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Otter's Replies
I loved both R1 and TFA on first viewing, but I think R1 is going to be the fan favorite in years to come. As others have noted TFA has a painful central weakness, in that the script is a total ripoff of ANH; and the more times you watch it the more the similarities get on your nerves. I haven't seen R1 as many times but I do think it'll stand the test of time, and of a hundred viewings over the years.
How I have to say there are a set of fans who are so upset with the idea of a female Jedi that they're making a hobby out of ripping TFA and calling Rey a Mary-Sue, as if wish-fulfillment characters hadn't been a part of Star Wars since the beginning. And it's not like the derivative TFA doesn't have a hell of a lot of grounds for valid criticism, it's a fun movie to watch but a huge misstep regarding the fandom - Disney should have made something that a fan can watch a dozen time or a hundred, and on that front TFA is a failure.
"Vader's henchmen is Snoke! "
I will keep an eye out for that when I get my blue-ray player working! What a cool idea, if true!
Truth to tell, I was so busy thinking "Ooooh, lava, way cool..." to notice a detail like that. I love volcanoes.
After two viewings: IMHO it's a cracking good film!
I don't rank things, but it's definitely one of the best of the series, a suspenseful and gripping film and a way cool tour through the Star Wars universe. It's better than TFA, and builds on its strengths without any of the derivative script that was a crippling weakness, and it gives me real hope that Disney is going to do a good job overall.
I'm no combat veteran, but I think it's very possible that a huge, strong, enraged man who is armed with a knife could kill two unarmed people without a scratch on him, given that it was dark and he had the element of surprise on his side both times. A black belt who's used to doing all his fighting in a dojo wouldn't necessarily react in time if a great big psycho jumped out from cover and stabbed him without warning.
And I don't say that a frame-up was impossible, but it's incredibly unlikely that even the dirtiest cop would give up on finding the real killers and decide to frame a celebrity who was known for distributing largesse to the police and for being able to afford the best lawyers in the world, within an hour or two of discovering the crime and without knowing how good OJ's alibi was. I suppose it's possible that there could have been collusion between the real killer and a dirty cop, but it's infinitely more likely that an abusive man who'd been threatening his ex-wife's life acted on his threats. And nothing has some out about a different killer in all the time that's passed, while OJ has been writing about "If I Did It".
Even out here in Podunk the LAPD has a terrible reputation - corruption, brutality, and letting celebrities get away with... anything. If a fraction of what I've heard is true, they'd be more likely to let a celebrity get away with murder than frame one for it, especially someone like OJ who made a point of throwing parties for police. Who knows what that means - hookers, blow, bribes, whatever, they were already letting him get away with domestic violence and stalking.
So if someone says they don't think it likely that OJ was framed by the LAPD, it's not necessarily a compliment to the police.
On the case of Faux news, I'm sure he was!
But I wonder if there was any way out of having his true nature become an issue. Even if the LAPD had sent him on a year-long assignment into the Australian Outback to keep him off the stand, the defense would still have been able to say that crucial evidence had been collected by a detective who'd made racist statements to the press. Am I wrong in thinking that all the dirt on him would still have been allowable, even he wasn't present?
As portrayed in the show, he was a guy who had a conscience and some compassion under his shallow, starstruck exterior. I have no idea what the real man was like, of course, but Schwimmer did an excellent job of playing a man who realizes there's a serious conflict between his inner decency and the values he's been living by. Having inner conflicts within the Dream Team was vital to the drama, they absolutely had to have someone there wrestling with his conscience, or it would have been a very simplistic good-guys-vs-bad-guys story.
I can't say the same for all the appearances by his kids, they were totally gratuitous.
Lancaster thought Clift was better than he was. He had no formal training in acting and had only been working a few years, he was intimidated by Clift's talent and just wanted to be able to hold his own. He wasn't entirely happy to be nominated for an Oscar for this film, he thought Clift deserved to win and knew his nomination would split the vote and cost Clift a win.
Personally, I'm with Lancaster, I think Clift was excellent in this film and it's the best performance of his career, a full expression of his talent. Lancaster holds his own, but he doesn't do anything extraordinary.
We know.
And the ocean is very wet.
I could see them getting together if Rhett ever went through with divorcing her, and she realized that if she ever wanted to show her face in Atlanta society again, she needed to marry a highly respectable man from a good family. And face it, it Scarett came to him and demanded that he marry her, he'd do it for reasons of honor and sympathy and because someone with a stronger personality had told him what to do.
But she'd never to it because... You're right, by the end of the story she was kind of embarrassed about her feelings for Ashley. Nothing kills romance like embarrassment.
The Production Code was fully in effect in 1946, and it forbade the inclusion of real sizzle and passion in Hollywood films.
Yeah, bah!
I think the sister was is massive, bone-deep denial about her dear little brother and what he'd become as an adult, but even she wouldn't mistake another person for him!
As for little hints that he was an impostor, well, Hitchcock loved misdirection and little jokes on the audience.
In the book the narrator tells us that the DeWinters are living a simple life in Italy as the story is told, with bread and butter for tea instead of the table full of baked goods that was the rule back at Manderly. Their motives for such a drastic change are not made clear; it could be that they're no longer as rich, or maybe they fled from scandal and bad memories, or maybe Mrs. DeWinter is now calling the shots and this is what she likes (my pet theory).
I would assume that something more drastic than mere unhappiness was behind the switch, it would take a massive impetus to get a traditional English landowner like DeWinter to abandon his lands and his relationship with his tenants, under normal circumstances he'd consider that an abandonment of traditional responsibilities. So I'm assuming that either hes in reduced circumstances, or there was a massive scandal and he doesn't want to deal with anyone at home.
I was 16 or 17 when I first saw it, and was so horrified at all the adults playing kids MY age that I didn't enjoy it at all!
I only learned to appreciate this film when I was much older, in my thirties like some of the cast.
Actually Henry's goal was to bring The Rule Of Law to England, and he enacted tremendous legal reforms during his reign - giving power to juries and setting up local courts to administer justice instead of requiring all disputes to be brought to the king. Beckett stood in his way, because he was thinking in terms of power politics and cared more about protecting the church's perogatives than administering justice or protecting the weak.
Henry was right and Beckett was wrong on this issue. And if Beckett was following his conscience, well, sometimes a well-intentioned person's conscience is wrong.
Or "Brokeback Mountain", or the last two "Captain America" movies.
I still bet you ten bucks he dies before the end of the series, just because the mentor character always dies - it's an official part of The Hero's Journey. So Luke will probably go the say of Been and Yoda.
And my guess is that he'll go in this film, leaving Rey as the last you-know-what.
I will definitely be interested in seeing them, because I had previously suspected that Snoke made them up.
Or maybe he did, and he found some other fools with Force powers who are also willing to believe in his lies.
Very thorough and insightful response.
The only thing you left out was the rise of Protestantism, and how Henry's personal desires drove an entire nation from the Catholic church and into Protestantism... or rather, changed the government's official stance. Not every citizen of England believed in the change, and yes, the change brought on generations of conflict between English Catholics and Protestants and accusations of heresy on both sides and executions and burnings.
While I am no fan of the Catholic church, I have to say that Henry's disregard of the price of change would have made me oppose him too. All he cared about was his own needs, he didn't give a rat's ass about what the effects of the divorce and everything that came with it would have on his subjects.