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daveyh's Replies
interesting that you've mentioned Sylvester Stallone, because a while ago, I watched a rather poor biopic on Al Capone from the 1970s, the only thing I remember was that Sylvester Stallone was in it, looks very young, presumably pre-Rocky. Can't even remember what the film was called or even who Stallone was playing, think he was one of Capone's underlings or bodyguards.
But he's featured in a movie set in that era, and more pertinently, Scarface is essentially the story of Al Capone, presumably they had to change names for legal reasons, but the St Valentines Massacre is in there, along with obviously the scar itself! So he's sort of been in a "remake" of Scarface, just not as the lead
thing is, if the murders are a fantasy, you've got to wonder what other aspects of his life/identity are also only in his head. He could not be rich or successful, either in his own right or through family money, or be the well dressed, athletic handsome guy he projects to be - it would have been funny if he'd looked in a mirror of his American Gardens building appartment towards the end of the movie and the audience could see an overweight, pasty-faced slob staring back , with what appeared to be a scruffy cramped garret in the background.
and yet Diner gets credited as being the first film in which supposedly pointless conversations and stories took place throughout. Not pointless at all though because, like here, it was all character forming and part of the experience.
But these guys were doing it over 20 years earlier!
beards (and to a lesser extent hairstyles and other fashions), smartphones, and the changes in the world post-2019, would distinguish a movie set in 2009 from now. Not to the same extent though, I'd agree.
Funnily enough I read a while ago that the original series of The Wonder Years ran from the late 1980s to the early 1990s and focused on the period in the late 1960s, so just 20 years earlier but would have seemed a lifetime earlier because of all the change in culture and society since then.
By contrast, made now with a similar time lapse, it would be covering the first few years of this century - 9/11, the Iraq War, hurricane Katrina, none of it feels as long ago as the 1960s would to someone in 1990.
"no, it was after midnight" - especially dumb because by saying that, he'd admitted breaking curfew in addition to vandalising the school
"yeah, sure" to his dad when he tells him he doesn't condone the juvenile misdemeanours Uncle Junior had just been describing
I agree. Not seen Beta House yet but the other 2 "AP Presents...." movies have had a Stifler at the centre of the story, whereas this one was about a group of 3 guys who weren't even friends with Stifler, so for most of the movie, the Stifler character was just kinda there - caricature is a good description, the main purpose of him (and his jock friends) seemed to be to show guys behaving like arrogant jerks and being successful with the ladies, in contrast to the 3 protagonists.
Not only changed his character - it's just too much to believe, given his dorkiness, that he'd have started off the Naked Mile and the Book of Love. If he'd done so with the latter, you'd have thought he'd have let Jim know about it in the first one.
I get that they had to work him into this movie somehow but I'm sure there was a better way than that. The cameos by Dusin Diamond and C Thomas Howell were a nice touch though
My problem with Erik is that he didn't 'look' like a Stifler. The others (including the one in the book of love, too), you could actually believe that the actors playing them are somehow related. At least, they've all got a certain look about them.
Given that he acted differently too, maybe they should be questioning Erik's heritage.
As far as the OP goes, as another poster's already said, Steve was the ultimate as he's the original and the one against whom the others are measured.
I'd agree though that Dwight is the most likeable of them - seems more sensible and friendlier, while still being enough of a party animal to lord it over his frat brothers and the other students
I found it more ridiculous that there were just a couple of random patches of slimy mud on an otherwise pristine field on a sunny day in the middle of spring.
she plays a similar role in John Tucker Must Die the following year and impresses in that too.
Last thing I saw her in was A Bride For Christmas but that movie's probably about 10 years old now
also worth bearing in mind Steve's time at high school ends with the first AP movie, so his antics and lack-of-growing-up shown in 2 and 3 wouldn't be known by the majority of students who would have graduated with him.
It's a bit of a strange dynamic anyway and unclear how friendly Stifler was with Jim, Finch and Kevin before AP1 starts - I get the impression they're almost "friends-in-law" and only associate with him through Ox. They go to parties at his house but so does the entire school, it seems. And while they tire of him and don't particularly want him around in 2 and 3, some of that is because of the tension between him and Finch after what happened at the end of AP1.
But if AP1 shows us anything, it's that Stifler seems to be far better friends with the other Lacrosse players, and he seems very popular among them. He also gets a job back at the school and seems very well respected by the students he's coaching there in AP3.
That's the problem though with so many sequels (or at least movies set in that universe) with different writers and different ideas/themes - there's a lot of ret-conning going on.It's therefore strange to say "everyone" hates him - if that were the case, he'd hardly be considered a legend and therefore the Stifler name wouldn't be so difficult for Matt and the others in these sequels to live up to.
that was why the crash hit everything so hard - people weren't just losing everything they had (which would have been bad enough anyway), they were losing 9 or 10 times everything they had.
OP's saying she was a successful singer away from this movie though.
I do agree though that that was the point of it in this movie - that she was OK but not spectacular and not nightclub-headliner material.
