Now Screening - What Are You Watching Right Now?

[struth]

Looper, 2012...In 2074, when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent into the past, where a hired gun awaits - someone like Joe - who one day learns the mob wants to 'close the loop' by sending back Joe's future self for assassination.





The script originally called for Joe to move to Paris when he got older, which is why he spends the early scenes trying to learn French. However, Rian Johnson soon realized that they didn't have the money to shoot in Paris. He considered using New Orleans to "stand in" for Paris, but rejected that idea. The Chinese distributor for the film offered to pay for the crew to film in Shanghai, and Johnson accepted, both because it solved the Paris problem and because he felt Shanghai better reflected the future setting of the movie.

[struth]

First Blood, 1982..4k bluray...






First Blood was shot using Panavision cameras on 35mm film. This release was made using the original camera negative which was scanned at 4K resolution and utilised for the creation of this Ultra HD Blu-ray release. The disc presents a native 4K 3840 x 2160p resolution image in the widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio, and uses 10-bit video depth, a Wide Colour Gamut (WCG), High Dynamic Range, and is encoded using the HEVC (H.265) codec for HDR10.

A plot point that was present in the novel but absent from the film was the primary reason behind Teasle's resentment and contempt toward Rambo, which was that Rambo was a veteran of the Vietnam War, which gained a lot of attention, whereas Teasle was a veteran of the Korean War, which most people had all-but-completely-forgotten at this point in time.

Sylvester Stallone hated the first cut of the film so much that he tried to buy the film back and destroy it. When he couldn't do that, he suggested that the producers cut much of his part and let the rest of the characters tell the story. That cut the movie time in half and set a precedent for future action movies.

[struth]

An Inspector Calls, 1954.. 60th anniversary bluray remaster.






During the first scene at the dinner table, Eric Birling says "Steady, the Buffs". This phrase means "stay calm, be careful, and persevere", and is associated with the 3rd Regiment of Foot (The East Kent Regiment), whose nickname was 'The Buffs'. The phrase is thought to have originated when the Regiment was stationed in Malta in 1858, and was popularised in Rudyard Kipling's novel, "Soldiers Three". 'Buffs' refers the dull yellow colour of the facings worn by the regiment, starting in the 18th Century.

In the stage play on which this film was based, the inspector's name was Goole. It was changed in the film to hide the twist at the end of the film when it becomes clear that the inspector does not really exist and is a figment of everyone's conscience. (or was he a ghost?)

[Barry]

Looper, 2012...In 2074, when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent into the past, where a hired gun awaits - someone like Joe - who one day learns the mob wants to 'close the loop' by sending back Joe's future self for assassination.





The script originally called for Joe to move to Paris when he got older, which is why he spends the early scenes trying to learn French. However, Rian Johnson soon realized that they didn't have the money to shoot in Paris. He considered using New Orleans to "stand in" for Paris, but rejected that idea. The Chinese distributor for the film offered to pay for the crew to film in Shanghai, and Johnson accepted, both because it solved the Paris problem and because he felt Shanghai better reflected the future setting of the movie.

Good film.

[struth]

Manhunt, 1941.. Bluray remaster..






When this movie was made, America was not part of World War II. At this time, a number of Hollywood studios were pro-American involvement in the war. This movie is one of a number of films made during the late 1930s and early 1940s that represented pro-American intervention in the war. These films include: A Yank in the R.A.F. (1941), Man Hunt (1941), Foreign Correspondent (1940), The Mortal Storm (1940), Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) and Sergeant York (1941).

This was one of several films mentioned in the September 1941 Senate subcommittee hearings on Propaganda in Motion Pictures, where isolationist senators Nye, Clark and Wheeler attacked Hollywood for "war-mongering." Senator Nye, who testified before the committee, had not seen most of the films mentioned. The subcommittee did not reconvene after September due to the attack on Pearl Harbor in December. The featurette included on the 2009 DVD release contends that the making of war-mongering films would be a violation of the Neutrality Act, which focused on restricting arms sales to belligerent nations, regardless of their status of aggressor or defender.

