Now Screening - What Are You Watching Right Now?

[Macca]

It's pretty lame.

[struth]

Stir Crazy, 1980.


https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/i...GAfxCpNhrYhLqe


Prior to filming, Arizona State Prison Warden Robert Raines had tried to organize a rodeo for 2 years. The biggest obstacle was the cost of constructing an arena, complete with grandstand, stables, and livestock chutes. When Columbia Pictures inquired about renting the prison for a film shoot, he saw a way to realize his dream. If security could be maintained, the prison was available for a fee which matched the budget for the new rodeo grounds. Raines said, "There was a fringe benefit we didn't anticipate. Morale in the prison was never higher. Some 350 inmates signed on as extras, playing themselves, and the rest, even the most notorious troublemakers, stayed on their best behavior. There were simply no incidents."

The cast and crew had to leave the prison walking in a line, single file, every night so the guards could ensure that no inmates escaped. One night, Charles Weldon recalled, "As I was walking out, a guard asked me to stand to one side. I should have realized something was wrong, but I obeyed him without a second thought." A moment later, Weldon found himself marched toward a cell block, along with the inmate extras. Fortunately, the film's production coordinator noticed one of the actors was missing, and rushed back to the prison. Weldon added "The guard told me, 'I could have sworn you were one of our guys.' He was profusely apologetic. But I didn't mind. To an actor, there couldn't have been a higher compliment."

[struth]

Sneakers, 1992.





When Martin (Robert Redford) and Cosmo (Sir Ben Kingsley) attempt their initial prank at the beginning of the movie, the façade building seen is the famous Hill Valley clock tower from the Back to the Future (1985) trilogy.

The computer in the room off of Cosmo's (Sir Ben Kingsley's) office in the PlayTronics building (the one that looks like a circular bench) is actually a Cray Y-MP, a multi-million dollar supercomputer that was one of the worlds fastest computers at the time this movie was made.

The movie deals with the impact of a factoring breakthrough on encryption, a reference to the RSA algorithm, the most popular public-key encryption algorithm in use today. Professor Len Adleman, one of the co-inventors of the RSA algorithm, provided some technical guidance on this movie in exchange for giving his wife a chance to meet Robert Redford.
Adleman served as a mathematical consultant on this movie, and spent several days constructing the slides Janek (Donal Logue) displays at the college symposium on "unbreakable codes" (which took Adleman a considerable amount of time to create using primitive early 1990s computer graphics technology). In the end, writer and director Phil Alden Robinson had the slides transposed as oil crayon scribbles, on account of the notion that "That's what a regular mathematician would have done." Adleman later remarked that this was indeed true, and what he would have done, and would have saved him days if only he'd known.

[struth]

great quote...

“There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information!”

and humourously...

“- Cosmo: There I was in prison. And one day I helped a couple of nice older gentlemen make some free telephone calls. They turned out to be, let us say, good family men.
- Bishop: Organized crime?
- Cosmo: Hah. Don't kid yourself. It's not that organized.”

[struth]

The Conversation, 1974. Director Francis Ford Coppola... This is the Studio Canal bluray






The blue Mercedes limousine that Cindy Williams is sitting in near the end of the film was won by Francis Ford Coppola on a bet with Paramount Pictures. Coppola had complained about the station wagon he shared with five other passengers during the filming of The Godfather (1972). Studio executives told him that if The Godfather had grossed a certain amount, they would spring for a new car. After The Godfather became the highest grossing film of all time, Coppola and George Lucas went to a dealer and picked out the Mercedes, telling the salesman to bill Paramount Pictures.

Francis Ford Coppola's personal favorite of his movies, and also Gene Hackman's of his.

Gene Hackman learned to play the saxophone especially for the film.

On the DVD commentary, Francis Ford Coppola says he was shocked to learn that the film utilized the very same surveillance and wire-tapping equipment that members of the Nixon Administration used to spy on political opponents prior to the Watergate scandal. Coppola has said this is the reason the film gained part of the recognition it has received, but that this is entirely coincidental. Not only was the script completed in the mid 1960s (before the Nixon Administration came to power) but the spying equipment used in the film was discovered through research, and the use of technical advisers, and not, as many believed, by revelatory newspaper stories about the Watergate break-in. Coppola also noted that filming had been completed several months before the most revelatory Watergate stories broke in the press. Since the film was released to theaters just a few months before Richard Nixon resigned as President, Coppola felt that audiences interpreted the film to be a reaction to both the Watergate scandal and its fall-out.

