Movies

[barton2]

Also like The Conspirator, almost forgotten as a 2011 movie.  The resonance with post-Patriot Act America....thought it was well-done and would give the film more presence on Best Of lists than it did. 

[madupont]

http://news.moviefone.com/2011/11/06/colin-firth-on-tinker-tai_n_1190490.html

An abbreviated version of this was previously on-line and more concerned with baseball than Direction; but within this interview, we find a clip of Gary Oldman,looking as aged as his own Dracula (compared, for instance to Frank Langella, harrie, who has always looked and behaved as he did in Wilton or how else does one become a star? Actors are always "on" when given the opportunity to address their real live audience in some unexpected place. It is what makes them actors.  Of course, Lady Gaga showed up in my area recently but was very demure and quiet; because she came to visit her "boyfriend" whom I think is possibly underage compared to her and what we otherwise always referred to as a "boy-toy".

[harrie]

I know what you're saying (about Langella), madupont, but he broke the code.  At a Friendly's, which is funny or sad or both.  (The code being, celebrities act like regular people, and the regular people give them their privacy.)   Thanks for answering the question of whether Mme. Gaga dresses theatrically in her down time - good to know.   

[barton2]

Saw The Conspirator on DVD this weekend, and it's as good as I remember it.  One year after Mary Surrat was hanged, the Supreme Court ruled that all private citizens were entitled to a jury trial.  And the shunned lawyer ends up as editor of a major newspaper -- so you feel he didn't just give up, after being driven out of the legal profession, but found a way to continue his advocacy.

All the ensemble are good (well, Justin Long not so much) -- it's not a film where an actor or two are shouting, "look at me!  I'm Oscar-worthy!" -- just solid work and a minimum of bloopers....at one point, defense lawyer calls her by her first name, which in 1865 you just would not do.  It would always be "Mrs. Surrat."  The lighting and set design of the courtroom was notable....really captured an oppressive feeling.  A lot of people underrate Redford, because what he does isn't flashy -- it's just really good - quiet competence and mastery.

     

[harrie]

I think a couple of Redford's flicks have been so non-flashy they're kind somnambulant (not to be confused with sleep-inducing).  The Legend of Bagger Vance comes to mind, and I was going to mention Cuba Havana, which I thought he directed, but he didn't.  That being said, once you've sat through his stuff, more often than not you're glad you did.  In checking on Havana, I noted that RR has a flick in post-production - The Company You Keep - with an excellent-looking cast (Tucci, Sam Elliot, Brendan Gleeson, Stephen Root, Susan Sarandon, Julie Christie .... and more!)  I look forward to that as well.  Redford: not just a pretty boy.

re The Conspirator, it took me a minute to figure out Kevin Kline and Stephen Root, and I totally missed Jonathan Groff in the movie; but the second he showed up, "Oh, Justin Long's in this."  So, yeah.

[madupont]

harrie, "at one point, defense lawyer calls her by her first name, which in 1865 you just would not do.  It would always be "Mrs. Surrat." 

Given the chronological order of things this may be worse than something that was a recent faux pas between two of the senior actors on Downton Abbey in the slightly pre-war and WW1 and post-war era in the house (on loan) of Lord Carnarvon, the great explorer who conducted excavations in Egypt. They now call the house(huge) something else but, if you are going to play in quite so bigger than anybody else's home, you might as well get the diction correctly rehearsed before the cameras record this for posterity. I grant you that although their manners are English and the owners came from elsewhere and only bought the edifice, there is a good chance in Wales some linguistic confusion could occur. Especially when you have the chutzpah to name the housekeeper,"Mrs. Hughes".

After having discovered one of her housemaids in flagrant delicto with a British officer who had to wrap himself in a flannel sheet, dismissing the girl from the household only to be visited by her in an obviously fallen estate where she announces, "I am going to have a baby....", Mrs. Hughes thinks better of it; but not much other than visiting their one room digs, eventually sending her off with bicycle baskets of food from the larder that is supposed to be used for "feeding the men" assigned to their castle turned convalescent hospital until the end of the war to end all wars, she writes the absent father who refused to talk with her in person and acknowledge the baby when he barely could be interested in acknowledging Mrs. Hughes beneath his station in life. With  quick writing, he was pronounced dead by notice of the war office.
                  So I believe it was Mrs. Hughes who was discussing "the what should I do?" of it all, with Carson the prominent Head Butler(who is even taller and more imposing than the Earle of Grantham for whom he works) when he mistakenly improvises, and alas, uses the present day term: "Baby daddy" when he meant to say," the daddy's baby". He gets points anyway for not once losing his composure having said this. Nor did Mrs. Hughes who delivers her lines to cover, in character and without losing a beat because she is given to hectic expectations of hurried improvisation in a household this overworked.

