"neat" touches in films

Cafe Society
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This isn’t from a movie, but it was really funny. If anyone watches soaps on abc, this was on One Life to Live at Asa’s (faked his own death) funeral. Well Asa is one of the charcters that has been married like 9 times or so. So all of the ex-wives were there at his funeral. They showed each one sitting in the funeral reminicsing about their wedding to Asa, and showed the original clips of the weddings. I think these were really mostly the same actresses too. One of the ex-wives, who is also still a main character on the soap, was played by a different actress during the time she and Asa were married. Anyway, the funny part is, it shows Blair (the current one) remembering her wedding to Asa, they show a flashback clip of it and it is of course the other actress. The “old” Blair is asian, or at least has very dark hair and very different more exotic features that the current blonde haired, blue eyed Blair. So when current Blair snaps out of the little fanatsy, it shows her sitting there, at the funeral with a perplexed look on her face and she whips out a little cosmetic mirror and looks in it, only to look slightly more confused, but then sort of shrugs it off. Very funny to see that the people who write this stuff making fun of how goofy it is that the actors change and no one “in soap land” ever notices the sudden complete change this “soap person” has gone through.

Oh and the part in “Big Trouble in Little China” that someone else mentioned, I found that really funny too. He is looking all tough, but for the lipstick smeared on his face.

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**Mystery, Alaska **

There is this micro scene with Russell Crowe and Cynthia Whatever, who plays his wife. They are sitting in the car waiting for the good news that they expect that Russell is back on the team. (This is the part) He gives his wife a look that, too me, just adds more to that little scene of the silent interaction between a husband and wife. (It also melts my insides all to mush.)

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Mrs. Soffel . Mel Gibson is a convict in prison and Diane Keaton is the Wardens Wife. He falls in love with her and in one scene, thru the bars of the cell, all they do is hold hands. It was a very nice little part.

**Lethal Weapon ** (Ok, I’m on a Mel Gibson kick right now, sue me.) When Riggs escapes Endo and busts into the room where Murtaugh is being held with his daughter and frees them, as Murtaugh and his daughter are getting up, and Riggs is in control of the situation. Riggs does a joke,

“What did one shepard say to the other shepard?”

“What?”

“Let’s get the flock outta here.”

I always liked that little touch. Just because you’ve escaped a bad assed torturer and killed half his dope smuggling buddies does not mean you have to take the situation that seriously. :smiley:

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This detail is in King Kong, but Harryhausen didn’t do it He wasn’t in animation then. This was almost certainly Willis O’Brien (other people worked on animation for KK, but O’Brien was the boss). He’d used a similar detail in an earlier film, where the large prehistoric bird Diatryma scratched itself.

There are a lot of cute effects in early animation – both eye-grabbing and subliminal effects. Just look at the incredible detail in, for instance, the scene where Kong derails the subway train. As Kong approaches the track you have silhouettes of people down at the bottom of the screen, and you have people in the window of the building moving and gesturing, and you get a train going by as well.

When Kong is in the cave at the base of Skull mountain you have him, the plesiosaur (which a lot of people thought was a snake), superimposed “steam” from the bubbling lake, and the figures of Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) and Driscoll (Bruce Armstrong) miniature rear-projected in. And these are alll moving in different ways, along with Kong himself.

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I’m amazed that there isn’t more Coen brothers movies mentioned here, they are filled with these tiny “attention to detail” bits. My favorite is, in Raising Arizona, the theme music can be heard in different styles throughout the film. When H.I. is running through the grocary store getting shot at, it’s playing as Muzak.

And the matching tattoos, the look that Leonard Smalls and H.I. give each other made me think it was a realization (Dad? Son?) then KABLOOEY!

the movie Angus had a similar musical stunt, the High School Band was playing Love Spit Love. The Coens did it first.

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Ok, so I don’t have time to read the whole thread right now, so sorry if I’m repeating anything here. One comes to mind really well for me.

Lethal Weapon 4 - when riggs and murtaugh are chasing the chinese mafia guys on the highway, riggs says something like “what I wouldn’t give for a siren right about now.” Well, in the original version, they just kept on going. In the dvd version, however, murtaugh lets out this big siren with his head stuck out the window, some wonderful Danny Glover improv that had me rolling on the floor!

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Lord a-mighty. Someone actually resurrected this old thread. (Almost exactly one year after it was started).

Well let me add one from Honeymoon in Vegas.

Still fairly early in the movie. They’re in the hotel room and Nicholas Cage is freaking out that his fiancee, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, is actually going to go through with the weekend jaunt with the mobster -James Caan.

