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A powerful & positive role model for many in real life! If only more followed it.
Absolutely. I would have preferred a movie that was solely about her character & her story.
If I could upvote your post, I'd do it countless times!
<i>Very</i> close calls, as I remember. For someone who had been a small boy in the dock & cover era, with missile raid drills disrupting classes for us 2nd- & 3rd-graders, having that fear revived in the 1980s struck a deep & frightened nerve.
Ray Walston had a thriving career long before My Favorite Martian. Just check out Damn Yankees for one example.
"Miracle" doesn't have to be literal. It can be a metaphor, as it is in this wonderful film.
Exactly. Well said.
To this day, the old Rankin-Bass animated TV version of The Hobbit is my go-to for that story as a movie. While not perfect, as if leaves out Beorn and the Arkenstone, it gets the tone right & respects the source material. It even includes a lot of the songs from the book!
Look at the attention the British royal family gets even today. People in the early 1950s were far more enamored of royalty then, and Princess Ann would definitely be a major media figure because she's young, charming, beautiful, and of course still unmarried. Which in turn would have everyone wondering who she would eventually marry. Obviously, she didn't want the celebrity. but felt it was her duty to her country. That shyness would make her all the more appealing to the public.
There have been quite a few movies about historical characters, and quite often the portrayals of the same characters in different films have been <b>very</b> different. Again, <i>The Lion in Winter</i> is not a documentary, nor did it ever claim to be. It's an interpretation by an individual screenwriter who did a great deal of research, came to his own artistic conclusions about the characters, and used the historical framework to tell the story he wanted to tell. Besides, even historians can look at the source material about people from hundreds of years ago & come to very different conclusions about what they were like.
I understand that you disagree with this particular characterization of Richard intensely. And that's your right. Plenty of people would agree with you. And plenty others wouldn't.
Personally, I find the portrayal of Richard quite sympathetic, showing us the anguish & fear that he carries with him & that he dares not show to the world. He desperately wants his father's approval, as he's shown himself to be a strong, brave fighter. Even if he's gay, that doesn't change his strength & courage one bit. He's a complex man. And this portrayal makes him all the more human to my mind.
Exactly. The only question is, does the portrayal work for the particular story being told, in the way that it's being told. And it does work for this film. These are the characters as written by the screenwriter, to tell the story he wanted to tell. That's what matters here.
It's well worth watching, with a superb final episode to round it out.
Absolutely!
More like a deeply damaged person struggling with monstrous fears, which he attempted to exorcise through his writing. And in doing so, creating a new genre of horror.
I feel rather sorry for them, because they're needlessly cutting a vast array of wonderful, imaginative, emotionally powerful movies out of their lives.
Quite a few of the best TV series only last 1 or 2 seasons, because they're different or challenging, and they don't get a mass following. Only afterwards are they recognized for their quality.
Conversely, a great many TV series that are mediocre at best go on for season after season after season, precisely because they <i>don't</i> challenge the majority of the audience. They provide comfortable & reassuring material -- and sometimes do that very well, to be sure -- but they're more immediately accessible to the majority.
The thing to remember is, Popular does not necessarily equal Good or Important. It can & it has at times, but not that often. Justin Bieber in his heyday outsold both Mozart & Miles Davis, but did that make him a better or more important musical artist than either of them? Will he be regarded with the same respect in the future? I don't think so. And this applies to TV series as well.
The film actually makes a lot of sense.
For one thing, the problem of children being crushed by the demands of their parents is always relevant. Too often parents will try to live out their own unfulfilled dreams through their children, seeing those children as extensions of themselves, not individuals with their own needs & dreams.
For another thing, it raises questions about life. Is it solely utilitarian, or is there something deeper, more rewarding & satisfying, to be found? Keating touches on this with his lines:
“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”
Yes, there are things we do in order to sustain life. But there is (or can be) more to life than that. Are we just cogs in the social-economic machine, or do our individual lives have meaning & purpose? Poetry is one way of discovering that meaning & purpose. Not the only way, but one of them.
Yes, this movie makes a lot of sense!
Neil didn't expect his father to underwrite his dream. He just wanted to have some measure of personal choice in his own life. Maybe he wouldn't have succeeded as an actor, who knows? But at least he'd have been able to give it his all.
And Neil's father didn't want to best for his son, he wanted to live out his own thwarted dreams through his son. He couldn't admit that to himself, so of course he was convinced that he was doing it all for Neil. But he was always doing it for his own emotional needs, without once considering Neil's own needs.
As always, a calm, intelligent response to someone's self-imposed nitpicking.
It doesn't need fixing. It's ramshackle, rough around the edges, uneven ... and that's exactly what makes it so much fun.