Now Screening - What Are You Watching Right Now?

[struth]

Kelly's Heroes, 1970. directed by Brian G. Hutton.






Donald Sutherland (Oddball) became seriously ill during filming on-location in Yugoslavia. His wife received a telegram telling her to come immediately but warning her that he would probably be dead before she arrived. He said he saw "the white light" when he died for a "few seconds" . during the middle of shooting he was hit with a bout of spinal meningitis, causing him to go into a coma and he admits he "dug his feet in" so as not to pass away.

He said: "I got sick in the middle of shooting 'Kelly's Heroes'. I came to Yugoslavia for a day's filming and I was out for six weeks.

"They took me to hospital – I had spinal meningitis. They didn't have the antibiotics, so I went into a coma, and they tell me that for a few seconds, I died. I saw the blue tunnel, and I started going down it. I saw the white light. I dug my feet in."

However, Donald was tempted for a second to stop fighting to stay alive.

He added: "I didn't want to go – but it was incredibly tempting. You just go: 'Aw, s**t man, why not?'. "

At the beginning of the movie, Big Joe (Telly Savalas) is desperate to know about the best places to stay in the city of Nancy, and he uses a Michelin tourist guide book. Use of these books by Allied troops during WWIi is accurate. When planning the Normandy invasion, staff officers were concerned about how the troops would navigate in light of the possibility that retreating Germans would take down or reverse road signs. The U.S. government quietly reprinted the most recent edition from 1939, as new publications had been suspended because of the war. So when Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normany on June 6, 1944, they carried the Michelin guides and, for the remainder of the war, advancing forces depended on their Michelin maps.

During filming in Yugoslavia in 1969, Donald Sutherland (Oddball) received word, via co-star Clint Eastwood (Lieutenant Kelly), that his then-wife Shirley Douglas was arrested: she had tried to buy--using a personal check--hand grenades from an undercover FBI agent for the Black Panthers. Sutherland recounts this story often, mentioning that when Eastwood got to the part about the personal check, he laughed so hard that he fell to his knees and Sutherland had to help him up. Eastwood then put his arm around Sutherland, walked him down the hill that overlooked the Yugoslavian countryside, and assured his friend of his complete support with his predicament. Sutherland and Douglas, who are the parents of Kiefer Sutherland and twin sister Rachel Sutherland, divorced in 1970.
The movie was mainly filmed in Yugoslavia because the Yugoslavian army still had a large quantity of Sherman tanks in 1970.

Big Joe quote:
Look, we're not worried about the German Army - we've got enough troubles of our own. To the right, General Patton. To the left, the British Army. To the rear, our own goddamn artillery! And, besides all that, it's rainin'. And, the only good thing to say about the weather: it keeps our Air Corps from blowin' us all to Hell because it's too lousy to fly! Verstehen?!?

[struth]

Saturday matinee is I'm All Right Jack, 1959.





Two of the shop stewards in the movie, brothers Tony Comer and John Comer, got the roles after winning a talent show as a comedy double act, "The Comer Brothers". The prize was one thousand pounds sterling and a movie contract with The Boulting Brothers.

Yet another film showing a British judge with a gavel! Neither British or Canadian judges have a gavel.

Ian Carmichael was one of several people who witnessed the mini silent films made by Peter Sellers on the set of this movie. Insomnia Is Good For You and Dearth Of A Salesman.

[struth]

A year on and a few of cast in this too... School For Scoundrels, 1960. Based on the Stephen Potter "One Upmanship" and "Lifemanship" books.






The 'Bellini' sports car driven by Terry-Thomas in the film, is in reality the actual Aston Martin DB3S which was once driven by Sterling Moss in the Mila Migilia and has been valued recently at £7 million.

The burbling sound made by Palfrey's Swiftmobile car is the same sound effect used for Sidney Stratton's experiments in "The Man in the White Suit" (1951). The swiftmobile was in fact a disguised 1928 Bentley 4½-Litre Open Tourer. The other car used was an ex-Works Austin-Healey 100-Six.

Terry-Thomas's expression "Oh to be in England now that April is here" is a quote from the start of Robert Browning's poem "Home Thoughts from Abroad".

