Monterey Jack wrote: ↑Fri Mar 29, 2019 12:38 am,l
Hopefully the remake does justice to King's book (one of his best), and with the talented Starry Eyes team directing (check out my review of that in last year's Halloween marathon thread) and Christopher Young scoring, I'm definitely getting some good vibes.
It's odd that the early reviews for this movie were so positive when they've come crashing back to earth ever since...some pre release plants perhaps?
What's scarier is the reaction of King fans on social media and the audience score from various websites which are both positively dreadful. Most hate the changes to the book, the ending, and many indicate the original was far "better".
Looks like this isn't going to be IT, that's for sure.
EDIT - Richard Roeper called it "one of the least successful King adaptations....since the last Pet Sematary"
I saw Pet Sematary today and I found it more tedious than the original, which is saying something.
They showed half a dozen previews for equally crummy looking horror films due this summer. But, the most cringe-worthy trailer was for the new Avengers movie. Yikes! I understand the movie itself runs three hours.
Do you think Chris Evans will appear in anything people will actually pay to see after hanging up his Captain America costume? After looking at his non Marvel CV, I’ve come to the conclusion Evans is the definition of someone who should keep his day job.
Strong new riff on the classic Stephen King novel (and far-from-classic 1989 film adaptation) takes some WILD liberties with Kings text, especially in the last half-hour, and yet the changes to the narrative seem well-reasoned and like what King himself might have penned had the dankly fertile soil of his imagination sprouted in a different direction. It's a far better-acted and crafted film, with some truly shuddery imagery (and a fine Christopher Young score), and if some of the re-purposed elements seem jammed in just for the sake of alluding to the previous versions of the tale on the page and the big screen (yes, there's a cover version of that damned Ramones song). It's another in a surprisingly good run of horror we've gotten since the New Year (following the underrated The Prodigy and the fascinatingly multilayered Us), and while some of the changes to King's book might outrage purists, the last thing we needed was a Xerox of the '89 film, which was remarkably faithful to King's text and yet was clumsy, artless and more disgusting than disturbing. If you want the book, it's available from a variety of retailers, but this new version takes some welcome divergent paths from it, and it's to its credit. [Bwip-bwip]…!
Johnmgm wrote: ↑Fri Apr 05, 2019 7:30 pm
Do you think Chris Evans will appear in anything people will actually pay to see after hanging up his Captain America costume? After looking at his non Marvel CV, I’ve come to the conclusion Evans is the definition of someone who should keep his day job.
I don't think Evans has much of a future outside Marvel, but if he gets hooked up with another franchise as most stars seem to do nowadays, he may not disappear either.
Honestly I was never big into Evans. When he was first cast as Cap, I thought it made zero sense that they wanted the Human Torch playing another Marvel hero. He's OK, but I felt some of the original casting candidates were more interesting (and still are, like John Krasinski).
There's not much left to say about a movie which is universally -- and rightly -- considered one of the best ever made. Suffice to say this picture holds-up just as well 44 (!) years on. Moreover, the absence of CGI, frenetic camerawork and other gimmickry (with typifies -- and often spoils -- most films today) only makes this movie more special, and more believable.
Although on the surface a "popcorn thriller", Jaws is also a subtle character study, which hurls three men into conflict with a killer shark -- and to a lesser extent each other -- for reasons unique to each of them: Brody, owing to a desire to protect his community (and by extension, his family); Hooper, due to his scientific passion for sharks; Quint, because of an Ahab-like obsession to exact revenge for his crewmates on the Indianapolis. Beyond that, the film also has a nostalgic "sense of place", which captures the appealing ethos of coastal New England (thanks in significant part to John Williams). All of these elements add-up to make Jaws much more than your average potboiler.
Also, while certain visual elements -- such as the vehicles and a few costuming touches -- place the film in the time it was released, Jaws doesn't feel at all dated, and for the most part seems like something that could have been made within the past fifteen years.
I watched it with a friend mine and his wife. She had never seen Jaws -- and she loved it! And at several points she jumped and let out a yelp -- which confirms that this movie is just as effective, thrilling and terrifying today as it was in 1975.
Maybe it's because it's evocative of where I live, but JAWS has always been my favorite film, and there's one thing you touched upon Paul that really hits on why I love it: the sense of community, the side characters, the sense that you are "there". All of those things lend enormous appeal to the film -- that, and that the characters actually act and behave like real people. The more you watch the film, it's as if you know Brody and his family, you can identify with Hooper, and the interaction between them all -- they actually behave like adults. They talk like adults. Revisiting the film is like revisiting them -- I like that element even more than the "shark stuff".
