Poster

(Click on image  to enlarge).

Movie Moments: #26

The Castle (1997)

Synopsis:

Tow-truck driver Darryl Kerrigan (Michael Caton) is the head of a close and loving family which lives in a house on the edge of the airport, under power lines and built over toxic waste. Nonetheless to them it is home. When their home is sought to be compulsorily acquired to expand the airport, Darryl and his neighbours fight back.

Quote:

(Darry tells a meeting of the neighbours that he has made enquiries and that they can engage the local lawyer to fight the matter in court for them).

Darryl Kerrigan:   All up it’s going to cost fifteen hundred, that’s seven fifty now and seven fifty in six months’ time, so a hundred and fifty each. Now Jack, I know that you can’t do it so I’m kicking in for you.

Jack (a pensioner): Good on you Darryl, I’ll pay you back.

Darryl:   Yvonne?

Yvonne:  Yeah, fine.

Darryl:   Farouk?

Farouk:  I pay cash now (peeling off notes).

Darryl:   No, no, no, hold your horses. What is it with wogs and cash?

Trivia:

The film was shot on a limited budget of $19,000. The family was named Kerrigan so the filmmakers could borrow trucks from an actual Melbourne tow-truck company, Kerrigan's Towing.

Problem

People in Asia and Australia who use Google Blogger, as I do for this blog, are experiencing problems in adding material, editing it and posting it. I am as well. Hopefully it will be rectified within the next few days. Until then, Bytes may be delayed or not appear. Sorry.

Quotes: Helen Keller

Pictured above:  Helen Keller (seated) with her teacher and friend Anne Sullivan (later Anne Sullivan Macy, although the marriage did not last), c 1910.  Click on the photograph to enlarge.

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.”

- Helen Keller

Helen Keller (1880-1968) contracted what is believed to have been scarlet fever or meningitis at the age of 19 months, which left her deaf and blind. On the recommendation of Alexander Graham Bell, who was working with deaf children, enquiries were made for a tutor when Helen was aged 6. The person appointed, Anne Sullivan, was aged 20 and was herself visually impaired. This was the beginning of a 49 year relationship that evolved into a governess role and eventually companion. The story of how Anne Sullivan taught Helen to comprehend the spelling of words, thereby identifying objects, by touches on her hand is told in the movie The Miracle Worker. Helen Keller went on to become a world famous speaker, author, a spokesperson for people with disabilities, a suffragist, pacifist, radical socialist, birth control supporter and advocate for workers’ rights. In 1964 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Johnson, one of the two highest US civilian honours.

Movie Moments: #25

Runaway Train (1985)

Stars:  Jon Voight, Eric Roberts, John P Ryan, Rebecca De Mornay.

Synopsis: Two convicts escape from a maximum security prison in winter in Alaska, pursued by the vindictive prison warden. They board a train that becomes an out-of-control runaway when the driver has a heart attack, the only other person on board being a frightened female train worker. 

Movie Quote:

Sara: You're an animal!

Manny: No, worse! Human. Human!

Trivia: Jon Voight was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor for his role as “Manny” Mannheim but lost to John Hurt for Kiss of the Spider Woman.  Eric Roberts, Julia Roberts brother, was nominated for Best Supporting Actor but the award went to Don Ameche  for Cocoon.

Bytes won't be here on Sunday but it will be back on Monday.

My Name is Earl, or Prince, or Princess...

Click on above graphic to enlarge.

Byter Lyn asked me why Prince Andrew’s kids are called Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, yet Prince Edward’s kids aren’t called Prince and Princess. It does seem a bit rough, especially when Michael Jackson’s lad is named Prince and the Artist Formerly Known As had the name and dropped it. So I rang Edward and asked him why the royal rugrats don’t have a proper title like the rest of the royal and I obtained some interesting information. (I made up the part about ringing him).

• To have the title Prince or Princess, you must be of the royal blood. Hence Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward all have the title. Diana’s correct moniker was not Princess Diana but Lady Diana, Princess of Wales.

• Edward has always been something of an odd man out. Born in 1964, he joined the Marines to become an officer but resigned when he decided that khaki was not for him. Instead, he worked with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Theatre Company where he was part of the production effort for Phantom of the Opera, Cats and Starlight Express.

