The factory would have been amazing if not for the rest of the Burton oeuvre – I kept wondering where Willie kept the batmobile.
There’s a hotel in Rosemary’s Baby? How did I miss that?
What hotel? Most of the story takes place in apartments and outside NYC.
That’s a location, schmuck, not a set; pay attention. Building that as a set would have cost the whole budget of the picture.
Can I really be the first to mention the interior Xanadu sets for Citizen Kane?
[QUOTE=Sampiro]
(In Max “Jethro” Baer’s plans for the Clampett Mansion Casino the upscale restaurant, Drysdale’s Fancy Eatin’s, features billiard table dining tables [yuk yuk]).
Please, please Sampiro, tell me that’s a joke site! Is this a real place (casino/hotel?) I can’t believe people would voluntarily stay there!
Stargate SG-1 covers both ends of the spectrum. The Gate Room set is terrific, and generally all the Cheyenne Mountain scenes are pretty good. Some of the Gou’ald ships are pretty impressive (and someone has spent an awful lot of time painting hieroglyphics)
But…every damn planet looks like it’s a short drive from Vancouver
[QUOTE=Ultraviolet]
Nope. It’s being constructed on the site of a former Wal-Mart in Reno. It’s something he’s wanted to do for years but funding always falls through or otherwise gets held up.
HIJACK: I saw some entertainment show a year or so ago when Cinderella Man came out on DVD and Baer was being interviewed. He spent all his screentime bitching about a problem the casino plans were having with a flaming oil derrick that violated a Reno city ordinance. Baer’s not known for being particularly rational to begin with (he’s a reclusive, obsessive gun nut who dates porn stars and alternately attacks people who call him Jethro or poses for pictures with theme depending on the day) and was brought on to rant and spew bile against Ron Howard for the portrayal of Baer’s father as the near psychopathic villain in Cinderella Man (he’d totally raised hell when the movie first came out). Instead he basically said “Well, it wasn’t accurate and showed my father in a bad light that wasn’t true, but I understand that Opie has to have a villain for his movie…” then started blathering on again about the oil derrick problems. He’s a very strange man. (He was broke and typecast a year after Hillbillies but made millions from producing low budget movies that were all box office hits and then turned to real estate.)
So, has there ever been a sitcom where the sofa was flush against the wall like it is in most homes?
I don’t think a one-week bump should qualify as a zombie thread, so I will since it’s relevant.
I just got Sally Hemings: An American Scandal from Netflix, a 2000 TV miniseries starring Sam Neill as Jefferson, Diahann Carroll as Sally’s mother, Mare Winningham (an actress I wish worked more in high profile roles because I think she’s great) as Martha Jefferson (the daughter), and a cast mostly of unknowns or “there’s what’s his name” actors in supporting roles. It’s definitely somewhat “soap operatic”- there’s a silly sideplot about Sally assisting on the underground railroad and visiting TJ in DC while president and such stuff, and Rene Auburjonois’s portrayal of real life yellow journalist Thomas Callendar is an over-the-top fop charicature. It’s totally fictionalized since it’s impossible to know the details of Hemings-Jefferson affair, and while the real relationship was probably a matter of mutual convenience (he got a young concubine and she got freedom for her children and preferential treatment for herself) it’s of course portrayed for dramatic reasons as a ‘story of forbidden but passionate love’. All that said, it’s WAAAAY better than I would have expected (I saw the second half on TV when it first aired but haven’t seen it since) with surprisingly good acting and production values- Neill [a sexy older man anyway] is convincing as a middle aged man a young girl could fall in love with, and the scenes twixt Sally and Martha are extremely believable (Martha being a surprisingly complex character for a TV miniseries- she’s an arrogant bitch and completely sympathetic at the same time, knowing full well that Sally’s her aunt and her father’s lover but refusing to admit either).
Anyway, all that aside, the reason I bumped the thread was obviously the sets. The movie did an unusually excellent job for a TV historical miniseries in recreating the look and feel of Monticello. In the series as in real life the house changes form constantly from the late 18th century through the next 30 years, and has great details such as the parquet flooring looking walked on and functional instead of always glossy like it is today and with some lighter stains behind the wall sconces where the candles have caused discoloration. The lawns are, as they would have been in real life, not the mown grass of today but tall wild grass with flowers and walking paths, and the sets for the mansion beautifully reflect Jefferson’s financial troubles. The furniture changes constantly as he remodels during his wealthy years, then in a somewhat subtle change it stops changing as he can no longer afford to order new stuff constantly, then in the later years when he’s too broke to even buy sheets to replace the threadbare ones for guests you notice the house’s decline.
In a deviation from history but one that’s completely explicable for dramatic purposes the screenwriters have some of the auctions of Jefferson’s furnishings and slaves move up to occur during his final years (in fact, while he sold his library and a few of his more expensive curios and belongings during his life, the “lock stock and barrel” sales of his possessions and slaves occurred after his death). The scenes of the old Jefferson (good aging job on Neill) sitting in his swivel chair wearing expensive but decades old clothing in a house denuded of finery and even of a lot of necessities (clocks, sofas, settees, etc.) are very striking and, while not exactly historically accurate, reflect the financial desperation of his final days.
Anyway, at least one thumb up for the miniseries and two enthusiastic thumbs up for their recreation of Monticello. While not as good as it arguably could have been in plot, it’s a WHOLE lot better than I’d have expected (i.e. it’s not North & South or Scarlett) and the only way the sets could have been better is if they’d had a huge budget.
The only cheesy moment is when the White House is seen; while it’s admirable that they wanted to show the White House facade as it actually appeared during Jefferson’s term (i.e. before it was white) it’s so obviously a computer image that they should have just used an engraving or dispensed with it altogether.
Reminded me of another “bad set! bad set!” pic, a TV miniseries remake of Cleopatra starring Timothy Dalton as Caesar and Billy Zane as Mark Antony in which Sphinx/Pyramids/Library at Alexandria/Pharos light house/etc. were just hysterically unrealistic animations; the pyramids and Sphinx balsa wood miniatures used during a production of Antony & Cleo. at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival were (due to lighting and forced perspective) actually far more realistic on probably a fraction of the budget.
I agree. I think that both sets were actually groundbreaking, in a way, giving a more “lived in” and realistic look and sound to their respective genres.