The humor is subtle but it's not contrived (Hooper getting off the boat and having the guys in the launch comment "walk straight ahead" when he asks for a nearby hotel). Murray Hamilton's "villainy" is smarmy local politician stuff -- but he's not an awful guy, just one who places the town's prosperity (which, as is pointed out several times, it needs to sustain it through the off-season) over public safety. Even the scene with Brody and his son at the dinner table -- that could've been "cute" but the way Spielberg films and places it, it's a short, and very sweet, moment that could well come out of the real world.
More than anything, that kind of writing -- which also opens up and allows for the performances to work their magic -- is what's sorely missing from modern day blockbusters. When was the last time -- or ANY time -- you watched a dumb super-hero movie where there was a sense of time and place established? Or where people talked and behaved like they do every day? These days, nobody even tries, and the level of writing in basically everything we see is so clearly inferior to the cinema of 40, 50 years ago that it's just sad, if not pathetic.
Great points, and Paul is right in how believable the film is...as you said Andy, the way the characters act and behave toward each other, toward the threats, etc. I appreciate JAWS more each time I see it...and the payoff at the end is worth the price of admission (with Hooper and Brody paddling back to shore and Williams' introspective and understated victory music tinged with a bit of sadness due to the loss of Quint). Not a weakness in the film for me at all, and I think it will continue to hold up as the centuries go by because it was so well made on every level.
It is one of the greatest films ever because as you say, they basically gave us a great action story and at the same time kept the people real and ones we can relate to which can not be said of how the characters are written in Benchley's novel. By going into the film and saying "no affair between Ellen and Hooper, none of the stuff about the Mafia pressuring Vaughn," that allowed the people to stay real. And Quint's backstory was not in the novel at all. He was just "there" with no texture whatsoever. The "Indianapolis scene" is unquestionably the greatest non-adventure scene ever in an an adventure film and you will *never* see that kind of compelling genuine acting moment in any kind of action film again. Why Shaw didn't get an Oscar nomination I will never know.
Great point Eric -- it's arguably the best book-to-screen adaptation ever. Spielberg and Gottlieb really eliminated the soap-operaish/unnecessary components of Benchley's book and raised the material onto another level. Benchley's book is a fun read but the movie elevates it into something more significant -- and human.
As for Quint, I was thinking that also -- would a movie today even pause for a scene like that? (Rhetorical question). And again, you're right, that's something the film developed. Shaw is brilliant -- the more I watch the film, the more I appreciate him. One of my mom's closest friends was a schoolteacher who had a fisherman husband -- and he was very, very much like Quint! Not unstable and more lovable, but the way he carried himself and such, it was remarkable how much the movie got a New England fisherman on the nose without making it seem like a stereotype. Dreyfuss and Scheider are perfect in their own ways as well (this is a sidenote that, while it's interesting that as much as I love JAWS 2 as well, Roy Scheider seems to be playing himself more in that film and not the quieter, more bookish Brody from the original).
More than any other film, JAWS proves Spielberg's genius -- every choice he made artistically paid off, and the film isn't just beautifully made, it almost seems to be "alive" in every sense of the word.
AndyDursin wrote: ↑Mon Apr 15, 2019 12:36 pm
When was the last time -- or ANY time -- you watched a dumb super-hero movie where there was a sense of time and place established? Or where people talked and behaved like they do every day? These days, nobody even tries, and the level of writing in basically everything we see is so clearly inferior to the cinema of 40, 50 years ago that it's just sad, if not pathetic.
Andy, you're just afflicted with nostalgia for the movies of your youth!
But seriously, if Jaws was made today it would be filmed on the coast of Australia, with a Orca scenes all done in a tank with a green screen background.
Eric Paddon wrote: ↑Mon Apr 15, 2019 12:49 pm
The "Indianapolis scene" is unquestionably the greatest non-adventure scene ever in an an adventure film and you will *never* see that kind of compelling genuine acting moment in any kind of action film again. Why Shaw didn't get an Oscar nomination I will never know.
To me, the Quint monologue is the centerpiece of the film, not just in how it gives us an insight into who Quint is, but also in the way it taps into the primal fear we all have of "sea monsters". John Milius wrote that monologue, didn't he?
Further on the music, what is noteworthy is that Spielberg temptracked the film with John Williams' score for Images, but when Williams viewed the rough cut with that music, he gently told the director, "No, no, no -- this isn't a psychological horror movie. You've made an old-fashined pirate adventure!" -- and he scored it accordingly.
Today, a director would tell the composer "Just write something like the temptrack!" -- and we'd wind-up with something like this...
