Now Screening - What Are You Watching Right Now?

[struth]

Cowboys and Aliens, 2011. directed by Jon Favreau.







Harrison Ford and Olivia Wilde are the only ones in the cast to wear a Six Gun holster for rapid draw, in the front w/the gun not on the side like so many movies showing Cowboys on the side draw

A "Southland Ice Company" wagon is visible in the final scene. Southland Ice Company was the predecessor to 7-11 stores

[struth]

where we are heading now if not careful... Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1984. directed by Michael Radford.



In poor health during most of the filming, Richard Burton had great difficulty remembering his lines and sometimes had to film a scene dozens of times before he could get it right. The scene in O'Brien's apartment where O'Brien is talking to Winston about Goldstein's book took a record of forty-one takes for Burton to say his speech without fumbling his lines. He died in August of 84 at the age of 58. The film was shot in April to June.


Director Michael Radford and cinematographer Roger Deakins originally wanted to shoot this movie in black and white, but the financial backers of the production, Virgin Films, opposed this idea. Instead, Deakins used a film processing technique called bleach bypass to create the distinctive washed-out look of the movie's color visuals. This movie is a rare example of the technique being done on every release print, rather than the inter-negative or inter-positive; as the silver is retained in the print, and the lab is unable to reclaim the silver, so the cost is higher, but the retained silver gives a "depth" to the projected image. The 2003 DVD release (the only release to restore Dominic Muldowney's full musical score) was mastered from the original negatives (not a release print), and thus inadvertently restored the movie's original color saturation.

The confessions of the "Thought Criminals" Rutherford (Peter Frye), Aaronson (Joscik Barbarossa), and Jones (Anthony Benson) were based on the Soviet show trials of the 1930s, which included fabricated confessions by prominent Bolsheviks Nikolai Bukharin, Grigori Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev to the effect that they were being paid by the Nazi government to undermine the Soviet regime under Leon Trotsky's direction.

[struth]

The Final Countdown, 1980. Directed by Don Taylor.






The script called for the Japanese pilot to try to force the F-14 into the water. The pilot who basically did a hammerhead and pulled out real close to the water was Richard "Fox" Farrell (VF-84 XO), now retired. He did kick up quite a bit of seawater and was really pushing the envelope with the Tomcat. WWII ace-in-a-day Archie Donahue was one of the Zero pilots. The Zeroes (converted AT-6 Texans) were flying with the throttle to the stops and the F-14s were flying at stall speed (note wings fully extended in most scenes). That was so they could get both aircraft in the same shot at the same time (remember, no CGI stuff back then!

In the mid 1980s the communist government banned the movie in Hungary, claiming it glorified the United States Armed Forces. However, some illegal copies were circulated on VHS with parts about the Russian trawler spying on the USS Nimitz edited out.

During shooting of the opening shot where the CAG's Tomcat is taking off from Pearl Harbor, the film crew actually underestimated the blast radius of the Tomcat's exhaust and one of their cameras was blown over when the plane went to full afterburner, which resulted in the shot being filmed from a slightly different angle than originally planned.

Filmed in the Atlantic, not the Pacific Ocean (where it takes place). The USS Nimitz was an Atlantic fleet ship until the summer of 1987 when it was transferred to the Pacific. USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63) stood in for the Nimitz for the arrival past the 'Arizona' into Pearl Harbor.

[Barry]

where we are heading now if not careful... Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1984. directed by Michael Radford.



In poor health during most of the filming, Richard Burton had great difficulty remembering his lines and sometimes had to film a scene dozens of times before he could get it right. The scene in O'Brien's apartment where O'Brien is talking to Winston about Goldstein's book took a record of forty-one takes for Burton to say his speech without fumbling his lines. He died in August of 84 at the age of 58. The film was shot in April to June.


