Originally posted by johncorrigan
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I enjoyed this too, it's a very well made film. We know they got to the Moon and returned safely, but there is a strong sense of the perils they faced in doing so. Both the prospect, and the actuality of death pervades this film throughout. Ryan Gosling gives a highly controlled performance of who must have been a highly controlled and brave man. The scenes of being launched into space atop the Titan and Saturn rockets are terrifying (Armstrong's heart rate never rose above a hundred), as are the events of the Gemini 8 mission that john mentions. The Moon is a frighteningly bleak place, the only glints of colour being man-made. The film ends with Armstrong in post-mission quarantine being reunited with his ever supportive wife, albeit separated by glass. This wordless scene is at once tender and cold; although not even hinted at in the film, their marriage did not last and it's plain to see why. -
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Trivia corner: Aldrin's mother's maiden name was Marion Moon.Comment
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My pal was saying that he read about 'First Man' that, re the Hopperesque tones of some of the domestic scenes, Director Chazelle filmed the close-up home and work scenes in 16 mm which gave them a soft grainy Kodachrome look. The NASA stuff was 35mm film and only on the moon was it Imax sharp 65mm (but still film and not digital).Originally posted by johncorrigan View PostComment
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Originally posted by johncorrigan View Post
We saw it this afternoon. Excellent film if a bit lacking in atmosphere...
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Originally posted by Richard Tarleton View PostRe-watched after a great many years - "The Long Good Friday", stonkingly good 1979 London gangster movie starring Bob Hoskins trying to get into semi-legit property deals with New York businessmen, with help from corrupt council officials and bent Met coppers, but whose world unravels at blistering speed as IRA gangsters who have been crossed (unbeknownst to him) by members of his team take their deadly revenge. Helen Mirren as his bit of posh who was at school with Princess Anne
, this was Derek "Casualty" Thompson's big break . Bob Hoskins - what an actor, he eats the screen. Warning, contains scenes some viewers may find disturbing 
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A marvellous film that made a huge impression on me as a teenager. I knew the girl with the red hair who was an extra in the yacht scene where Bob Hoskins is giving his big speech. She said it was bloody freezing and the yacht made such a racket the dialogue had to be added post production!
It's a tradition in this household that we watch it every Good Friday!Comment
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Well worth getting the Blu-ray. I found the DVD version I had very poor for picture quality. I well remember the enthusiastic review it got in Republican News* at the time of its release. A very fine comment on Thatcher's Britain. Not so popular with Brexiteers, I would think. The Monkman score is particularly effective, I think.Originally posted by pastoralguy View Post
*The weekly paper of Sinn Féin in the north of Ireland at the time.Comment
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I agree about the original DVD. It was pretty shoddy. The blu-ray has a fascinating documentary which has Bob Hoskins doing a Scottish accent in 'homage' to the director!Originally posted by Bryn View PostComment
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I should perhaps clarify that the "it" in "the enthusiastic review" referred to the film, not the DVD.Originally posted by pastoralguy View PostComment
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My DVD is "newly remastered", for what that's worth - I didn't have a problem with the quality.....various "extras" - "making of" documentary, interviews etc. which I haven't yet watched.Originally posted by pastoralguy View Post
"The dinner got a bit burnt"
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On a very different tack, I have just felt a sudden urge to dig out Nadia Tass's Malcom. Another favourite with good use of Simon Jeffes's ready-made music.
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Had an excellent 2½ hours in the cinema this afternoon: watching Bad Times at the El Royale - a 60s/70s-set bravura mix of noir, gangster, espionage, post-Tarantino pulp-fiction styles. Led by some great performances (esp Jeff Bridges, John Hamm...), it looks brilliant and sounds it too - great music, by Michael Giacchino plus original songs of the period (the latter being woven into the plot due to one of the characters).
Above all, it's a long time since I've seen a film where I absolutely didn't know what was going to happen next - that includes a few moments of sudden violence, but also sudden insights into the history of the main characters, taking the film into totally unexpected visual areas for a few minutes. And the culmination managed a kind of lurid Gothic grandeur which I found very satisfying
Thoroughly recommended if your constitution can stand the effects of unexpected firearms discharge."...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
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Just finished watching The Good Die Young (recorded from Talking Pictures TV), an absorbing and atmospheric movie in which Harvey's odious character comes to seem like the Devil incarnate (especially in the scene in the pub after the four main characters have met up and are persuaded to take a decision that will affect all their lives). Very well worth a watch.Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View Post
Trivia: I had no idea that Harvey was Lithuanian-born, real name: Laruschka Mischa Skikne. Likewise that Margaret Leighton, who plays his Sugar Mummy in the film, was at the time Harvey's real-life lover and later wife (the marriage lasted only 4 years)."...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
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Experiment Perilous is a nice old film starring the stunning Hedy Lamarr from 1944
It's available for a few more days on the iplayer.
There's an interesting story that during the WW2 Hedy Lamarr worked with George Antheil to develop a frequency-hopping guidance system for torpedoes to avoid radio jamming. They patented it, but the military weren't interested at the time. The idea is now the basis of wifi and Bluetooth among other applications, but earned them nothing. Antheil's contribution was the use of pianola rolls as a way of working the frequency changes.
She also tried to create a cola cube for the troops which would make a fizzy drink when put into water. I don't believe it was very successful!Pacta sunt servanda !!!Comment
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I think I first came across him on the big screen in The Alamo**, as an excellent Colonel Travis - acc. to Wiki he was John Wayne's personal choice for the role, thanks to the aristocratic demeanour Wayne thought he could and indeed did bring to the part. I don't think he was at all oleagenous in that.... I saw him on stage at Drury Lane in 1964 in Camelot, about which the less said the betterOriginally posted by Caliban View Post
((in those days I got dragged along to musicals) - his singing was right up there with Pierce Brosnan's in Mamma Mia 
But my favourite screen appearance of his was in the original and best version of The Manchurian Candidate. A terrific actor - he could certainly do oleagenous if the part required it, but I think the "ever" is unfair.
PS **I did not know then that my Scottish soldier-of-fortune great-great-great-great grandfather was helping to train the Mexican army at the time - that's the one, Cali, whose abandoned wife, my 4xgreat grandmother, had a spell in the Fleet prison for debt in the late 1820s
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