Oh yeah? Well, I don’t follow that stuff at all. I just happened to see it on NFLX and thought ‘why not’. The number of franchise sequels I’ve seen can probably be counted on two hands.
We saw The Color of Money last night for the first time. The plot made no sense to me. Old guy decides to quit his lucrative job as a liquor salesman in order to bankroll a young pool player whom he’s watched for all of a dozen shots, to teach him how to become a hustler, which the young guy shows no interest in learning how to do. What?
That sure was a slow movie about fast zombies.
Did you see the first movie?
Anthem: An American Road Story
The film companion to the book of the same name. Two young film makers travel across the country interviewing both ordinary and well-known people (including Robert Redford, John Waters, Willie Nelson and Hunter S. Thompson). While it is very much an amateur effort production-wise, it’s an interesting time capsule of America in the late 90s.
A long time ago, 1964 or so. Was there some point from the Hustler that would have helped?
I FINALLY watched The Big Lebowski last night. I very much enjoyed it. But that was just, like, my opinion, man.
I just saw it this morning and liked it quite a bit. The walkers all gave really good performances (if they hadn’t, the movie wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on), but I particularly liked Mark Hamill as the heavy. I know he’s done some voice acting in villainous roles, but he really nailed The Major as a tin-pot dictator. Kind of reminds me of Nick Nolte’s performance in The Thin Red Line.
Nothing’s stopping us. It’s high ground by nightfall!
Are we going up this hill or aren’t we!?
They could die from enemy fire, too! They’re all tough boys…
And if some of the men… pass out, why, hell, they’ll just have to pass out.
(Those are all lines from The Thin Red Line, but they could just as well be from The Long Walk)
Technical question about the Color of Money. Newman was a pretty good pool player, I understand, but was Cruise? Did Cruise need to undergo tremendous training to pull off some of those tough 5-ball sequences where he not only shot each shot, but did it quickly and with panache? If it was just a matter of doing re-takes, Scorsese would have shot each scene hundreds of times before an amateur lucked out, which seems very inefficient to me. I looked for a break in the filming to show where they stitched together several different one-shot-at-a-time shots in sequence but they all looked like the same camera without a break to me. Now they can CGI the shit out of this problem but I don’t thnk that they had any technology like that when this movie was made.
I’ve read, but have no proper cite, that Tom Cruise trained in pool for 3 months prior to filming.
Cruise performed most of his own pool shots. An exception was a jump shot over two balls to pot another. Scorsese believed that Cruise could learn the shot, but that it would take too long, so the shot was performed for him by professional player, Mike Sigel. Cruise mentioned that, to prepare for the role, he bought a pool table for his apartment and practiced for hours on end.
Late responding to this, but if as you say, you like that kind of thing, check out the 2023 Korean film “Ballerina” on Netflix. IMHO it is much better that the Wickian movie, just enough of a back story to set the characters up, wall to wall action sequences, and it also features a flame-thrower.
You mean “in medias res”. Which is snooty Latin for “coming in in the middle of things”.
I think he meant mise-en-scéne, a different snooty term..
Mad Men was noted for its meticulous attention to mise-en-scéne.
Yes. I did mean to be snooty. That’s all I’ll cop to.
More correctly (and therefore snootier), mise en scène.
I just got back from the Tuesday Night Classic showing of 2001. It has a great mise en scène but does not start in medias res.
The theater gave an intermission, like a classic road show, but…Harkins! You’re supposed to STOP THE MOVIE during the intermission. They blanked the projector, but left the film going. I’m going to have to check my DVD to see how much we missed, but I’d guess the full ten minutes.
It does if you consider the possibility that the star child was sent back in time to witness the dawn of man.
Thus spoke ASL.