I haven't heard any of her other work - maybe Priscilla Lane is a better singer than she sounds in this movie - maybe she deliberately dumbed her voice down for this movie to sound more average.
it's clear from the conversation had before young Tom and Matt come into the club (1915 I think, and also I think the first scene in which Tom's old enough to be played by Cagney) that Putty Nose was very much using them, rather than taking them under his wing or helping them or bringing them into the game, as others claim in his defence. And, as the last poster commented, the earlier scenes showed that he thought nothing of trying to rip them off.
Yes, Tom screws up the job by needlessly firing his gun, thus bringing the policeman's attention, who they then shoot, increasing the heat from the robbery to the point where it's every man for himself afterwards, and you could argue that Putty's promise to help didn't extend to cop killings. However, from the conversation I started this post with and from everything we see of Putty's behaviour, I don't believe Putty would have looked after them even if something minor and not their fault had happened (such as, say, a passer-by recognising them or the store owner coming back and things getting ugly).
And all those years later, on the night of the killing, he lies that he's got a girl in the house, proving to Tom that he's still scheming - how can he trust him - Putty could shoot them in the back as they're leaving if they did spare him.
While it's not for us to decide if someone did or didn't deserve to die, I think Putty was a dead man walking as soon as Tom hit the big-time and gained a rep as a feared and hot-headed bruiser and killer. Putty should have skipped town and stayed away the minute he learned that Tom and Matt were under Nails Nathan's protection and were very senior enforcers for Paddy Ryan's bootlegging.
He can't have been around the underworld and not known that.
and I agree with point 10 that it's the dumbest part of the book, in fact I'd say the movie did this better, with Tom going to Venice specifically to avoid being interviewed by the same inspector, who would undoubtedly recognise him.
Also think Marge's hostility and suspicions towards the end work better because it just adds to the tension.
I recently posted a new thread, not realising there was already this one from years ago.
The difference very early on that surprised me was that Tom had actually met Dickie on a couple of occasions (when Dickie still lived in America) and that Greenleaf Sr actively seeks him out having been recommended to him as the man for the job of bringing his son home.
Another change is that in the book Tom does bear a resemblance to Dickie - they're the same height and have a similar shaped jawline/chin and so look almost identical from the nose down. In the movie, that's not the case, I guess because they had to go for the best actors rather than the best lookalikes!
Just to add to your Marge point, it's actually a complete reversal because in the latter parts of the book (in Venice and when Sr Greenleaf is there) she's a lot nicer to Tom and concedes that Dickie is dead, whereas in the movie her hostility only begins when she arrives in Venice as she suspects Tom. In fact, in both mediums, her finding Dickie's rings proves to be the confirmation she needs (in the book, that he has either run away and changed identity or committed suicide, in the film that Tom has killed him).
Lastly, the book's ending is quite an anticlimax, whereas the film's ending is a lot darker.
and that's just how sitcoms are done over here. 6 episodes, and then after a couple of series, they either quit while they're ahead or go stale. Even a "long running" sitcom like Only Fools and Horses - it's quite misleading because they stopped making series after about 1990 and then just did some rather lacklustre Christmas specials (with 3 very obvious exceptions), therefore only making I think 10 episodes for the last 13 years of the show's "run".
In the US they have teams of writers who pick up the mantle for different episodes, and can get away with filler/bottleneck episodes if it's in the middle of a good 15-20 episode series. Friends, Fraser, its predocessor Cheers, Seinfeld etc. ran for years, 20 odd episodes per series without the quality slipping or the essence of the show being lost despite different people (often ones who had nothing to do with the creation or inception of the show) writing throughout. Maybe we English should have tried it.
Although not a sitcom and not aimed at adults, Grange Hill ran for 30 years, pushing 20 episodes each year, and that's one of the few shows that did use different writers etc because each series was so long. And I don't think any lack of continuity or dip in quality showed as a result of them doing this. So it does work.
"Overall it seemed like it should have been called The Ricky Gervais Show" - actually one of the things that made it so watchable was the good ensemble cast/characters being given their own stories and development - Gervais probably had slightly more screen time than the rest but only the same as Steve Carell would have in each episode of the US version. Brent's one of those characters that's better in small doses. If it had just been 20-30 minutes of Brent goofing around it would have been unwatchable. He's possibly still in it too much for other people's taste, but try watching Extras, when his character is on screen pretty much the entire time. It's too much. Think that's one of the reasons the only other work of his I like is Cemetary Junction, in which he only appears a couple of times and only for a few minutes (as the lead's dad).
maybe they meant "nice guy" in inverted commas.
I'm surprised that there's not been a comment about how he asked out Dawn when she was still engaged to Lee. Twice.
While Lee, like Gareth, can also come across as a d**k and the audience are wondering what Dawn sees in him or why she's with him, that's completely Dawn's call to make.
He's lucky Lee didn't destroy him. Maybe that's what happens shortly after the cameras stop rolling.