Eh, I think Sharif saying he quit film after the 13th Warrior was just something he threw out in an interview to plug his next film, claiming it was so good it drew him out of self-imposed retirement. But in reality, he basically just took a twoish year break, and kept on making films at about the same clip as beforehand. He didn’t even forgo making more action-adventure type films, going on to be Hidalgo and 10,000 BC.
I havent seen “The Long Kiss Goodnight”…but I think I would like it.
Multiplicity, based on a National Lampoon short story by Chris Miller, could have been another Groundhog Day. Unfortunately, its director (Harold Ramis) and the intended star (Bill Murray) had a falling-out that lasted the rest of Ramis’s life, and Michael Keaton was brought in as the replacement. Still a very funny and very watchable movie. I love Andie McDowell, but understand that a lot of other people don’t.
Regarding Waterworld: I actually started a thread about the very issue of why didn’t Costner’s character just put sea water through the gizmo he’d been recycling his urine with. (It’s not coming up in any searches.) It was pointed out that desalinization takes a lot of energy, the resulting water is still too ionized to drink, and urine can be recycled with a microfilter and maybe a little chlorine. Israel apparently uses a lot of desalinized seawater, but they use bigger machines than Costner’s little hand-crank.