#787

I have always liked Tom Hanks myself too Dr. He has always had a reputation as one of the true nice guys of Hollywood his entire career, which is handy because he usually plays loveable everyman type characters so this adds to the effect.

It’s crazy to think such an iconic scene would not have made it to the screen due to the budget but, Hanks obviously saw the personal value in the scene and pushed it through.

Do you recall the opening scene from Deadpool at all? The one where he forgets his ammo bag and has to fight with just 12 bullets?

That scene was originally meant to be a huge fire fight with tons of explosions and dozens of bad guys falling like flies. This to me sounds like a standard Michal Bay type action sequence I have seen many times before. The reason they changed it to the 12 bullet sequence? They lost something like $2,000,000 of funding from the budget and could not afford to shoot the scene.

The lack of funds forced them to go back to the drawing board and get creative with the cash they had. The end result was probably my favourite scene in the movie. Funny in this case they had too much money and I think would have lost their most iconic scene to a run of the mill action scene we have all seen before.

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#788

Robert Rodriguez made El Mariachi for $7000 which makes it the greatest movie of all time on a per-pound basis.

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#789

Was not the biggest fan of El Mariachi but, I loved his big budget remake of it. Desperado was one of my fave films when it came out and it started his relationship with Tarantino that eventually led to From Dusk Till Dawn.

EDIT. Talking about From Dusk Till Dawn got me thinking about what a great job that film did with the genre flip. For the first 30 minutes it appears to be a fast paced crime thriller and then once your inside the Titty Twister it just flips the script and your in a full blown horror film with dark comedy undertones throughout.

Still to this day one of the best examples of a genre flip that worked and both sides of the flip were brilliant and showcased what would become the signature styles of Rodriguez and Tarantino

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#790

I just bought a new TV since my old wonderful Samsung had extremely basic in/outputs and getting Netflix onto it was becoming silly (smart DVD player which is a joke really).

So a new one c/w apps. As usual, the out-of-the-box settings are terrible so spent a couple hours calibrating it. I downloaded the typical cal images to a thumb drive. So got all that, figured out why “movie” mode was all yellow (“warm”), fixed that.

Why am I rambling about all this? Well because my final test was with the original Blade Runner, the Final Cut which is on N-Flix.

What a truly astounding feat for the time. It really stands up in a most impressive way. Sure it may be dull but it is easily one of the top technical achievements in cinema.

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#791

That one’s high on my Faves list. Along with Star Wars, Indiana Jones and E.T., Blade Runner made a huge impact on me as a kid, especially since I was definitely too young to make proper sense of everything that was going on. I rewatched it several years ago for the first time in 30 (?) years and somehow still remembered many of the sequences, like they were permanently etched in my brain. It was such a bizarre but magical experience.

Congrats on your sexy new tv!

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#792

This could go in a few threads, but this will do.

Seriously, see this. I just about transcended this reality just watching the opening song. This is peak Byrne (well, he’s always been peak Byrne…).

And what an awesome band. Check their credits. Unbelievable.

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#793

Just watched this as well. Absolutely wonderful. :+1::+1:

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#794

Need to change my mind. Don’t know why but this scene come to mind.

I’ll start with Two Towers. Maybe it won’t turn in another LotR binge watching this time. :wink:

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#795

V for Vendetta

Obvious right?

Timing is perfect on two counts, one of which is the date. Well yesterday, but close enough.

We’ve all seen it and/or read the book so no need to say anything more than Alan Moore really is the magician he claims to be.

That and :

5 Likes
#796

Was in the mood to watch Deadpool. So i did. I can’t wait for him to come out in the MCU.

#797

I finally saw Leave Her to Heaven, which has been on my “to watch” list for years. Gene Tierney is great in it and the Criterion blu-ray has some of my favourite cover art ever.

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#798

Is it just me, or does this look good?

I will be absolutely gutted if this sucks.

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#799

I dare not predict the movie based on the trailer alone but it is Jason Reitman’s baby and he’s got a great resumé : Thank You For Smoking, Juno (featuring a pregnant Elliot Page), Up in the Air, Young Adult, Tully.

He knows how to treat character, that’s for sure.

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#800

Denis Villeneuve on the WB/AT&T/HBO deal

Chris Nolan has weighed in but I think we all know he’s a theatre purist, so no link required.

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#801

I’m looking forward to Dune, after reading the book showed me that even though it was inadequate the SYFY miniseries was better for me than Lynch’s (which I loved as a kid). And I’d love to see it in a theater, but I haven’t been able to get to the cinema proper without serious planning in about 3 years. I’m content to wait, but I’d be lying if I told you the HBO Max deal truncating that period of time for me didn’t appeal. I do think that these companies are treating artists as commodities, and that ain’t right by any measure, so I hope that these pieces make some kind of impression on the people that read them and the executives that make these decisions.

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#802

It took 70 years but the studios finally got around those pesky anti-trust laws!

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#803

I can’t help but wonder how many of these directors and actors calling out the WB deal from an artistic standpoint are more concerned that without the box office the days of billion dollar budgets and 100 million dollar paydays for actors and directors is over. Not saying they don’t give a ■■■■ about the art btw, just betting a lot of them are more pissed about factor 2 than the art.

Even as someone who is trapped inside all day and would be unlikely to ever walk into one again in this lifetime, the thought of the death of the cinema experience makes me sad. I think long term the cinema will rebound post COVID because people do enjoy it as a social experience too much to die out, but I don’t think it will be the same. The virus has brought forwards the streaming vs cinema war by a good few years.

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#804

Sorry for the double post. I just watched a film called Lost in London on Amazon starring Woody Harrelson based loosely on a night about 15 years ago that he got arrested in the UK.

It’s not the story that makes this film of interest though really, though the story is not bad. The most interesting thing is the film is one entire shot, no cuts at all filmed live across different locations in London.

Mentioning it here as I think it’s worth a watch for a couple of you guys purely as it’s the first full length film to use a single camera one shot method and I think that would interest a few of you, it did me.

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#805

I’d be very happy to see the end of $40m paycheques.

However in the case of guys like Nolan and Villeneuve, they are at risk of losing their medium. Like forcing Frank Gehry to design cardboard boxes.

The advent of quality TV in the last decade (and earlier with HBO shows like The Wire and The Sopranos) has destigmatized TV work and as a result has pulled vast numbers of movie actors, directors, writers, etc who happily work for less money to have the chance to broaden their pallet. In fact, TV was getting so good, people were starting to wonder if the 2 hour movie structure was destined for obsolescence.

However, the movie/theatre combination is an unmatched milieu. I don’t mean the social, popcorn aspect but rather the immersive nature of the sight and sound. We all know how deflating it is to see a big movie on a small screen. My dad always refused to let us watch Lawrence of Arabia on TV. It was theatre or nothing.

Unfortunately theatre fodder has increasingly become brain dead with the advent of superhero movies, so true film artists like Nolan, Villeneuve, del Toro are now the minority. Compare with the 70’s.

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#806

This is true, certain films really are made for the cinema and don’t give the viewer the same experience on the small screen. You know I have not been able to get out to the cinema in over a decade now Jefe. I was lucky enough to experience Nolan’s Inception at the cinema but alas not his later work and I know it impacted those films. Interstellar especially felt underwhelming to me compared to the obviously viewed at the cinema reviews of the breath taking imagery. I have a nice 65 inch 4k TV, but it is still no comparison to the big screen and as a result films like Gravity and Interstellar that were visual treats in the cinema came across a bit empty and dull for me on first viewing stuck at home.

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