Director Michael Radford and cinematographer Roger Deakins originally wanted to shoot this movie in black and white, but the financial backers of the production, Virgin Films, opposed this idea. Instead, Deakins used a film processing technique called bleach bypass to create the distinctive washed-out look of the movie's color visuals. This movie is a rare example of the technique being done on every release print, rather than the inter-negative or inter-positive; as the silver is retained in the print, and the lab is unable to reclaim the silver, so the cost is higher, but the retained silver gives a "depth" to the projected image. The 2003 DVD release (the only release to restore Dominic Muldowney's full musical score) was mastered from the original negatives (not a release print), and thus inadvertently restored the movie's original color saturation.

The confessions of the "Thought Criminals" Rutherford (Peter Frye), Aaronson (Joscik Barbarossa), and Jones (Anthony Benson) were based on the Soviet show trials of the 1930s, which included fabricated confessions by prominent Bolsheviks Nikolai Bukharin, Grigori Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev to the effect that they were being paid by the Nazi government to undermine the Soviet regime under Leon Trotsky's direction.

Is that the one with Peter Cushing as Winston Smith? It's very good, as was the later (1984 ) version with John Hurt.

[struth]

Is that the one with Peter Cushing as Winston Smith? It's very good, as was the later (1984 ) version with John Hurt.

john hurt one from 1984..lol

[Barry]

Ah - I didn't look at the cover properly. Does it also have Tara Fitzgerald as Smith's love interest?

The Peter Cushing version was made by the BBC in 1954, and is well worth watching.

[struth]

it was Suzanna Hamilton. not seen the Cushing one for a long time; think Yvonne Mitchell was the love interest in that.

[struth]

The Ghost And Mrs Muir, 1947. Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.





Despite being set in London and on the English Coast and having mostly English actors and actresses, this movie was shot entirely in California and along the central Pacific coastline.

The word "muir" means "sea" in Scots Gaelic. Many times sailors are said to have been "married" to the sea, or that the only woman they ever loved was the sea.

[struth]

49th Parallel, 1941. This was particularly aimed at the Americans, and that the Nazis are evil and should be opposed. It had to be cut badly to'not offend' Powell and Pressburger in an early collaberation.







On a trip home to Wales, Niall MacGinnis was stopped and searched by police. He was arrested as a German spy when the police found a photo in his wallet of MacGinnis dressed in a German sailor's uniform, standing next to what appeared to be a U-boat. In fact, it was a publicity photo from MacGinnis' role in this movie. MacGinnis spent several days in jail before documents were sent from London verifying that he had been in the movie.

Peter Cushing had gone to Hollywood before the war, but things hadn't worked out too well, and he ended up doing a variety of odd jobs, which is how he came to be making props (not acting) on this movie. One day he had the job of making flags for model boats to be pushed around a map, and he made a lot of swastikas and laid them out in his digs. They were found by his landlady, who promptly called the police.

Producer and Director Michael Powell forgot that Newfoundland was a Crown Colony, and not a part of Canada, and when they moved the full-sized submarine model there, it was impounded by Customs and Excise, which demanded that import duty be paid. The matter was finally resolved when Powell appealed to the Governor of Newfoundland, citing their work for the war effort. Newfoundland finally became a Canadian province in 1949.

Screenwriter Emeric Pressburger said, "Goebbels (Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister) considered himself a master of propaganda, but I thought I'd show him a thing or two." Ironically, Pressburger's status in Britain, at the time, was as an enemy alien. He was born and raised in Hungary, which had allied itself with Nazi Germany. So when he returned from filming in Canada, he found himself imprisoned and threatened with deportation. Thanks to the intervention of Producer and Director Michael Powell and the Ministry of Information, this did not happen.

When the film was first shown in France in 1952, huge scenes had to be cut from it for fear of offending German audiences. In 1974, there were objections from Germans to it being shown on British television.

[struth]

Sad to hear Sally Kellerman, M*A*S*H’s original ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan has died aged 84. Just watched mash the other day too. A great loss as she was excellent.