I was watching the commentary of the Anti-trust DVD and they show the scene of all the programmers that are being spied on, one of them is wearing a red hat, just like the Linux one! So cool!
In Mira Nair’s film Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love, the queen (Sarita Choudhury) goes mad with sexual frustration (because her husband is ignoring her and schtupping the new courtesan). All she can do is lie down, twitching and moaning. They call in the doctor (Harish Patel) to examine her. She lies nude under a sheet with a hole in it; the doctor sticks his hand in this hole and uses it to examine her. When her touches her breasts, she moans loud. Then you see his hand moving south, toward her vulva…
When he pulls his hand out of the sheet, he rubs and flicks his fingertips as though he’d gotten something on them. The expression on his face is perfect. This is a very subtle touch, easy to miss, but it is exactly right to suggest the queen’s state of excitation.
In most (if not all) of Brian DePalma’s movies, there will be a reference (either a character or in one case, graffiti on a wall) to “Bobby Dee”. “Bobby Dee” is Brian’s cousin (and a friend of mine, so I know it’s true 
O.K. I had to dust off my copy and watch this one again.
So they’re road signs and not construction barriers, and the fugitive (Mickey) was giving PeeWee a ride, my apologies. The visible bike chain could be a framing thing, but in the scene I mentioned even if you crop out the wheels the signs are being pulled on, you can still see (and hear?) the cables being used to pull them. Are they digitally erased in the DVD version as well? Could Burton and Rubens still be pulling our leg? As evidence, I noticed that the falling rocks in the scene come up again in the chase sequence on the WB lot. Fakery exposed!
More “neat” touches:
Phil Hartman who co-wrote the script appears in the last reel as a reporter.
PeeWee brushes his teeth before eating some MR. T cereal.
His correct weight: 98 pounds (weakling!)
Sign in door of Mario’s Bike Shop is easy to read because it’s backwards.
The animated eyes in the dark in “the middle of nowhere”.
Large Marge! C’mon that’s a classic! (…face looked like THIS!)
More Adult Stuff: Mickey leers suggestively at PeeWee in drag? What about this scene?
Simone: Do you hane any dreams?
PeeWee: (forgot exact quote)…rolling a doughnut and a snake wearing a vest…
Simone: No, not that kind of dream. (Freud! ROTFLMAO)
Then:
(Simone’s boyfriend overhears)
PeeWee: Everyone I know has a big but(t). C’mon Simone, let’s talk about your big but(t).
…
Simone: Oh PeeWee, I’ve been waiting for someone to put it to me like that for so long!
Chase scene on WB lot interrupts filming of Twisted Sister’s Burn in Hell video. This is an actual shot set up from an actual music video and hell/devils is a motif in the movie.
The fake film within a film: James Brolin as PeeWee and Morgan Fairchild as Dottie. PeeWee’s cameo in the FWAF is as a bellboy (Jerry Lewis tribute?) and he can’t stop looking straight at the camera, flirting with the fourth wall. As extras walk left in the scene projected at the drive-in, PeeWee walks left at the same pace and is (fore?)shadowed by the extras in the film.
Jason Hervey (Kevin Arnold’s mean older brother in The Wonder Years) portrays bi-polar kid actor Kevin Morton.
That’s quite enough I’m sure.
Cervaise, that scene really struck me too. I thought it was a very effective attempt to emulate the way comic book art works – in a connected series of still “panels.” The curtains part to reveal, first, the woman; then Bruce, unmoving; then the woman; then Bruce, still unmoving – but now he’s closer.
I’m not sure if I’m explaining this well, but the fact that you see action without ever seeing anyone move reminded me of the way some good comic book artists work, with the same image – slightly changed – repeated in consecutive panels. I thought it was a wicked cool scene.
I just got finished watching “Dr. Strangelove” again, and one touch I had either not noticed or forgotten about happens when Slim Pickens is sitting on the bomb trying to get the bomb bay doors open. Lettered on the bombs are cautionary warnings “Nuclear Device : Handle with Care” and “This Side Down.”
I can’t imagine this being feasible in real life, but the scene in Three Kings, when Barlow stuck in his hell hole bunker uses a stolen cell phone and pow we’re in a suburban home and his wife’s on the line, was pretty amazing.
also, I thought the penis at the end of fight club was a nice touch.
His name was “Rene Belloq”.
I guess Steven Spielberg wasn’t as attentive in temple as he should have been!
The use of oranges throughout all three Godfather movies.
Speaking of Dr. Strangelove"
I also saw it again recently and only then I noticed that early in the war room scene, George C Scott is talking to the President (of camera).
I always thought that both, Sellers as the President and Scott as the General, were talking to each other in “real time” but then I noticed, in a bigger TV, that Dr. Strangelove (also Peter Sellers) was one of the people present at the table a few seats away from Scott! Very impressive bit of acting and editing.
eunoia wrote:
Actually, that struck me as a sly reference to one of Paul Reubens/Pee Wee Herman’s first film roles, as a desk clerk in Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie.
Could be. Some Howie Hamburger Dude references would have been funny too.
In The Boondock Saints, you can see William Dafoe’s character become more and more involved in the flashbacks - in the last one he is actually in the flashback.
Another “Raiders of the Lost Ark” bit that I thought would have been mentioned by now.
