[QUOTE=Cervaise]
Mine is not a whoosh! Until somebody explained it to me, I had assumed that the old guy crying in the graveyard at the end of Saving Private Ryan was just some random dude, totally unconnected to the flashback plot, who was moved because he’d heard about this story one time. It’s just that Spielberg is such a subtle director, I totally missed all the hidden clues that connect one part of the movie to the other part.
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Ok, so it’s not a woosh. What did you originally think the point of that scene was then?
[QUOTE=Dragwyr]
Probably mentioned before, but in the 2005 movie, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” the scene where Arthur Dent recalls his first encounter with Ford Prefect shows Arthur saving Ford from being run over by a Ford Prefect.
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Of course, like just about everything in that film, the punchline is given but the joke is cut. The real joke is that Ford Prefect selected his name to blend in with the “dominant life form” on the planet (i.e. automobiles, which are cared for and fed by humans) and hence the name “Ford Prefect” would be “nicely inconspicuous.”
[QUOTE=Zebra]
In Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Indy suprises everyone and shows up with the bazooka/Panzerfaust, all the Germans react and draw their guns or take cover and such, except for Thot. He just sort of sits down, sighs heavily and start to fan himself.
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[QUOTE=phouka]
Sorry, because this is a total nitpick, but it’s Toht. (God, I’m such a geek.)
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Wait, it gets even better! Toht is a homophone with Tod, the German word for death. Good name for a sadistic henchman, no?
Here’s another bit of fun with art on the wall – in Re-Animator, the young lovers have sex under a Talking Heads poster. Stop Making Sense, to be precise. Considering that pretty soon, the dead will start being reanimated and the medical school professor will be shambling about holding his own head in his hands (and that’s the least of what he’s up to!), this counts as dramatic irony, of a lewd and baser sort.
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
Of course, like just about everything in that film, the punchline is given but the joke is cut. The real joke is that Ford Prefect selected his name to blend in with the “dominant life form” on the planet (i.e. automobiles, which are cared for and fed by humans) and hence the name “Ford Prefect” would be “nicely inconspicuous.”
Stranger
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I seem to recall that Ford’s explanation for his name did make it into the final cut of that film. Am I mistaken?
In “Threesome” with Josh Charles and Steven Baldwin, there’s a scene where the setup is that they’ve been driven out of their room by a foul and unusual odor. Later, they find that its an old pizza, accidentally forgotten. Steven Baldwin tosses it out the window. If you wait a few seconds, there’s a very faint scream of “Aaaugh!” outside, where the pizza was inflicted upon a passer-by.
[QUOTE=pepperlandgirl]
Well, that’s not really subtle, since it’s the entire set-up and punchline of the movie.
There are subtle touches in Hot Fuzz to be sure. The local Am-Dram production of Romeo and Juliet was Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet. Mr. Treacher (the old man with the guns) is named after the book Straw Dogs is based on (“Seige at Treacher’s Farm” but I could be wrong about the exact title), and of course, a member of the NWA was an extra in Straw Dogs. They used blue Cornettos instead of the strawberry ones because police uniforms are blue.
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Ah, I see someone else has been watching the DVD commentary! What leapt to my mind while reading this thread was an echo of *The *(original, natch) Wicker Man - people mentioned a picture of the titular stick figure just behind the head baddie at one point. Well (going to spoiler this in case):at one point Jim Broadbent is speaking, and you can see a freaking display case with his evil robe and hood, spotlighted and everything, over his shoulder!Not that I noticed till the director mentioned it, but it was only my second viewing.
The movie Uncovered is about an art restorer who gets involved in intrigue over a particular painting of a historical chess game she’s working on. The history of the people in the painting is revealed over time, and some of the details of the painting and game highlight the real-life conflict between the players in it.
The final shot of the movie, though, is a slow pull back from the center of the painting - the outstretched hand of one of the players, reaching across the board. (If you don’t know chess, that indicates a offer of a draw). It’s a point that’s never mentioned, and the way it’s done, it’s not all that noticeable, since the shot is a somewhat natural way to end the film.
Here’s the actual position, by the way. Despite the questionable continuation to satisfy the plot, at least they seemed aware of the rules of the game. (It’s also not the same position as in the book the movie’s based on, The Flanders Panel.)
[QUOTE=Unauthorized Cinnamon]
Ah, I see someone else has been watching the DVD commentary! What leapt to my mind while reading this thread was an echo of *The *(original, natch) Wicker Man - people mentioned a picture of the titular stick figure just behind the head baddie at one point. Well (going to spoiler this in case):at one point Jim Broadbent is speaking, and you can see a freaking display case with his evil robe and hood, spotlighted and everything, over his shoulder!Not that I noticed till the director mentioned it, but it was only my second viewing.
[/QUOTE]
A few of those things I caught on my own, but Mr. Treacher’s name really threw me. Everybody else’s name made perfect sense (ie Leslie Tiller, the Porters etc), but I was baffled by Treacher. I’m glad Edgar explained!
In Big Fish, Edward Bloom visits a dilapitated little Southern hamlet. On the porch of one shack, there’s a middle aged man playing a banjo. The actor is Billy Redden, the same actor who had played the banjo playing kid in Deliverance thirty years earlier.