Cage is alternating between screaming, hysteria, pleading and so on and then at one point he spies a fruit basket. Without thinking, he picks up an apple and takes a bite out of it and then realizes why in God’s name am I eating at a time like this??

Don’t know whose idea it was but it is definitely a quirky touch to a great scene.

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Best moment in a movie: Silence of the Lambs, when Lecter is giving Starling the maps and folders she’d left with him, near the very end of the movie. She’s dashed back away from the police to grab the papers; Lecter is standing there very calmly with his arm outstretched. She seizes the papers from his hand and – for just about half a second – the camera zooms in on their hands, where his index finger moves across hers briefly and gently before she dashes off again. Her movements are so large and dramatic; his very subtle stance and gestures are such a contrast.

Best moment in a TV show: Sue me for being a Buffy fan, but their best episode (IMHO) was one of those where Buf nearly gets killed. She decides to go talk to Spike, who’s killed two Slayers so far, to find out how to keep from dying, figure out how he killed the others so he can prevent it. The scenes in the flashback where he is describing the second Slayer he killed – a pretty black girl in a New York subway, wearing the same leather trench Spike has been wearing since his first episode in Buffy – smoothly parallel his gestures as he describes the event, as though he can remember every single movement he made some thirty years ago. Almost as impressive as that is the end of the episode, when Buffy blows him off with the same words the lady he loved over 100 years ago used. The building fury and its resolution at the end of the episode is marvelous.

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Another one from Shawshank. After Brooks is parolled, he sends a letter to the gang, in which he jokes about killing the manager of the FoodWay to get sent back to prison. Red gives his speech about how a prisoner can become institutionalized to the point that the prison becomes home. He’s ostensibly talking about Brooks, but also about himself, and how he fears that he wouldn’t be able to make it on the outside.

After being paroled, there are many scenes paralleling Brooks’ parole, and showing Red’s growing despair. At one point, Red is looking in the window of a pawn shop while his voice over says something like “I find myself thinking of ways to violate my parole,” while the camera pans across the items in the window, showing us what Red is looking at. As he delivers the line, the camera pans across a group of guns, but continues past them to stop on a compass. It’s a wonderful visual way of showing Red’s making up his mind to move forward rather than live in the past.

In Blood Simple, one of the shots in the bar begins at the end of the bar, focusing on two people talking at the other end. Halfway down the bar, a man is slumped passed out. The camera tracks slowly down the bar until it gets too close to the passed-out drunk to see him, at which point the actor would normally move and the camera would continue to move smoothly down the bar. Instead, the camera raises up slightly, then comes back down to bar level, as if passing over the drunk. The nice thing is that the man almost certainly moved to allow the passage of the camera, so the up and down movement is a deliberate, unnecessary insertion.

In The Parallax View, except for gunshots, the action sequences are played without sound effects, the noise being drowned out by environmental noises or background music, most notably when the waiter tries to escape on top of the Space Needle, Beatty’s fight witht the sheriff next to the dam, and Beatty trying to escape the auditorium at the end.

In the musical New York, New York, there is no background music until the closing credits.

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The Graduate. WEhen Katherene Ross’s character reaized the truth, her character comes into focus.
IMHO one of the best tricks done in movies ever.

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Planet of the Apes, the new one. Charlton Heston, who of course was the human protagonist Taylor in the original, plays the ape villain’s father in the remake. A nice touch in itself, but as he dies, he chokes out, “Damn them. Damn them all to Hell!” speaking of the humans, which was of course his famous line from the end of the original.

A little more subtle is the neatness which happens before Heston’s character dies. He instructs his son, General Thade, to go and break open a large red pot-type thing, which he finds to contain a handgun made by humans thousands of years ago. Heston says something to the effect of, “This is the evidence of their power and cruelty…” and explains how the gun is the great human tool of destruction and so on. Does anyone else find it slightly ironic that Charlton Heston is delivering a speech on the dangers of guns?

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In the “War of the Copraphages” episode of the X-Files which is about roaches, during one sceen, they added a roach that looks as if it is crawling across your television screen, not in the shot at all. Freaked me out.

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In Buckaroo Banzai we never did find out what that watermelon was doing there.

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You forget the punchline, a picture of Michael Duchachas (sp?).

I always notice neat things in movies, but the only one that comes to mind is from a TV show. I love how the Tick always kept previous episodes in mind, i.e the moon having the beginning of Chairface’s name carved into it, being bitten into…

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That half a second is the only time that Lecter and Clarice actually touch each other in the whole movie. Another great thing about that movie is that the camera gradually moves closer and closer whenever Lecter and Clartice are together. This happens slowly and subtly through the course of the movie, eventually moving in close enough to eliminate the bars between Lecter and Clarice. I loved that touch.