Actually, it takes place in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” when Indy and that film’s love interest (I forget her name) are in the tunnel and she sees a drawing on the wall and asks what it is. (paraphrasing from memory here)
Indy: It’s the Ark of the Covenant
Love interest: Are you sure?
Indy: Pretty sure.
I always liked that bit.
I was just watching the TV version of the Godfather saga, and noticed a really neat touch in a scene that had been cut out of the original release of Godfather: Part II. When Vito is holding the guns for Clemenza in return for the rug, they take them with Tessa to a gunsmith identified as August Coppola, who then introduces his young son Carmine. Carmine then proceeds to play a short tune on a flute. Carmine Coppola is Francis Ford Coppola’s father, and also wrote the score of the movie. Having been born in 1910 would make him about the right age for the boy in the movie.
In Fear And Loathing when Depp says “Look at you man, you’re all sideways”
In Hoy Grail when John Cleese says “She turned me into a Newt…[Long Pause]…I got better” That pause was improvised, it wasn’t supposed to be so long, but it made it so much funnier.
I like how in Airplane! every time they show the plane in the air, it’s in the middle of a thunderstorm and even though it’s a jet, it sounds like a prop plane.
Oh, I have so many.
Little Shop of Horrors -
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The first shot of Audrey II’s face (this is when the plant is at its smallest) - the face is absolutely perfect. It looks cute and sweet and like something Seymour would pick out, but it’s sinister looking too - you can tell it’s headed for the bad side.
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The front cover of the newspaper Mr. Mushnik reads at the very beginning of the movie says something like “Unexpected Total Eclipse of the Sun” and in one scene with Seymour (also at the beginning) the radio is playing in the background and Wink Wilkinson mentions the total eclipse of the sun - with both of these scenes of course being before the Da-Doo number which talks about the eclipse.
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Along the same lines as #2 - when Seymour is being interviewed on the radio and Wink asks him where he found such an unusual plant and he mentins the eclipse and they replay the girls singing Da-doo as it goes into the next scene. (for those who haven’t seen the movie, Seymour’s line is the exact same introduction he used before actually going into Da-Doo, which was a few minutes earlier in the film, and this time… oh forget it, is anybody else noticing these scenes are hard to descibe but they’re so cool when you see them? bah)
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The tupperware party in Somewhere That’s Green. heh heh, cracks me up.
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The entire Skid Row number with all the extras walking on the beat, it’s a really nice touch.
Ahem, before I turn this into the “Cool Things about Little Shop of Horrors, the Greatest Movie in the World” thread…
Spaceballs
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Next to Mr. Coffee is Mr. Radar, ha. Also, the main menu on the DVD is labeled Mr. DVD.
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The scene where the camera is moving in on Dark Helmet to show him as very creepy and foreboding and then HA the camera bumps into him and knocks him over.
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The scene where Dark Helmet and Lone Starr are dueling and Dark Helmet loses his balance or something and falls over onto the camera crew.
Airplane!
oh, too many to mention, BUT I love how after Elaine manually inflates Otto, the next shot of them together shows them both smoking.
And I love the part in Dirty Dancing where it shows Baby walking down the steps towards the main house and a few bars of I’ve had the Time of My Life plays on the piano, oooeee!
Dippin “Say goodbye to your two best friends, and I don’t mean your pals in the Winnebago” Dots
Another one for ‘Shawshank’ - notice at the end of the movie, when Red gets out, he ends up in the same boarding house and the same room that Brooks had when he hung himself. I particularly liked the fact that Red found the carving Brooks had made in the arch near where he hung himself, right about the time when Red himself was at loose ends and wondering what he could do with the rest of his life.
X-Men: Cyclops’ comment to Wolverine, when Wolverine’s griping about the costumes, to the effect that maybe Wolverine would prefer yellow spandex. Of course, in the comics, Wolverine did have a costume of yellow spandex. Pretty funny.
The Untouchables: There are two shots in this move I’ve always loved, just for dramatic effect. The first is right after Pacino (as Al Capone) beats in the head of the thug who failed. The camera does this slow aerial pull back, and the blood is slowly spreading from the man’s shattered head – but from that vantage point and angle, it looks almost like spilled wine or something much less grotesque.
The second is right before Sean Connery’s character gets killed, where the hit man is waiting on the windowsill and looking into the apartment. If you look closely, you can not only see a full view of what is going on inside the apartment (including Connery stalking around back and forth) but a perfect ghostly reflection of the hit man in the window – yet there’s no sign of the camera or any lighting. (Call me easily impressed, but that was back before computer generated effects would have made that easy to do.)
And last but not least, the entire St. Crispin’s day battle scene in Henry V. Just incredible.
This is easily the best I’ve ever seen:
Early in the first Back to the Future, Marty McFly takes off in the Delorean from the Twin Pines Mall.
He cruises back to 1955, where the Delorean comes to a stop by running over one of a pair of pine trees.
When Marty finally makes it back to 1985 to save Doc from the terrorists, he passes a sign at the shopping center. It reads Lone Pine Mall.
You gotta look quick; Spielberg doesn’t linger.
Okay, second-best:
In Close Encounters, there’s a scene where Richard Dreyfuss is zoning out, staring at the TV. The scene is shot from behind the TV set, so you can’t see what’s showing on the screen. But if you listen carefully, you’ll hear the tinny speaker of the TV playing the voice of a slightly younger Dreyfuss, who is screaming at the mayor of Amityville, “Boating accident!? This is not a boating accident!”