• Eddy set up Ardent Productions 1993 to produce documentaries and dramas but it was voluntarily wound up in 2009. These days he focuses on public and royal duties, often standing in for his father, the Duke of Edinburgh, who is now aged 90.

• On 1999 Edward married Sophie Rhys-Jones. Traditionally the Queen confers the title of Duke on royal males when they wed, just as Prince William became Duke of Cambridge last week. This title, the highest in the peerage list, was to have gone to Edward but he politely declined, asking instead for the title Earl of Wessex. Reportedly he was attracted to the title after watching Shakespeare in Love where Colin Firth played the Earl of Wessex. He was granted both his request and the title. Sophie is now the Countess of Wessex.

Movie Moments: #24

The Jazz Singer (1927)

Movie Quote:

Jack Robin: Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothin' yet! Wait a minute, I tell ya! You ain't heard nothin'! You wanna hear "Toot, Toot, Tootsie"? All right, hold on, hold on...

[walks back to one of the band members]

Jack Robin: Lou, listen. Play "Toot, Toot, Tootsie", three chorus, you understand. In the third chorus, I whistle. Now give it to 'em hard and heavy, go right ahead.

[band starts playing]

Trivia:

• The above quote comes from the famous 1927 Al Jolson flick The Jazz Singer, now dubbed the world’s first talkie.

• See and hear the words, with the song Toot Toot Tootsie at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFrObKv5qIs

Funny Friday

At New York’s Kennedy Airport today, an individual, later discovered to be a public school teacher, was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, and a calculator. The Attorney General believes the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged with carrying weapons of math instruction.

Maureen was attending her convent school reunion where the Reverend Mother was asking each of her ex-pupils what career she had chosen.

“I’ve become a prostitute,” said one, and the Reverend Mother promptly fainted.

When she was revived she asked the girl what she had said.

“A prostitute,” repeated the girl.

“Thank Heavens,” said the Reverend Mother, “I thought for a moment you had said Protestant.”

Movie Moments: #23

Moby Dick (1956)

Movie Quote:

 

Starbuck: To be enraged with a dumb brute that acted out of blind instinct is blasphemous.

Captain Ahab: Speak not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. Look ye, Starbuck, all visible objects are but as pasteboard masks. Some inscrutable yet reasoning thing puts forth the moulding of their features. The white whale tasks me; he heaps me. Yet he is but a mask. 'Tis the thing behind the mask I chiefly hate; the malignant thing that has plagued mankind since time began; the thing that maws and mutilates our race, not killing us outright but letting us live on, with half a heart and half a lung.

(Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab; Leo Genn as First Mate Starbuck)

Trivia:

The Starbuck's Coffee franchise took its name from the character Starbuck of the Pequod crew.

Gregory Peck (Captain Ahab) and director John Huston intended to shoot Herman Melville's Typee in 1957, but the funding fell through. Not long after, the two had a falling out after Peck discovered that Huston had been forced to cast Peck as Ahab by the Mirisch brothers at Warner's to secure financing. Peck felt Huston had deceived him into taking a part for which Peck felt he was ill-suited and, by his own admission, too young and with not enough in him for the part. Years later Peck tried to patch up his differences with the Huston rebuffed the attempt. Huston, quoted in Lawrence Grobel's biography The Hustons, said that it was too late to start over. The two never spoke to each other again

The Paradoxical Commandments

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered

Forgive them anyway

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;

Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;

Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;

Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;

Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;

Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow

Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;

Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis,

it is between you and God;

It was never between you and them anyway

Dr. Kent M. Keith is a speaker and writer who wrote the Paradoxical Commandments as a 19 year old Harvard undergraduate in 1968, in a booklet for high school student leaders.

Movie Moments: #22

  

The Naked Gun:  From the Files of Police Squad (1988)

Leslie Nielsen as Lt Frank Drebin

Priscilla Presly as Jane Spencer

Movie Quote:



[Frank seems to look up Jane's skirt as she climbs a ladder right in front of him]

Frank:   Nice beaver.

Jane:   Thank you. I just had it stuffed. [Hands him a stuffed beaver]

Movie Trivia:

The humour of the scene relies on the ambiguity of the word “beaver”, being both a rodent and the American slang term for the female genitalia.