[struth]

More British comedy from a bit earlier. The classic Kind Hearts and Coronets, 1949.






Sir Alec Guinness took his extensive roles very seriously, always showing up to work every day thoroughly professional and prepared. Playing eight different roles did come with its challenges, however. "Quick transformation from one character to another has a disturbing effect", he told Collier's Magazine in 1952. "I had to ask myself from time to time: 'Which one am I now?' I had fearful visions of looking like one of the characters and thinking and speaking like one of the others. It would have been quite disastrous to have faced the cameras in the make-up of the suffragette, and spoken like the Admiral."

Although tame by today's standards, Dennis Price's love scenes with the purring Joan Greenwood shocked Ealing Studios head Michael Balcon, and almost led to a major re-edit of the finished movie.

Dennis Price's shortened quote from Johnson was in full... “Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

[struth]

Joan Greenwood again with.... Whisky Galore!, 1949.







Alexander Mackendrick insisted on making the film entirely on location, an unusual move for Ealing Studios. This was primarily because the most of the studio space was taken up by two other films in simultaneous production - Passport to Pimlico (1949) and Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949).

Because of financial pressures on the studio, Michael Balcon decided to release it with little promotion. John Jympson, one of the editors at Ealing, recommended the film to his father Jympson Harman, the film critic for The Evening News. Although there was to be no trade viewing, Harman and several other press reviewers visited the studios to see the film. They all wrote good reviews, which forced Balcon to provide funds for promotion

[Macca]

You have a colourized version of 'School For Scoundrels Grant?

One of my favourite films that.

[struth]

You have a colourized version of 'School For Scoundrels Grant?

One of my favourite films that.

nope, the original B&W version. i like the b&w ones tbh.

edit.. i did a search and been unable to find a colourized version so there might not be one, although i had an odd feeling there was.

[Pigmy Pony]

You have a colourized version of 'School For Scoundrels Grant?

One of my favourite films that.

I was wondering that too. One of my mum's favourite films, the tennis part always cracked her up. "Hard cheese!"

[struth]

Picked this up recently. Shooter, 2007. This is the 4k version.






The dog featured in the film as Bob Lee Swagger's companion was trained by owner Drew Thompson. The dog's real name is Logan. He is a Bernese Mountain and English Mastiff X. Drew states that "he is easily the smartest dog I have ever trained".

The large caliber rifle that Swagger owns, with which he is framed, is a Cheyenne Tactical M200 Intervention. It fires a .408 caliber projectile accurately out to and beyond two thousand meters. The CheyTac M200 is also available with a Long Range Rifle System, which consists of a laser range finder, magnifying scope with night vision capability, and a weather-sensing module, all of which interface with a PDA running ballistics calculation software.

Swagger's wristwatch is a Suunto Vector, a digital watch made in Finland. Besides telling time, it also has an altimeter, barometer, and digital compass.

[struth]

Duck, You Sucker!, 1971. (aka, A Fistful of Dynamite)






When James Coburn (who had been offered roles in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)) was offered the role of John Mallory by Leone, he was initially reluctant. He had dinner with Henry Fonda (star of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)) and asked him what he thought of Leone. Fonda told him that he considered Leone the greatest director he ever worked with. Coburn then took the part (similarly, Fonda himself had been reluctant to take the part Leone offered him, but was persuaded by his friend, Eli Wallach).

Despite the politically charged setting, the film was not intended as a political film: Sergio Leone himself said that the Mexican Revolution in the film is meant only as a symbol, not as a representation of the real one, and that it was chosen because of its fame and its relationship with cinema, and he contends that the real theme of the film is friendship:

"I chose to oppose an intellectual, who has experienced a revolution in Ireland, with a naïve Mexican... you have two men: one naïve and one intellectual (self-centred as intellectuals too often are in the face of the naïve). From there, the film becomes the story of Pygmalion reversed. The simple one teaches the intellectual a lesson. Nature gains an upper hand and finally the intellectual throws away his book of Bakunin's writings. You suspect damn well that this gesture is a symbolic reference to everything my generation has been told in the way of promises. We have waited, but we still are waiting! I have the film say, in effect "Revolution means confusion"".