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Palmerin

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Posts posted by Palmerin

  1. Every time BM and TV introduce a movie that involves someone like Dalton Trumbo and other blacklisted people, there is sure to be mention of the Unamerican Activities Committee.

    This example of historical context should be applied to, well, practically every movie ever made. For example, when TV introduced THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE on 17-06-2017, it would have been very enlightening to speak about the Jacobite Rebellions; certainly the Italian who rendered the name of that movie as THE PRINCE OF SCOTLAND is unlikely to have known the impact of the Battle of Culloden on Scottish history. Scotland certainly had a huge impact on the making of this particular feature, as attested by its abundance of Keltic names, such as FLYNN, CAMPBELL and LIVESEY.

    Le Roy's QUO VADIS is an even better example. Henryk Sienkiewicz wrote his novel as an allegory where the Roman Empire is the Romanov monarchy, Nero is Nicholas II, and the Christians are the very unhappy subject peoples of the Russians, such as Poland, whose Latin name was LYGIA. In the 1951 production, the Roman Empire is now the Soviet Union, and the Antichrist known to history as Nero is clearly Stalin. This background to the movie and the original book is of much greater value than trivia about how Elizabeth Taylor was supposed to play the role that eventually went to Deborah Kerr, and how Sophia Loren was an extra in the crowd scenes.

    One regrettable thing about HS's allegory is that its analogies are not perfect. The Roman Republic and Empire was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, civilizations in history; an outstanding example is the fact that English is written in the Latin alphabet, and that about half the words in the English language, such as CONSTITUTION and REPUBLIC, come from Latin. The Soviet empire was a culture of kitsch, with little of value to show for the less than three quarters of a century that it lasted. Prokofiev and Shostakovich certainly wrote some great music, but also a lot of junk of which they were heartily ashamed. Ever heard the LENINGRAD SYMPHONY? A lot of empty sound and fury, signifying nothing!

  2. Jeremy Irons does look quite a bit like DD-L, but even less like HH Alexander VI.

    And speaking of the House Borja=Borgia, one of the present day descendants of HH Alexander VI is the King of Spain, who also has Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez among his many illustrious ancestors. 

  3. Ben's humor IS rather arid.  Mine is often too, so that's why I have no complaints about it.  And SPEAKING of arid------

     

    How you holding UP lately down there in AZ Darg?  But don't despair, and just remember.....

     

    At least it's a DRY HEAT!  :D

     

     

    Sepiatone

    ARID? Dont you mean ACID, as in sweet and sour? My favorite Chinese dish is sweet and sour pork, but I would not use those terms to describe BM's limp stabs at humour.

  4. The Italian poster for Keighley's THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE rendered its title as THE PRINCE OF SCOTLAND. That is because, in Italian, the title of prince is not limited to royalty, but instead applies to members of eminent families such as the Derrys of Stevenson's story and the most illustrious House of Visconti.

  5. I hear a cry for conformity in the title question.

     

    If the lady feels comfortable as she now dresses and looks respectable (which she does), that should be the end of the issue.

    So why don't B, M, and Mr dress in a more comfortable and attractive manner? I have not worn ties since the 1970s, and no dress code could persuade me to strangle myself with those garish hangman's nooses.

  6. I would imagine since JANE SEYMORE plays the character of Solitaire that she's supposedly a light-skinned bi-racial.  I'm not sure if the term Mulatto  is still accepted by the bi-racial populous.  In fact, being that light skinned would have at one time caused her to be considered an Octaroon,  which I'm also not sure is acceptable these days.  But it does remind me of a small joke a history teacher of mine once told,

     

    "If a N e g r o was part SCOTTISH, would that then make him a MacAROON?"  :unsure:

     

    Sepiatone

    Why is there objection to N--E--G--R--O, which is simply BLACK in Spanish?

  7. Moonraker has an excellent beginning, and Michael Lonsdale is so good you forget his character is an idiot:  the British have no reason to suspect him, so why try to kill their representative as soon as he shows up?

    That is a capital offense of practically all BONDS: that they reveal the identity of the villain at the very beginning, instead of building the suspense by keeping the villain and his plot a secret until the very climax.

  8. The entire plot of the 1968 PLANET OF THE APES, where Taylor witnesses what are obviously orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees riding horses and shooting bolt action rifles, who speak in 20th century English, use the Latin alphabet and Latin names--and only at the very end, when he sees the remains of the Statue of Liberty, does he realize that he is back on Earth!

  9. The old DEARBORN theater in Dearborn, MI sold wine to legal age patrons back in the '70's.  That theater is long gone now, and I don't recall ever hearing of any problems there as a result.

     

    The old MAI KAI theater in Westland, MI was also set up for both dinner AND cocktails  while patrons watched a movie too.  It TOO is now long gone.  But the booze in those cases had nothing to do with their demise. 

     

    As most theater patrons these days get loud and rowdy enough WITHOUT also being half in the bag, I wouldn't look foreward to liquor being made available to them too.  :unsure:

     

     

    Sepiatone

    Theater patrons in PR only need sugar and caffeine to get good and loud and rowdy.

  10. Yes, as Lawrence just mentioned, your examples would fall under the term "anachronisms" rather than "plot holes", Palmerin.

     

    However, and in regard to your example which I highlighted above, as I've always understood it, Berenson's makeup in that Kubrick film and when she's all dolled-up especially is actually period correct.

     

     

    A base of rice powder, a touch of rouge, one or two mouches: that was it.

    Eye makeup and lip coloring was the mark of streetwalkers, as can be seen in Gillray, Hogarth and Rowlandson.

  11. That's an anachronism, not a plot hole.

    Such a constantly repeated anachronism counts as a plot hole because anybody who has lived a number of decades should be aware, for example, that the hair and clothing fashions of his teen years are no longer the hair and clothing fashions of his fifties. It's something so OBVIOUS, it defies explanation that someone as careful as Kubrick, who made BL look like an animated 18th century painting, would commit a mistake that could have been avoided if he had looked carefully at the women portrayed by Gainsborough, Ramsay, Reynolds, Romney and Zoffany.

  12. THE HUGEST PLOT HOLE EVER, WHICH HAPPENS IN PRACTICALLY EVERY MOVIE SET IN THE PAST!: the women, and to a lesser extent, the men, have their hair and makeup--facial hair in the case of the men--done in the fashion of when the movie was made, instead of in the manner appropriate for the period of the story.

    Marisa Berenson in BARRY LYNDON wears makeup so garish that she looks more like a 1975 disco queen than like a high born lady of the 18th century;

    Errol Flynn wears his pencil line moustache even in movies set in times where that style of moustache did not exist, or, in the case of THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE, facial hair was almost totally out of fashion.

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