It was this same play on words that inspired Kotex to use a beaver in its cheeky ads for a new brand of tampons, Kotex U. The ads feature a young woman sunbaking, having a manicure and chatting over coffee with a pet beaver, and uses the slogans “You've only got one so you may as well look after it” and "You've only got one. So for the ultimate care down there, make it U." The woman then hands a packet of Kotex tampons to the beaver as a gift.

The ads prompted a large number of complaints when first shown, mostly from women, as well as further complaints when the ads were allowed to continue being run.  The ads were the most complained about in that year.

Princesses and Titfers...

“Where did you get that hat? Where did you get that tile?

Isn't it a nobby one, and just the proper style?

I should like to have one just the same as that!

Where'er I go, they shout ‘Hello! Where did you get that hat?’ “

Lyrics to Where Did You Get That Hat?

James Rolmaz, 1901

Famously performed by Stanley Holloway

“The only rule is don't be boring and dress cute wherever you go. Life is too short to blend in.”

- Paris Hilton

“Where did you get that hat?”

-  Prince Philip to Queen Elizabeth after her coronation, 1953

So the fashion knives are out for the Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, especially in relation to the hat worn by Princess Bea at the Royal Wedding:

(Click on the pics to enlarge).

Movie Moments: #21

Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

Movie Quote:

Harmonica (Charles Bronson): "Did you bring a horse for me?"

Snaky (Jack Elam): (Turns to look at the horses the 3 men rode to the station, turns back and says) "Well, looks like we're shy one horse."

Harmonica: (Also slowly looks at the three horses, turns back and says) "No, you brought two too many."

Movie Trivia

The iconic opening sequence of Once Upon a Time In The West is lengthy, powerful and memorable that serves as a perfect introduction for the rest of the film. As with most Sergio Leone films, the harsh landscape is an integral part of the story, it shapes the people who live there and the events which take place in it. There is no soundtrack in the opening sequence, just the monotonous sound of the squeaking windmill, the wind, an annoying fly, and 3 men in dustcoats waiting to kill a man due to arrive on the train. That man, Charles Bronson., never has a name in the movie. He is called simply Harmonica from his playing a haunting harmonica riff  from time to time.

Al Mulock who played Knuckles, one of the three gunmen in the opening sequence, committed suicide by jumping from his hotel window after a day's shooting. He did so in full costume, including his dustcoat. Production manager Claudio Mancini and screenwriter Mickey Knox, who were sitting in a room in the hotel, witnessed Mulock's body pass by their window. Knox recalled in an interview that while Mancini put Mulock in his car to drive him to the hospital, director Sergio Leone said to Mancini, "Get the costume! We need the costume!"

Graffiti

Movie Moments: #20

How Green Was My Valley (1941)



"There is no fence nor hedge around time that is gone. You can go back and have what you like of it, if you can remember. So I can close my eyes on my valley as it is today, and it is gone, and I see it as it was when I was a boy. Green it was, and possessed of the plenty of the Earth. In all Wales, there was none so beautiful. Everything I ever learned as a small boy came from my father and I never found anything he ever told me to be wrong or worthless. The simple lessons he taught me are as sharp and clear in my mind as if I had heard them only yesterday. In those days, the black slag, the waste of the coal pits, had only begun to cover the sides of our hill. Not yet enough to mar the countryside, nor blacken the beauty of our village, for the colliery had only begun to poke its skinny black fingers through the green."

-  Huw Morgan (Roddy McDowall)

Trivia:

The film was shot in California rather than in Wales, where it is set, because of the continuous Nazi bombing of Britain in World War 2. This also accounts for it having been filmed in black and white, the colour of the flowers in Southern California not matching those in Wales.



It was the best of times...

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

- Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870),  A Tale of Two Cities

The opening words of the first paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities are well known. It employs the literary technique of doubles – the contrasting of opposite themes, locales, characters, events etc – to introduce the age and setting, the novel thereafter using doubles throughout its structure: Paris and London in 1775, when the novel is set; Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay; Lucie and Madame Defarge; good and evil, the past and the future; wisdom and folly., and so on.

The above quoted passage, in its comparisons, paradoxes and contradictions, also highlights some other aspect of the human condition. One such aspect is typified by what is known as Imbresi’s Conservation of Filth Law: “In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty.” Everything comes with a price.

