeletons, an aesthetic complicated by Verbinski's decision to shoot the battles with handheld cameras. The actors also had to perform their scenes again on the motion capture stage. With the shoot only wrapping up four months before release, Verbinski spent 18-hour days on the edit, while at the same time spending time on 600 effects shots, 250 of which were merely removing modern sailboats from shots.

[Macca]

I agree too that The Matrix is the exception.

There's one other film he is good in, you're forgetting his performance as 'Ted' Theodore Logan in 'Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure', although in retrospect it turns out he was just playing himself.

Also there's 'Point Break' where he does sort of suit the character he is playing - with the added benefit of occasionally being unintentionally amusing. The film is so daft anyway that it kind of works.

[Macca]

Only films I watched over Xmas was 'Carry On Again Doctor' and 'Back to the Future'.

I'm developing a theory about 'Carry On' in that the best ones are those where Sid James' character is also called Sid. If he's called something else or he's not in it then it's almost always a bad one.

[struth]

Great Expectations, 1946. Directed by the great David Lean and stars John Mills and Valerie Hobson. Co stars include Bernard Miles, Francis L. Sullivan, Anthony Wager, Jean Simmons, Finlay Currie, Martita Hunt and Alec Guinness.

It won 2 Oscars at the 20th Oscars.


This is the Bluray version.




At the end, a shot of Valerie Hobson staring into a mirror was taking longer than anticipated and was suspended, it was lunchtime, and returned to in the afternoon. Approximately three months after this movie had been on exhibition, a moviegoer asked what was meant by a Chad being reflected in the mirror. It seems that a worker on the movie had drawn it on the wall during the break in filming, and it is dimly visible in the final scene behind Sir John Mills's shoulder as he says "I've never ceased to love you when there seemed no hope in my love."

[Pigmy Pony]

There's one other film he is good in, you're forgetting his performance as 'Ted' Theodore Logan in 'Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure', although in retrospect it turns out he was just playing himself.

Also there's 'Point Break' where he does sort of suit the character he is playing - with the added benefit of occasionally being unintentionally amusing. The film is so daft anyway that it kind of works.

Forgot all about Point Break, ("Death on a stick mate") Maybe I like Keanu Reeves after all.

[Pigmy Pony]

Christmas telly was so grim, we gave 3 hours of our life to Netflix's "The Salisbury Poisonings", which was actually quite good. And it looks like New Year's Eve telly is gonna struggle to keep me out of the pubs.

[struth]

The Hunt for Red October, 1990. directed by John McTiernan, and starring Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones, and Sam Neill. It is the first installment of the film series with the protagonist Jack Ryan.





excellent soundtrack from Basil Poledouris.

The film caused a minor sensation in the black projects submarine warfare technology community. In one scene, where USS Dallas is chasing Red October through the submarine canyon, the crew can be heard calling out that they have various "milligal anomalies". This essentially revealed the use of gravimetry as a method of silent navigation in US submarines. Thought to be a billion dollar black project, the development of a full-tensor gravity gradiometer by Bell Aerospace was a classified technology at the time. It was thought to be deployed on only a few Ohio-class submarines after it was first developed in 1973. Bell Aerospace later sold the technology to Bell Geospace for oil exploration purposes. The last Typhoon-class submarine was officially laid down in 1986, under the name TK-210, but according to sources was never finished and scrapped in 1990.

[Macca]

Christmas telly was so grim, we gave 3 hours of our life to Netflix's "The Salisbury Poisonings", which was actually quite good. And it looks like New Year's Eve telly is gonna struggle to keep me out of the pubs.

It was shocking wasn't it? Neither 'Zulu' film was on and I couldn't find my DVD. So that was Christmas Night ruined. No Bond on any channel not even the rubbish later ones.

Manged to watch Christmas Top Of The Pops for about the first time in five years. Never even heard of any of the acts. Wall to wall crap, thought I'd tuned in to the open auditions for the local school dance by mistake.

Christmas telly has been crap since 1984 anyway, I don't expect anything different these days.

[Pigmy Pony]

Back in the 70s, we only had 3 channels and we got by. Though to be fair I was down the pub 7 days a week, and that's no exaggeration. At present we have hundreds of channels and yet I struggle to find an evening's worth of viewing.

Further pisses me off that I couldn't afford a daily pub visit, because Sky, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix are swallowing most of my disposable Thank God for my records and CDs, without them I'd really lose my shit...

Maybe I should take up fishing, she bought me all the gear about ten years ago.

Edit: forget everything I just said, new series of Magnum pi starts Sunday. Yay!

[Barry]

Only films I watched over Xmas was 'Carry On Again Doctor' and 'Back to the Future'.

I'm developing a theory about 'Carry On' in that the best ones are those where Sid James' character is also called Sid. If he's called something else or he's not in it then it's almost always a bad one.

Oh I don't know - 'Carry on Screaming' was pretty good.