=This is the season for Biblical and "epic" films in general and while "Cleopatra" of course is not directly tied to the season in its story, it is part of that epic tradition and contains a lot of back history that cast an influence into the first century AD in terms of Roman politics so that's why amidst the more traditional fare of this time of year (which I'll summarize in one post of what I watched this Sunday), I decided to give this my first look in about eight years. I've been on record in the past as preferring it to "Spartacus" and while I haven't sat down to watch "Sparatacus" in a while (owing I think to some confusion on my part on how good the current Blu-Ray is and wondering if I should still wait for Criterion to get another crack at the title on Blu-Ray), I still find "Cleopatra" a more interesting film because of the general story it deals with.
=This is also the first time I've seen the film since Elizabeth Taylor's death which hard to believe is now eight years in the past. I think in a way now that La Liz belongs to the ages, it has the effect of really letting her performance and on-screen aura shine more than it did when the image of La Liz the public figure and playing out her own real life soap opera on-screen overshadowed the ability of most people to just study the film on its own terms and merits. Now all of that has faded away while the film endures. And IMO, she is just incredibly compelling, so much so that her other natural gifts end up compensating for the one real flaw she has which is a tendency to sound too contemporary when her voice gets a bit too shrill. That this doesn't ultimately drag down the performance is a testament to how good an actress she was and how right she is as a presence for this larger-than-life conception of Cleopatra. Claudette Colbert was a sexier Cleo but that was because DeMille basically had her playing the role (and brilliantly I would note) as a light comic vamp and thus she was costumed more provocatively. Taylor, while she has her share of gorgeous costumes, is a more multi-dimensional Cleopatra and more likely "closer to the real thing" as George MacDonald Fraser noted when comparing performances since it's easy to see Taylor with the gravitas and ambition necessary to have Alexander style dreams of conquest and impossible to see that in Colbert (I still haven't seen Vivien Leigh's performance even though I have a DVD that's been patiently awaiting my viewing for years).
=Unfortunately, where Taylor and the film was ill-served ultimately was Zanuck's refusal to let the project be two three hour movies. The first half of the film, as I'll note has some narrative gaps caused by this editing, but it still holds together well thanks to the outstanding presence of Rex Harrison and the fact that there is still even with the cuts a logical development to the Caesar-Cleopatra relationship. That cannot be said of the second half alas, where thanks to the cuts we do not see a proper build-up to explain why the Antony-Cleopatra relationship becomes one of grand passion. It just is thrust upon us and because in an earlier age we were more fascinated by the real-life romance showing up on-screen it was harder to realize that narrative wise something was off in terms of setting this up to begin with.
=After I watched the film, I found a fascinating website, "Restored Cleopatra" that had access to the original shooting script and reproduces ALL of what was shot and not used with accompanying production stills (and narrative summarizing the parts that stayed in) and it is essential to go through this after one has just seen the film to finally make some real sense of what was intended and for the first time realize just how right Mankiewicz and company were about how so many important moments of the film that helped balance the spectacle with intimacy were lost. As a result of going through this, "Cleopatra" is now permanently at the top of my list for "lost" films that I wish we could see restored but sadly never will.
Here are some key narrative points that were lost with the Act 1 cuts.
=All of the additional scenes involving Ptolemy's general Achillas (John Doucette) who is seen only in the scene of Caesar's arrival. We get some narrative references to his troops fighting Caesar later but we lost the critical scenes establishing him taking his armies out and EVERY scene showing him in the field as the Roman armies counterattacked.
=An underlying subplot of the affection Cleopatra's faithful attendant Apollodorous has always had for her. All of which is necessary to understanding his farewell line at the end of the film about how he has always loved her.
=Also lost was a LOT more complexity concerning the assassination of Caesar and the machinations Cleopatra was engaging in. Probably the most incomprehensible moment of the final Act I narrative is when suddenly the body of a character we have never seen in the film, Titus the moneylender is found dead and Cleopatra says this could be a warning against her. The character of Titus was played in his one scene by Finlay Currie, the grand old man of these epic films ("Quo Vadis", "Ben Hur"). Titus was a moneylender that a number of Senators were in debt to. In a cut portion of the scene before Cleopatra leaves for Rome, it's established she has a past relationship with Titus and thus Sosigenes, when going to Rome is to buy up all the debts so that the Senators will now be in debt to Cleopatra instead of Titus. Thus, the reason for the Senators resentment against Cleopatra isn't so much her relationship with Caesar but the additional machinations she's engaged in. The final narrative is perhaps "simpler" but now we get an insight into how much of the nuance in Taylor's performance was lost when key scenes like this went.
Act 2 cuts
=At the beginning, we lose a critical Antony-Rufio scene that establishes Antony's fascination with controlling the wealth of the East and why for now he believes he's neutralizing Octavian by putting him in charge of Rome's affairs. Also important in this scene is how at this point, Antony is only going to see Cleopatra if she comes to him.