Our present age has the highest technological development ever seen, yet we are overpopulating the planet, depleting its finite resources and treating the environment as though we hold a renewable lease. We are the most advanced, the most skilled, the most knowledgeable, we have ever been, yet we are beset with wars, terrorism, religious division and discord within our own societies, countries and cultures.

Read Dickens' words again and then ponder whether the statement “the period was so far like the present period” is not more apt for 2011 than for 1775.

Movie Moments: #19

As Good As It Gets (1997)

Quote:

Receptionist: How do you write women so well?

Melvin Udall: I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.

Trivia:

• Melvin Udall’s response to the question about how he writes women is an actual response given by author John Updike when asked the same question.

• The couple Melvin Udall insults in the restaurant at the beginning of the movie are played by Lisa Edelstein and Peter Jacobsen, who would later play Dr Lisa Cuddy and Dr Chris Taub in House MD

• Yeardley Smith, who plays Simon's assistant Jackie Simpson, is best known for being the voice of Lisa Simpson.



Milestone Moment

This is the one thousandth post on Bytes. I have enjoyed posting and I have enjoyed the feedback.

May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face;

the rains fall soft upon your fields

and until we meet again,

may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Some thoughts and comments about one thousand...

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.

- Buddha

I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old.

- Charles Baudelaire

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?

- Friedrich Nietzsche

If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again.

- Flavia Weedn

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

- Lao Tzu

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.

- Buddha

Listen a hundred times; ponder a thousand times; speak once.

- Turkish Proverb

May you live a thousand years, and I, a thousand less one day; that I might never know the world without you.

- Hungarian proverb

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Measure a thousand times and cut once.

- Turkish proverb

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

- Napoleon Bonaparte

A reputation for a thousand years may depend upon the conduct of a single moment.

- Ernest Bramah



Movie Moments: #18

Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)

Henry V111 (Richard Burton) and Anne Boleyn (Genevieve Bujold)

King Henry VIII: Then, Anne, lets do all gently for old times sake. I have no wish to harm you, and your words have moved me deeply. I must be free to have a son, and the son must be free to rule England when I die.

Anne: Why must you leave a king to follow you, Henry? Why not a queen?

King Henry VIII: This country has never been ruled by a queen. I know it never could be. We can never have a son now, God has spoken. I must have a son elsewhere. And it's getting late. I'm not as young as I was.

Anne: What do you want of me?

King Henry VIII: Agree to annul the marriage and give up all rights. You shall go abroad and take Elizabeth

with you. You will be well cared for. Please set me free.

Anne: To marry Seymour and make our child a bastard? No. No. No.

Anne: But Elizabeth is yours. Watch her as she grows; she's yours. She's a Tudor! Get yourself a son off of that sweet, pale girl if you can - and hope that he will live! But Elizabeth shall reign after you! Yes, Elizabeth - child of Anne the Whore and Henry the Blood-Stained Lecher - shall be Queen! And remember this: Elizabeth shall be a greater queen than any king of yours! She shall rule a greater England than you could ever have built! Yes - MY Elizabeth SHALL BE QUEEN! And my blood will have been well spent!

Movie Trivia

Richard Burton had been with Elizabeth Taylor since 1963, when Cleopatra had been filmed. By 1969 when Anne of the Thousand Days was being filmed, there were reports that his eye had begin to wander. Shooting was in England and word came back to Elizabeth Taylor that Burton and Genevieve Bujold, the female lead of Anne, were getting on perhaps a little too well. She decided to visit the set and did so when the final scene was being filmed, the scene in which Henry confronts Anne in the Tower of London. The above monologue by Anne comes from that final scene. When Bujold heard of Taylor’s arrival, she “was fighting mad” records the producer, Hal B Wallis. According to Wallis: "She turned to Jarrott and me and said, ‘I'm going to give that bitch an acting lesson she'll never forget!’ then took her position in front of the camera. What seemed a misfortune suddenly turned into an advantage. Genevieve flung herself into the scene with a display of acting skill I have seldom seen equalled in my career. Then she stormed off the set. Soon after filming finished, we had an end-of-the-picture party. The two actresses held court at opposite ends of the room. Richard Burton very pointedly never left Elizabeth's side."