Ask 411 Movies for 09.24.12: Trouble with the Column!
Posted by Leonard Hayhurst on 09.24.2012
How were fight scenes filmed in Rocky? Does Trouble with the Curve hit a home run? Does the Bourne franchise hurt the success of the Bond franchise? All this and more covered this week in Ask 411 Movies!
What Leonard Recently Watched
I checked out Trouble With the Curve, which I was surprised to find out wasn't directed by Clint Eastwood. It was helmed by Robert Lorenz, who served as a first assistant director on many Eastwood projects. Lorenz copies Eastwood's directorial style with how he lays out a narrative and plays actors off each other. The ending is predictable, but it's what you want to see happen from the setup. I think Eastwood would have tightened the story some, but I overall liked it. It's not a seminal baseball movie as the whole 'love of the game' aspect gets lost in exploring the estranged relationship between Eastwood's Gus and his daughter Mickey, played by Amy Adams, and her falling for a former player Gus once scouted, played by Justin Timberlake. I'd call it a solid triple and not a homerun.
As a note, Chelice Ross is in the movie as a rival scout named Smitty. I so, so hoped he was playing Harris from Major League. That would have been so sweet.
From my friend Ron Adams at Creepy Classics I picked up a recent DVD release of the 1974 TV movie The Phantom of Hollywood. The flick is centered around fictional Worldwide Studios, but it was filmed on the MGM back lot while it was being dismantled and clips from MGM movies are used. Peter Lawford plays the head of the studio who is selling it off piece by piece, drawing the ire of the disfigured actor (Jack Cassidy) who lives among the ruins. John Ireland and Broderick Crawford have bit parts as cops and Jackie Coogan is a film editor. It's a play on the Phantom of the Opera and kind of cheesy. It's interesting, but sad at the same time, to see the once glorious MGM backlot in its dying days.
Obscure Television Series of the Week
Title: Mercy Point
Run Dates: Oct. 6, 1998, to Oct. 20, 1998
Network: UPN
Cast: Joe Morton as Dr. Grote Maxwell, Maria Del Mar as Dr. Haylen Breslauer, Brian McNamera as Dr. Caleb Jurado, Julia Pennington as ANI, Alexandra Wilson as Dr. Dru Breslauer, Jordan Lund as Dr. Batung, Gay Thomas as Dr. Rema Cooke, Joe Spano as Dr. Harris DeMillo
Premise: This series was basically ER on a space station. Set in 2249 at the edge of the galaxy, human and alien patients were seen by alien and human doctors. Dr. Batung was an alien doctor and ANI was the android head nurse, who the live nurses resented. Haylen was the senior surgeon, who didn't get along with her younger sister, Dru, who joined the staff. Dr. Maxwell was one of the top doctors and an expert in alien physiology.
Ask 411 Remembers
Actor John Ingle, 84, died Sept. 16. He was known as the second Edward Quartermaine on General Hospital and the third Mickey Horton on Days of Our Lives. He had bit parts in Batman and Robin, Death Becomes Her, True Stories, Heathers, Robocop 2 and he was the narrator and voice of Topsy in the Land Before Time animated movie franchise. Below, Ingle's last scenes on General Hospital. Go to the 7:11 mark.
Q: While reading August 20's article after work, there was a discussion about the Rocky films. I was wondering how the special effect of an actor getting punched in the face, showing his features rearrange due to the hit, is done. You see this fairly often, most commonly in boxing scenes, but sometimes in general fight sequences. The Rocky films have them, and the first five minutes of Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr has the effect.
Over the weekend I saw both Expendables 2 and Bourne Legacy. Both were good, but I didn't like how BL did not have an ending. Sure, movies have set up sequels before, but at least their internal story wrapped up. Legacy just.. stopped out of the blue. I had to leave before the credits were over, so do you know if there was something I missed? My buddy and I were chuckling before Legacy started, wondering if they would show the Skyfall trailer. Would that be irony or coincidence, I wondered. My friend's response was no, that would be good advertising. And bingo, there it was at the beginning!
Speaking of Legacy and 007, Mr Bond, Daniel Craig, is married to Rachel Wiesz, who starred in Bond's competition, Bourne Legacy. Have two married actors ever been in such a situation before, where each partner is in a directly competing movie?
-Paul in Canada.
A: Fight sequences are all done through makeup and the magic of editing. The most common practice is to use reverse motion. You shoot a shot backwards and then reverse it, to make it look like it's moving forward. Of course, CGI helps out a lot now a days. Another common practice is to shoot a fight, particularly a boxing match with specific rounds, in reverse order. It's quicker and easier to take makeup and prosthetics off a guy than to put it on, especially as actors are hot and sweating from doing a fight sequence. You step backwards until you get to the beginning of the fight and guys looking normal.
According to MediaStinger, there is no after credit scene, or stinger, for The Bourne Legacy. There is a scene that runs through the first few minutes of the credits and then about six minutes of lone credits after that. According to Universal Pictures Chief Executive Steve Burke at a recent media conference, the studio is committed to making more movies in the Bourne franchise, but he wasn't specific on details. Director and co-writer Tony Gilroy in an interview on Collider.com said there are three deleted scenes from the movie that will either be on the DVD as an extra or possibly threaded back into the film itself. It doesn't appear that any of these scenes would give a more complete 'end' to the flick.
In Hollywood, movies are only seen as being direct competitors to each other if they are released opposite each other on the same weekend or possibly in the same month. The Bourne Legacy opened Aug. 10 and Skyfall isn't set to open until Nov. 9. The Bourne Legacy will be completely out of theaters by then and it's not scheduled for a DVD release until sometime in December according to DVD Release Dates. Nobody is viewing the Bourne franchise as competition for the Bond franchise. In fact, one movie doing well is good for the other, because it lifts the entire spy genre.
I could have sworn that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had movies that opened opposite each other, but I couldn't find any checking release dates. Some readers might have suggestions, but I couldn't think of any major Hollywood couples that had films open in wide release against each other the same weekend.
I'm all caught up on questions. That means you need to send more. If you sent one in the past few weeks and haven't seen it answered, email me. We've been having some problems with the comments engine registering comments.
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