[Lhoffman]

I think you might have misheard, but if I'm wrong, I'd love to see that scene.   Here's a link to the show.  Do you have any idea how far into the episode this scene took place?   

Here's the link to the show:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2192345432

[madupont]

It is in Series Two  which deals with the place being turned into the convalescent home for wounded men brought back from the front. I missed most all of the opening Series One because I wasn't really quite that interested until following the death of the visiting Turkish gentleman as an indication of what it meant to be courted since at that point eldest daughter Mary was  as yet rather unlikeable. The contrast between her and second daughter Edith showed me only that I had once worn clothes like that which my great-aunt referred to as an
"anachronism" (or, that I was.) As we were then "late counter-culture".

By now, their youngest sister,Sybil, is almost always shown in her nursing uniform. You would have to come in at the point where Matthew Crowley and his servant William go missing and then come home wounded.  Kitchen-maid, Daisy has to be coaxed by the cook, Mrs. Patmore to marry William, a big lummox, even as she had to coax the tiny girl to become engaged to him "to get him through the war".

The real anachronisms are seen at the battle stations in the trenches when you realize that William really is Matthew's "man" and that they are still carrying out the feudal order of things in what is supposedly a modern world particularly in terms of the weaponry which the Germans have all over them, in the era of mechanized warfare (for this you have to go see the movie: War Horse, to appreciate how big the difference. The British had always been foot-soldiers until rather late in the game (for which you have to see Kate Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine).

With Downton Abbey, you have the girls walking home their cart horse and cart after the horse has thrown a shoe because, I really can't think of anyone in their league, as they are playing it, who would be willing to lend them a stable of horses up to their station as they are playing it. But then on the other hand they do have a motor-car, which is the problem because the Irish Troubles are just beginning to the west of them across the Irish Sea and their chauffeur is definitely Irish in that regard with Scandinavian derived name and pretty much a Socialist in his knowledge of what is happening.    We have nothing fussing about "The Hunt" which is still play-acted out in my part of the world and which I detest for what it has done to people like Christopher Reeve. I also lost one or two school-mates at high-school age.       

 I don't really have a chart of the sequence of episodes in series 2 or even what they were in series 1, I'll look at yours and try to figure it out and see if I can find the location of the slip of the tongue because plenty of other people heard it as well and remarked about the oddity.

[Lhoffman]

I'm guessing it would be in last Sunday's episode...which is what I posted.   I didn't look through the week before, though.     
 
The first scene between Carson and Mrs. Hughes is around 10 minutes in.   

......

I bought the first season and got hooked on it.   Am watching the current season, thinking about buying the DVD as well.   A lot to like in this series. 

[madupont]

Yes/ that is the episode but below is some information that surprised me:

"Don Williams
Hello I need some help .) My wife and i am trying to watch/catch up the last few weeks with this show. We thought we caught up after watching season 1 on PBS though what we taped as the start of the replay for season 2 and what show up on PBS as the start of season 2 is different. So...We decided to but it though now i find out that the US version has been cut and it is not the same as the version... that thy saw in England. I very much want to buy the version that England saw and not the version that is being sold in the states. Is the uncut version that England saw on sale on Blu Ray in the states. I think season 1 is though i am not sure about season 2 that PBS is showing at the present. Help and thank you in advance."

The scene that I looked for was at about 12:50 on your tape and of course you are right about what you saw and heard. I noticed lapses or abbreviations of scenes, sometimes shot at other angles. So that is what we are getting, sometimes different takes removed and shown at one location while at another locale the local station may have received the episode with different "takes" reshot.
On well, ever onward, tally ho!

[Lhoffman]

The scene that I looked for was at about 12:50..

..

Sometimes I feel like subtitles would be helpful when listening to Britspeak.   I find myself reversing and listening over and again.   I've been tempted to do this when watching the series of my television, but it doesn't have that capability.

But reading about the cuts, I'm definitely getting the version from English television.   In checking, I see that the version I have of the first season is the British version.  

Tally ho...I play a game on Facebook called Gardens of Time.   Great fun, initially based, I think, on the Victorian British mania for collections.   It begins with the idea of storing collections in a garden, but then simply goes nuts, with players collecting things like the Great Wall of China, the Empire State Building, Trojan Horses and the like..