In another Paul Newman film, the driver/sidekick character in “Twilight” is very similar to the one in “Die Hard.”
Actually, most of the characters Newman played in his best-known movies were losers (e.g., Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke). The films you mentioned were just a sub-category.
I watched the movie Hello, dolly! yesterday. Although I’ve seen the play onstage (ages ago, during its initial run on Broadway), and I’ve seen bits and pieces of the film, I’ve never watched it all the way through.
Irene Molloy, the milliner, and Minnie Fay, her young assistant, re walking down the street in New York. Irene looks over at Minnie, sees what she’s doing, and chastises her. “Minnie! Stop eating that banana! Men are looking at us for the wrong reason!”
It took a moment before that sunk in. It’s a surprising double entendre for a Gene Kelly-directed movie* from 1969. (I had a friend who was brought up in a “proper” New York girl’s school. They were taught to eat bananas using spoon from a plate, to avoid any suggestive impressions)
*Ernest Lehman both produced and wrote the screenplay. Lehman, who wrote the scripts for the screen versions of several other noted musicals, also wrote the scripts for North by Northwest and Family Plot for Hitchcock. He definitely wasn’t above the double entendre. I don’t know if he put the line in, or if it was in the original stage version by Michael Stewart , it being so long since I saw the play, but my money’s on it only being in the film.
The Battle of Wits in Princess Bride: Vizzini isn’t trying to reason logically about where the poison is. He’s gauging the Man in Black’s reaction whenever he says it’s in one or the other. Whenever he says the poison is in front of the Man in Black, he tenses up, and whenever he says that it’s in front of himself, he relaxes. From there, he just had to figure out whether the Man in Black was bluffing or not, something that Vizzini is very good at.
I’ve always viewed it mainly as he’s stalling for time while trying to come up with a better plan. Which he does, when he comes up with the quite clever plan of switching the cups and seeing if the Man in Black drinks willingly, which he does… except of course he’s been outsmarted.
(Of course, stalling for time and trying to gauge reactions are not mutually exclusive.)
I took it as appearing to plot logically to allow the distraction to work so he could swap the cups.
And I took it exactly the way that BlutEngel did, way back on Page 1.
Buh-bye.
Watching Corpse Bride last night as Halloween-appropriate, I finally noticed the bookending.
In the opening scene, Victor is sketching a butterfly in a bell jar. When he’s finished, he releases it and it flutters about town as the credits continue. Then at the end…when Emily sacrifices her happiness so she won’t steal Victoria’s, she is released from her purgatory as a whole flock of butterflies.
In the cartoon Chowder the chef character was named Mung Dahl. I found out recently that there is an actual Oriental dish called Mung Dahl.
What ruins the whole “Loretta” thing for me is, “Yeah, let’s run a diner for a month just so I can kill a guy” thing.
How did she get that job? Who owns that place? Where is the regular staff? 
Still a good movie, right? 
In listening to the audiobook of Stranger in a Strange Land, I realized Heinlein’s characters seem to do what a lot of characters do in extended dialogue scenes, which is restate the name of the person they’re speaking directly to, as a point of emphasis.
“Jubal, Do you really think she’ll go for that?”
“Michael, I don’t think that’s such a great idea.”
But in reality, how often are you going to say the name OF the person you’ve been having a one-on-one conversation with for the last ten minutes? Even as emphasis? It would be weird to be sitting with a friend and switch back to “Mario, it’s cold outside.”
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The owner and staff were probably made an offer they couldn’t refuse. :dubious:
*“Tell you what. You’re gonna take a few weeks off, with pay. Don’t worry, we’ll call you back when we need you. So go on, disappear.”
*
And going even further down this side track, in the Coen’s* Hudsucker Proxy* Newman gives Tim Robbins a job because he expects Robbins to suck at it. (I like Hudsucker Proxy.)
Further, he finally won the Oscar for THE COLOR OF MONEY, where – spoilers are inevitable here, right? – it turns out that he only beats Tom Cruise in the climactic match because, hey, a young hotshot like Cruise can only make a ton of money by throwing the thing after secretly betting on the aging has-been, see.
“The odds were a joke!”
I’ve listened to the audiobook of SIASL countless times (and read the book numerous times, as well), and have to admit that I never noticed this. I’ll have to listen to it again sometime soon and verify this. The habit, though, clearly isn’t annoying or intrusive to me, at least.
One thing I DID find annoying that shows up in the audiobook readings of Heinlein’s novels (I own three – SIASL, Starship Troopers, and Rocketship Galileo, and have listened to several others) is his habit of having characters say “So?” pretty frequently. And not in circumstances where I or people I know would use that response. It starts to get annoying.
Much as I love Heinlein’s writing, this one is really starting to show its age. It’s not just the image of Mars he has, which was woefully out of date when he wrote the thing*, or the social attitudes** , but the very different path that technology has taken. I don’t mind the huge gap between his imagined future and reality in, say Rocketship Galileo, and he’s so far ahead of the time in [Starship Troopers that I don’t know if he’ll ever be seen as behind the times, but it rankles in SIASL – e-mail has completely replaced the messaging system he imagines and describes in such loving detail, his spring-wound recording “bug” is obsolete with modern digital technology, and multiple other examples of The Tech Not Taken obtrude to take your mind away from the philosophical novel within.
*I figured he had a soft spot for “Classic” SF Mars. He kept hoping in his periodic updates of his speculative piece “Where to?” that life would still be found on Mars.
** Not just towards women, but towards gays, as well. Someone wrote an internet essay on it years back “You’re not shaping up too angelically, youngster.”
I realized a while back that this is a writer’s favorite shortcut and it doesn’t really bother me that much when I read it. What annoys me is when they do it in movies and TV shows.
"Look, furryman, you’re my brother. I know how you felt when dad died. I know how you struggled when your daughter, Cynthia, whosename we both know, got sick. But that doesn’t mean you can avoid this meeting with Mr Anderson, who we both know is dad’s lawyer. My wife Michelle agrees, and so does Carol, who is the person who is married to you. Also, you have a dog named Archibald. "
In the Twilight Zone episode “The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms,” the crew of the Stuart charges into the Battle of the Little Bighorn on foot, with small arms. If they wanted to help Custer, why the hell didn’t they walk back over the hill and get their tank? :dubious: 
Heh. That was exposition-a-licious!
Exactly what their CO said.
But yes, three guys, even with modern carbines and .45 arent going to change that battle. A tank would, and so in the universe they took the tank, the past changed so much they never existed. 