Posted on 03/09/2005 7:38:46 AM PST by KeithMyloe
"Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, riding through the town..."
Both of them. I read Atlas Shrugged as a sophomore in High School and it changed my entire perspective. The Fountainhead did not grab me like Atlas Shrugged but it is a good book nonetheless.
Wolverines!!!!
I would also like to recommend a very old British movie, made during WWII. It is called "Mrs. Minever" and stars Greer Garson. A family in an English village suffers through the war; the husband takes his boat and evacuates soldiers at Dunkirk, they are perpetually in black-out due to bombing raids, and at the end their very old church is bombed. Through it all they keep a stiff upper lip and press on, trying to maintain the traditions of village life. The ending is all of them standing and singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" in the ruined church. Very inspirational, and I highly recommend it.
I agree with you about your two movie choices. Second Hand Lions was fabulous; our nieces bought it for us last year.
And did you know there's a second Mrs. Miniver movie with all the same characters? It's wonderful. Not quite as good as the original of course, because it's after the war and the emotional level isn't quite as high, but a terrific story nonetheless.
No, I didn't know about the second movie. I only became aware of "Mrs. Minever" about 8 years ago; my sister was staying with me when I had my knee surgery and it happened to be on AMC and she insisted that we watch it.
I first saw Mrs. Miniver after 9/11 when I heard it mentioned by Rudy Guliani, I think it was. I mentioned it to my mom and she told me how much I'd enjoy it so I went to the library and they had it.
Since then I've watched it 3-4 times (something I rarely do) and once when I was renting it from the library I noticed it's companion. I think it's called The Minivers. You'd enjoy it.
I haven't seen Mrs. Minever in some time, and while I don't remember too much about it, I remember it being as good as you say.
"I not sure I understand you since.........The movie Rob Roy was based on Sir Walter Scott's novel which is named, amazingly enough, ROB ROY."
Hollywood has made hundreds of movies about real life characters but for good reasons, chose not to title the movie after the character. For example, Helter Skelter wasn't titled "Charles Manson".
Bottom line, Doc, is that Rob Roy was a bad choice for a title. It has nothing to do with the character or the quality of the movie. Just a bad title - period.
"Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, riding through the town..."
Holy Crap! This is weird! I was just singing that song in my head two days ago and then I see this post!
"He robs from the rich and gives to the poor, stupid bitch!"
I think you're still missing my point. As I've noted above, you're stuck on the word 'character'.
I could rephrase your sentence:
".....Hollywood has made hundreds of movies adapted from books and for good reasons, chose to title the movie after the book......"
ROB ROY, the movie, is an ADAPTATION of a famous novel entitled ROB ROY. They retained the name to signify that it was faithful to the original novel for the more literate viewers who they thought would be their core audiance. If they changed the name to LAND or THE SCOTSMAN then their core audiance would not be aware of the content of the movie in glancing quickly through the 'Movies' page of the newspaper.
Yes, I agree with you [*LOL*!!!] they could have named it something different.....more "Hollywood", as it were. However, they chose not to because it was an 'adaptation' of the novel NOT an 'Original Screenplay'. Indeed, the movie industry itself recognizes two separate, entirely different, Oscar catagories in this regard:
Screenplay, Original
Screenplay, Adaptation.
I'm sure you're aware of this.
What do you think they should have named the ADAPTATION of Margret Mitchell's novel GONE WITH THE WIND?
To my ears this sounds kind of flatulent. Surely they could do better? Or do they want to make sure the core audiance knows that this movie is a faithful adaptaion of the book?
Flight of the Intruder, from 1991.
To tell you the truth, it's not that great a film, but with right-winger John Milius at the helm it's probably the only Vietnam War movie ever made that argues that America should have handled the war more aggressively (to win it) or never entered in the first place-- the exact same position Barry Goldwater took on 'Nam in 1964.
If one can overlook the co-starring role of socialist Danny Glover in the film (and I can), then you can enjoy the scene where Willem Dafoe defies his politically-hamstrung orders (and weak U.S. policy) to bomb the hell out of a Hanoi "safe area". I'd say that's about as conservative as it gets in Hollywood.
And Hey, if that one's not to taste you can always watch Blazing Saddles again (okay, not really conservative, but so anti-PC and I LOVE it!).
RE: "THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW
(I'm posting this just to piss off the libs)."
I dare even the staunchest Christian conservative t stay still when the "Time Warp" number comes on. Everybody with me now: "It's just a jump to the left..."
RE: "Dude, Where's My Car?"
"How in the heck is that a Republican Themed movie?"
In a way, I guess you could say that it's a Libertarian movie, just like Up in Smoke (and No, I'm not high...right now).
I have been waiting for someone to bitch and moan about the "heteronormative" nature of The Incredibles nuclear family (the superhero mother actually is a housewife and does housework!), but so far, nothing. Thank God the designer Edna Mode was a woman (albeit voiced by writer-director Brad Bird) instead of a Queer Eye-inspired guy. I would have expected as much from a guy who used to write for The Simpsons.
BTW, Incredibles is the first halfway decent movie I have ever seen with the unendingly irritating milquetoast, Wallace Shawn. If you're not familiar with Shawn, imagine this: Woody Allen is Shawn on steroids. For years, a rule of thumb has been "If Wallace Shawn is in it, it's gotta suck."
I ran into Shawn while channel-surfing, finding him on PBS' NOW show (which I didn't know Bill Moyers didn't take with him into retirement). He has edited a journal full of anti-American screeds called Final Edition, and whined on about how uncomfortable it is to be a privileged American artist, although he admitted he wasn't ready to abdicate his position as such. Click here to read the transcript, if you have digested your last meal.
I laughed at Red Dawn when I first heard the concept, and especially a publicity photo showing the steel-eyed Reds with fatigues and guns in front of a McDonald's, but in retrospect, what are we to believe the USA would look like if Stalinists succeeded in occupying sections of the country?
Milius also was a collaborator with Robert (Forrest Gump, Cast Away, Back to The Future) Zemeckis and Bob Gale in the screenplays for the critically panned Spielberg epic 1941 (which I have never seen -- it's over 2.5 hours long) and the vastly underrated Used Cars. He spent most of the nineties under the radar, but it seems that halfway through the zeroes, he's back in the saddle, with several projects in the hopper, and I'm glad to see it. Lionel Chetwynd can't bear the burden alone.
Mrs. Miniver is the movie that everyone notes when asking why Wizard of Oz didn't win Best Picture. I saw Miniver for the first time last Oscar season, when one of the classic movie cable nets played a Best Picture winner every night. Oz is a timeless children's tale (at least the movie version), whereas Miniver was a product of the times, when it was very much in doubt whether the West as we knew it would survive Nazism. The only people who could fail to be moved by that ending are the heartless and those who think that because everything turned out fine, it was needlessly propagandish and manipulative -- as if movies like, say, Philadelphia weren't also.
It would take a tragedy of proportions that make 9/11 seem small to make a movie like Mrs. Miniver possible today.
Instead, they made a whiney movie about the rescued female soldier and that was it. Ibelieve they also have some anti-war movies coming out this summer.
I believe I will watch Mrs. Minever again. It is more relevant than anything coming out of Hollywood today.
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