Very little indeed remains of Geoffrey Household's original novel in this adaptation, but the author, interviewed about it over thirty years later, conceded that "Fritz Lang made a smashing film out of my book".

[struth]

The Eagle Has Landed, 1976... bluray remastered...






Michael Caine had initially been excited at the prospect of working with Sturges. During shooting, Sturges told Caine that he only worked to earn enough money to go fishing. Caine wrote later in his autobiography: "The moment the picture finished he took the money and went. [Producer] Jack Wiener later told me [Sturges] never came back for the editing nor for any of the other good post-production sessions that are where a director does some of his most important work. The picture wasn't bad, but I still get angry when I think of what it could have been with the right director. We had committed the old European sin of being impressed by someone just because he came from Hollywood."

Cornwall was used to represent the Channel Islands, and Berkshire for East Anglia. The majority of the film, set in the fictional village of Studley Constable, was filmed at Mapledurham on the A4074 in Oxfordshire and features the village church, Mapledurham Watermill and Mapledurham House, which represented the manor house where Winston Churchill was taken. A fake water wheel was added to the 15th-century structure for the film. Mock buildings such as shops and a pub were constructed on site in Mapledurham while interiors were filmed at Twickenham Studios. The "Landsvoort Airfield" scenes were filmed at RAF St Mawgan, five miles (8 km) from Newquay.

[Macca]

Quality film that, they edit it when they show it on telly these days though.

[struth]

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, 1970. bluray remastered.. Directed by Billy Wilder..







By the time of filming, Sir Christopher Lee had become famous as Count Dracula. When he and Billy Wilder walked on the shores of Loch Ness at dusk, with bats circling overhead, Wilder said to him, "You must feel quite at home here."

Originally, the scenes featuring the Loch Ness Monster were intended to be filmed in the actual Loch. A life-size prop was built which had several Nessie-like humps used to disguise flotation devices. The humps were removed, however, at Billy Wilder's request. Unfortunately, during a test run in Loch Ness, the Monster-prop sank and was never recovered. A second prop, a miniature with just the head and neck, was built, but was only filmed inside a studio tank. Geneviève Page said of this in the biography "Nobody's Perfect: Billy Wilder" by Charlotte Chandler): "When we lost our Loch Ness monster, he (Wilder) wasn't too concerned, even though he was also the producer. He was more concerned about how the man who made it felt when all his work sank to the bottom of the Loch Ness. He went over and comforted him." The original monster prop was located on the bottom of Loch Ness in April 2016 during a survey of the loch by an underwater robot.

The subplot in which Sherlock Holmes is approached by a famous ballerina who wishes him to father her child is inspired by a real-life incident. George Bernard Shaw was once approached by the notorious dancer Isadora Duncan, who told him that, if they had a child together, it would have "my beauty and your brains"; Shaw rebuffed her quickly, saying, "Ah, yes, dear lady, but what if it has my beauty and your brains instead?" In this movie, Sherlock Holmes uses a rather different method of putting the lady off.

[struth]

Dressed to Kill, 1980..Bluray remaster from Arrow... "Dressed to Kill was transferred from a 35mm interpositive. The film was transferred in High Definition on a Spirit Datacine at the Post Group in Hollywood, California. The audio was transferred from an original 35mm mono mag. This work was managed by David Sargent and Mary Grace Nicolas for MGM.





Angie Dickinson (Kate Miller) said the scene where her character gets seduced in the back of a taxicab was filmed on-location in New York City, where several gawkers observed the scene and shouted, "Right on, Police Woman!" (referring to her previous television role).

As a young man, at his mother's urging, Brian De Palma followed his father and used recording equipment to try and catch him with another woman. That incident inspired this movie.

Angie Dickinson, Nancy Allen and Keith Gordon all praised Michael Caine's generosity and professionalism as an actor on this film. As the main star, he was only ever required to be on set when his character was in shot, but all three stated he insisted on being there whenever his character was not in shot also, so that his co-stars were always performing to his character and not to a stand-in or nothing at all.

[Macca]

Never seen that one will have to look out for it.