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A friend of mine told me about a movie he saw where something flashes briefly onto the screen. When you go back and freeze frame it, you find that it says “Nice work with the Pause button dumbass” or something to the effect. Does anyone know this movie?

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I have another X-Men neat-o-trick.

In the “school” scene wherein Xavier is describing his methods for teaching young mutants while keeping them safe, one shot shows the teens (including Rogue) in class. Jubilation “Jubilee” Lee is the one wearing the bright yellow coat and the neon short (she popped up in the late 80’s, I think). Bobby, the teen with the ice control powers, is the boy Rogue has a crush on and Mystique imperonates. Kitty Pride is a long-time X regular, though she moved on to another comic some time ago. All are old “X-team” favorites.

Hugh Jackman is now my favorite Aussie for his exclellent portrayal of the loner Woloverine. Note his use of the word “Bub”, used like I might say “Buddy” or “Pal” or such. This is one of the character’s big traits in the comics.

This may or may not be something… but Sabertooth and Wolverine had some sort of past association and utterly hated each other in the comics. Neither one ever could kill the other since they were so well matched, and each simply didn’t have the kind of damage-dealing capability to take out the other one (re: healing factor). In the movie, Sabertooth attacks Wolverine and seems to really dislike him Though its not elaborated on, Sabertooth noticably tries to get Wolvie in the flick.

Senator Kelly is a long-time background character in X-Men. He’s an honorable man, but very afeared of what unrestricted mutants may do to the nation. He’s the leader of the Mutant Registration Act, though he lives a lot longer in the comics. I think he recently died, but I could be wrong.

Henry Gyrich is mentioned in the film as being Kelly’s aid, but found dead, “mauled by a bear”. The implicaton is that Sabertooth killed him. In the comics, Gyrich is a top-ranking intelligence official with broad oversight for the USA in dealing with some mutant affairs. Exactly what he could do is unknown, but it is known he’s dealth with super-technology and hhas tried to deal with some of the more troublesome mutant criminals.

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Ah, but all is explained in the DVD…

I’m such a tease.

Here’s one from the recent Harry Potter movie:

After Hagrid picks up Harry and they’re in London Hagrid takes him to The Leaky Cauldron, a pub for wizard folk.

Notice the pub sign outside. From a middle distance it’s completely obscured. It’s as if the pub has been out of business for decades (centuries) and no one has maintained it.

However, as Hagrid and Harry get closer to the pub the sign suddenly clears up and can be clearly read. It’s as if it’s designed to hide itself until people with wizrard powers approach and only then does it advertise itself.

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Another nice touch in back to the future is the changing of the name “Barton Ravine” to “Eastwood Ravine.”

And the movie scene Biff is watching in his hotel in Part II (during alternate 1985) where Clint Eastwood is wearing the steel plating as a bullet shield (Fistfull of Dollars), is recreated when Marty squares off against Buford Tannen. Buford is also mentioned in a promotional video that plays outside the hotel.

The neat little easter eggs Zemeckis (and Spielberg probably had a hand in as well) throws into the whole trilogy are too numerous to count. Still one of the best movie trilogy’s ever made.

One nice touch in a Zucker brothers movie that has yet to be mentioned is in Top Secret when Nick Rivers (Val Kilmer), distraught when realizing he may lose the woman he’s interested in, is rehashing the events of what have happened in the movie, and the woman responds with “It seems like it’s all a bad movie.” (or something similar), and the two stop what they’re doing and cast sideways glances at the camera.

I though it was also nice how Fincher and Walker worked the last two deadly sins into the plot line of Se7en. Although the end results were rather predictable, I didn’t expect the events to tie in the way they did. Very cool.

The dentist’s name in MASH* is “Painless.” Painless wants to commit suicide because he’s impotent. The theme song of the movie is “Suicide is Painless.” The song being sung during the suicide scene is “Suicide is Painless” as well.

Then there’s A Christmas Story when everyone (even Santa Claus) tells the protagonist that he can’t have a Red Ryder air rifle due to the fact that “he’ll shoot his eye out.” And then when he finally gets one, he end up shooting himself in the face with it (though causing no permanent damage). Icidentally, the old Interplay computer game Wasteland makes a couple references to the Red Ryder.

Spinal Tap when the bands latest drummer spontaneously combusts on stage, continuing the band’s bad luck with drummers always dying.

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Clarification on the Chritmas story. I just remembered the kid wears glasses, and actually does shoot his eye, but the glasses take all the damage (and I believe the lens is cracked). It’s been a while since I saw it.