[QUOTE=The Scrivener (me)]
In the original The Wicker Man [1973], the oil painting of a wicker man hanging high on a wall in plain sight (albeit in a darkened corner) in Lord Summerisle’s manor, and visible over Christopher Lee’s shoulder, when he’s being questioned by Sgt. Howie (Edward Woodward). The sergeant suspects that the missing girl was killed, or will be killed, under circumstances of pagan barbarity which he can scarcely believe to still exist in the 20th century – but the proof of that particular ritual is on display right there, should he only look that way!
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Er, not exactly. The painting in question is actually that of Summerisle’s [great, great-?]grandfather, the Victorian scientist who reintroduced paganism to the island. The painting hangs behind the piano and is seen in daylight when Det. Howie first cordially meets with Summerisle, and again in a dark gloom at night, when Howie angrily interrogates him and Miss Rose after exhuming Rowan’s grave. (This interrogation is the scene where Howie tosses the dead rab.. er, hare, at the two.) You can see the painting in the background when Howie enters the room and again, when he’s about to leave.
On my TV, the painting is just a big black panel unless you turn the brightness/picture levels to very near the max. At that level, you can make out an ominous, and by now familiar, outline, but it turns out to be only the ancestor’s profile. At the very brightest level, I can just make out the contrast between his white beard and his darker face, but one or two clicks below that, and that level of detail is lost. In any event, the only way I could be sure in my identification was by focusing on the outline of that gnarled tree, visible enough in both.
Having said that, there’s three nice details about the way this painting is used in the film:
In the daylight shot, you can see the fingers on scientist’s right hand are arranged in a rather unusual pattern, with the thumb, index, and pinky fingers splayed out, and the second and third fingers tucked tightly in. The “devil’s horns” gesture, isn’t it?
In the night shot, with only a wicker man-like form and the tree visible in the painting, Howie is led into the room by Broom, and for a second it looks almost as if Howie is walking into the painting.
At the conclusion of that scene, there’s a nice, rather tightly pyramidal composition shot with the painting at the apex and Howie and Summerisle at the base.
So, while it’s not really a painting of a wicker man figure, the lighting is such that it can easily be mistaken for just that – at least, on repeated viewings, after you know what to look out for.
Okay, I’ve got one. In the film Roger Dodger, in Campbell Scott’s opening postprandil monologue to his collegues regarding the evolution of the clitoris and the decline of male utility (which is worth a viewing in and of itself), his boss Joyce (played by Isabella Rossillini) is clearly displaying sexual interest in Roger’s much younger co-worker, Donovan. Not only is this a plot point later on, but it’s tellling that Roger–an insatiable student of human sexual and courting behavior–appears to totally miss this, except for a brief side look. Clearly Roger is not the objective expert on human relations that he thinks he is, at least insofar as his own relationships are concerned…
[QUOTE=Flander]
It was a subtle 3 years.
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[Inigo Montoya]
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you [and many others] think it means.
[/IM]
In not so sure that a lot of these classify as subtleties. Many of them would be more in the class of foreshadowing or symbolism i.e. unimportant things that are important later on.
[QUOTE=Bytegeist]
In the film Gandhi, when prime minister Nehru visits Gandhi during his second fast, someone from the crowd in the street shouts “Death to Gandhi!” Nehru is instantly angry and turns on the people, saying things like “Who said that?” and “Kill me first!” No one responds. They just stare back at him, silently.
But among the crowd of people staring back is the man who later will assassinate Gandhi.
Kind of creepy, and I didn’t notice it until the third or fourth viewing.
[/QUOTE]
It also has a subtle and rather amusing joke for the overall tone of the movie, at some point Gandhi is trying to do some fine manual work and his wife ribs him saying that he has 10 thumbs, Gandhi cheerfully and quickly shoots back “11!”
I know this is a TV one but…I have been rewatching the first season of Heroes and caught one. There is a confrontation between Hiro and his father, played by George Takei. When the father leaves, he climbs into a limo with the license plate of NCC 1701.
The station house has a set of twins who work the front desk. They are usually found reading a book. They read different books but by the same person but one is from a series of books written under a pseudonym.
There are some famous people, most with their faces covered. Cate Blanchette and Peter Jackson among them.
In Reservoir Dogs, Mr. Orange first tells a story to Mr. White (et al) about him as a drug runner going into a bus bathroom and meeting three cops who are telling their own story about a robbery, using phrases like “drop the fucking gun!” and such. But since the story was completely made up by Mr. Orange, none of that ever happened.
At the end of the movie, Mr. Orange is dying in a pool of his own blood with Mr. White sitting by him. The cops come in. You never see the cops as they’re off camera the whole time, but it’s the same ones from Mr. Orange’s story, using the same lines as in the story. It’s subtle in that regard but adds even more subtlety when you realize that Mr. Orange wasn’t predicting the future or anything. He is himself a cop and when we see his original bathroom story played out, he probably used cops that he knew and was friends with, knew their mannerisms and phrases and how they would respond in various situations.
[QUOTE=Hentzau]
In Creator, David Ogden Stiers plays a extremenly competent doctor who is a bit of a prick. In one scene is doing a physical on Virginia Madsen. He tells her to squeeze his hand, then says to Vicent Spano, “Oh, she’s left-handed.” Spano says, “No, she’s right-handed.”
Stiers says only “Hm.” But in that “Hm.” you know that something is very, very wrong. Excellently played.
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I apologize, but this movie is 22 years old and I’ve never even seena copy of it. Please explain?
