Movie Moments: #28

Synopsis:

To give the firm its full title, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, is a 1963 black comedy directed, produced and co-written by Stanley Kubrick. It satirises the nuclear scare by depicting a rogue general sending a flight of B52’s into Russia for a first strike nuclear attack. With the assistance of the US President and military, most of the bomb carrying planes are shot down.  The rest are brought back when the recall code is obtained, except for one. That plane, commanded by Major T J “King” Kong, is severely damaged and has had its communications and electronics knocked out but manages to stay airborne until it reaches its target. Finding that the bomb is unable to be released, Major Kong straddles it and releases it manually, riding it down whilst whooping and waving his cowboy hat, the biggest phallic symbol in all of moviedom. The movie closes with film of multiple nuclear explosions as Vera Lynn sings “We’ll Meet Again”.

Quote:

Major T. J. "King" Kong: “Well, boys, I reckon this is it - nuclear combat toe to toe with the Roosskies . . . Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find:

one forty-five calibre automatic;

two boxes of ammunition;

four days' concentrated emergency rations;

one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquiliser pills;

one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible;

one hundred dollars in rubles;

one hundred dollars in gold;

nine packs of chewing gum;

one issue of prophylactics;

three lipsticks;

three pair of nylon stockings.

Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.”

Trivia:

There are some production associations with the death of President John F Kennedy:

• The film was produced and filmed during the spring and summer of 1963 with the first test screening scheduled for November 22, 1963, the day that John F Kennedy was assassinated. Because the movie is a black comedy involving the American President, the premiere was rescheduled for late January 1964.

• Major Kong's above comment about the survival kit was originally "A fella could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas with all that stuff". "Dallas" was overdubbed with "Vegas" after President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Although it is heard as“Vegas”, Kong still mouths the word "Dallas".

• There is a deleted pie-fight scene in the War Room during which US President Muffley took a pie in the face and fell down, prompting General Turgidson to cry, "Gentlemen! Our gallant young president has just been struck down in his prime!" Stanley Kubrick had already decided to cut the pie fight, and the line about the President, by the time President John F Kennedy was assassinated.

Ducks, Communists and Lawyers...

"If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck."

- Senator Joseph McCarthy,

in a 1952 speech, suggesting a method for identifying communists and communist sympathizers.

We lawyers like to use the above phrase. I have used it myself in court.

Joseph McCarthy, quoted above, himself was a lawyer and a judge before serving in World War 2 as a marine. On completion of his war service he became a politician and hunter of communists, both real and imagined. He was not, however, the originator of the saying or the first to use it.

The phrase is often referred to as the “duck test”” and is a crude, but often effective, form of reasoning that eliminates alternative, unlikely possibilities and identifies a most likely or most correct assessment.

The saying is sometimes confused with the following:

1. Occam’s Razor: “When there are two competing explanations for an event, the simpler is the more likely.”

See: http://bytesdaily.blogspot.com/search?q=occam%27s

2. Skeptic’s Test: “Where there are two competing explanations for an event, one explanation is consistent with laws of science, reason and logic and the other requires suspension of belief in such laws and principles, then the former should prevail until the latter is proven.

Although there is some overlap, they are separate and distinct laws and principles.

Movie Moments: #27

Synopsis:

The Blind Side depicts the true story of Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), a homeless, traumatised and oversized African-American youngster from a broken home. Michael is taken in by Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock), Sean Tuohy (Tim McGraw) and their two children, a well-off white family who help him to achieve his academic and sporting potential and to meet his challenges, enabling him to eventually become an All-American footballer. In the process, the Tuohy family make self-discoveries of their own.

Quote:

Sean Tuohy: You really expect Michael to lay down on a couch and talk about his childhood like he's Woody Allen or something? I mean, Michael's gift is his ability to forget. He's mad at no one and he really doesn't care happened in the past.

Leigh Anne Tuohy: You're right.

Sean Tuohy: Excuse me? “You're right”?  How'd those words taste coming out of your mouth?

Leigh Anne Tuohy: Like vinegar.

Trivia:

When Quinton Aaron auditioned for the film, he was working as a security guard between acting gigs. After his audition, he left a card with his contact information and offered to work as a security guard on the set in case he wasn't selected to play Michael Oher.

The real Tuohy family and Michael Oher.

Problem Fixed

The problem with the blog server that prevented not only me, but also many in Asia and Australia, posting content, has been fixed by the host of the blogs, Google.  As a result Bytes is back on track. 

Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised) are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software.

~Author Unknown

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.