Gene Hackman was a fit, good-looking relatively young man when Francis Ford Coppola cast him as Harry Caul. In order to personify Harry's weary, aging, and unhappy existence, Hackman grew a pathetic-looking mustache, wore ill-fitting glasses, and had a wardrobe picked out that was at least ten years out of date. Coppola specifically told Hackman he wanted Harry to look like a "nudnik", a Yiddish word referring to a person who is boring and a pest.

[Barry]

One of my favourite films.

Today, surveillance experts are referred to as "plumbers", owing to Harry Caul listening into the conversation from the bathroom of a neighbouring room in the hotel.

[struth]

Looper, 2012.. 4K uhd..





Talking about Looper and time travel in film, Rian Johnson said:

Even though it's a time-travel movie, the pleasure of it doesn't come from the mass of time travel. It's not a film like Primer, for instance, where the big part of the enjoyment is kind of working out all the intricacies of it. For Looper, I very much wanted it to be a more character-based movie that is more about how these characters dealt with the situation time travel has brought about. So the biggest challenge was figuring out how to not spend the whole movie explaining the rules and figure out how to put it out there in a way that made sense on some intuitive level for the audience; then get past it and deal with the real meat of the story.

[struth]

Interupted Journey, 1949.





The reason for the crash which was due to Richard Todd pulling the communication cord mirrors an actual crash the previous year near Winsford in Cheshire when a serviceman on his way home did the same thing so he could get home quicker rather than continuing to Crewe and then catching a train back to Winsford.

[Macca]

Interupted Journey, 1949.





The reason for the crash which was due to Richard Todd pulling the communication cord mirrors an actual crash the previous year near Winsford in Cheshire when a serviceman on his way home did the same thing so he could get home quicker rather than continuing to Crewe and then catching a train back to Winsford.

Interesting that, thought about doing it myself but wouldn't actually do it.

According to Wikipedia:

The person who pulled the emergency cord was a railway employee who worked as a signalbox lad in Winsford Junction, but was currently serving in the army having been called up. He thought that the train would be perfectly safe because he knew how the signalling equipment of the time in that area worked; but he did not know that the train had stopped short of the track circuit, which would have reminded the signalman of its presence. He attended the enquiry to confess, and was still a signalman in Winsford Junction until he retired in the 1990s

There's no citation for that though and it seems unlikely, given that twenty-four people died. He'd surely do time for manslaughter?

[struth]

looks like it wasnt really his fault, well wholly...

"The two trains concerned were the 5.40 p.m. Up Passenger Express from Glasgow to Euston, comprising ten bogie coaches, and the 6.25 p.m. Up Postal Express from Glasgow to Euston, composed of 13 bogie vans ; both were hauled by Pacific type engines. The Passenger train had been standing for about 17 minutes in the 1s mile section between Winsford Junction and Winsford Station signal boxes after a passenger had pulled the communication chain (without good reason), but the collision resulted from the signalman at Winsford Station clearing the block instruments although he had not seen the train pass the box and subsequently accepting the Postal train.

The Postal train thus entered the occupied section under clear signals at Winsford Junction, but the driver braked when he saw a red light displayed by the guard of the Passenger train about 400 yards in rear of it ; detonators were also exploded, and the speed had been reduced to 45-50 m.p.h. when the collision took place. Both lines were blocked by the wreckage, and a Down Postal express was fortunately stopped at Winsford Station box.

The impact demolished the rear coach of the Passenger train (whose brakes were off) and half of the coach next ahead, and there was severe telescoping between the second, third and fourth vans of the Postal train. There was a fairly full load of passengers in the former train and I regret to report that 16 were killed and eight subsequently died of their injuries in hospital ; all were in the last two coaches. Fourteen passengers and four of the Post Office staff were detained in hospital, of whom eight were discharged within a week, and 12 passengers and the two guards were treated for minor injuries or shock. Serious damage to the engine of the Postal train was confined to the front end, and the driver and fireman were uninjured."