=Also lost before the first critical Antony-Cleopatra meeting is dialogue establishing the extent of his financially ruinous campaigns in the East and the carousing he's undergone. Marina Berti from "Quo Vadis" who saw her part in "Ben Hur" (as Heston's Roman love interest) reduced to one brief dialogue-free glimpse loses her entire scene as a queen in Tarsus Antony has romanced as part of his wasteful extravagance, thus putting him in the position of having to go to Cleopatra without saving face. The critical importance of these scenes is that they establish more clearly just how much Antony *needs* Cleopatra at this point and how he is scarcely the man Caesar was. Without them, the critical Antony-Cleo scene where they fall in love is lacking the necessary build-up to sell Antony's torment about being in Caesar's shadow.
=Related to this is that the final edit of the Antony-Cleo meeting eliminates more of the gamesmanship Cleopatra plays to force Antony to come to her. In the final edit it is streamlined so that Antony capitulates in effect after Sosigenes makes the point about how he must come to her on the barge in Egyptian territory. But again, while it might be simpler film narrative we lose more nuance to Cleopatra's skills as a politician and that also has the effect of taking away the muti-dimensional nature of Taylor's whole performance.
=Also lost after Antony and Cleopatra fall in love is an intimate moment of Antony bonding with Caesarion by playing games with him and a happy Cleopatra soon joining in, giving them a "family" moment. Another scene important to character nuance lost. And right after this scene is *another* important lost one of Sosigenes noting that for the first time Cleopatra has truly fallen in love.....at the expense of the ambitious dream she had with Caesar. And consequently we are getting the key set-up for what will be the eventual downfall of the two because their relationship is rooted in love and not ambition.
=Some more complexity to the scene showing Octavian laying the trap for Antony so that the people will declare war on him. And also lost in the scene where Octavian produces Antony's will is a key piece of dialogue with Germanicus that establishes just how Octavian came into possession of Antony's will. The final edit might leave the viewer with the impression Octavian could have had it forged to pursue his plan, but the dialogue establishes that Octavian was able to "take it by force" from the Holy temple where it would have been stored with the vestal virgins.
=Also lost was a VITAL scene explaining why Antony fights the battle of Actium on water instead of land, when if as his generals say, fighting it on land would result in a possible victory but on water, it is more likely going to end in failure. After Antony boldly declare his intentions and sends his protesting generals away, there is a scene with Cleopatra where Antony confides that his generals are right and that he is only doing what Cleopatra has ordered him to do. He is very uncertain about the plan, but Cleopatra has insisted that going by water will allow Octavian to be taken in retreat. And HERE we get the vital set-up for Antony's morose behavior when Cleopatra flees the battle and his behavior afterward. He submitted himself to her whims and desires on what to do in order to keep her happy, even at the expense of war with Rome, and thus when she left during the battle it brought everything crashing down. Without this set-up, Burton's performance as Antony later on comes off like that of an art-imitating-life besotted fool. But with this scene, we would believe what happens later. Also lost is a scene between Octavian and Agrippa where Octavian summarizes why Cleopatra's only hope of claiming the victory as the dominant partner of the relationship is for it to be fought at sea instead of Antony's way on-land.
=We also lost the final of the "incantation" scenes prior to the battle. There were to be five incantation scenes in the film but the only one that remained in full was her vision of the assassination of Caesar. This final one was to end with Cleopatra not being able to see the future outcome of the battle of Actium and for the first time being left afraid and fearful of her future. Again, another moment for Taylor's performance lost.
=More intimate scenes pre-battle between Antony and Cleopatra lost.
=Even a good moment for McDowall was lost after he is informed Antony is dead. In the film it ends with him shouting it out but then we were to have another moment of quiet introspection by him on what this now means for his life. It may in fact be the most humanizing touch his character gets in the whole film (brilliant as McDowall is, there is in the final cut a little too much of a one-note upstart quality to his performance that makes the viewer forget that ultimately as Emperor Caesar Augustus he *was* responsible for the most productive period of the history of the Roman Empire).
So the bottom line is that I can now truly see how if this had been two epic films, there would have been no question of them rivaling the best of them from this era. The final cut is still impressive spectacle because one can only be awed at how it was all done full-scale in ways that we will never see the like of again in moviemaking AND with such great actors as Taylor, Burton, Harrison, McDowall and even so many lesser names from both British and American background. That era of filmmaking is gone forever sadly.
On a side note, Richard O'Sullivan, who played Pharoah Ptolemy XIII, would go on to star in the British comedy series, Man About the House, which was later remade in the US as Three's Company.
Two spin-off sitcoms from Man About the House were also made, Robin's Nest and George and Mildred.
Man About the House and George and Mildred were also made into feature films in the 70's, starring the original cast.
We won't be that fortunate though 
