Life with a view

My Cinema/Tv series journal

[lifewithaview]

Brigitte Bardot and Jean-Pierre Cassel in The Bear and the Doll/L'ours et la poupée (1970)

Dir.Michel Deville

Cellist Gaspard is living in a big house in the country with his son and three nieces. He likes being quiet. One day, his modest car bumps into a Rolls-Royce, driven by Felicia, a young, beautiful, wealthy and temperamental woman. And she knows it. She is very angry at him because he seems not to be under her charm. She decides to seduce him, but Gaspard did not feel like letting his life being invaded by such a woman.

*The old Belfast library has been converted to a craft ale bar and called after this film with stencils of Brigitte Bardot on its walls.

[lifewithaview]

Michael Chiklis and Oakes Fegley in Accused (2023) Scott's Story

S1E1

A successful brain surgeon with a seemingly perfect family faces the limits of unconditional love when he discovers his teenage son may be planning a violent attack at the school.

*The principal photography was done in Greater Toronto Area of Toronto, Canada which combines the conventions of British-English and American English, as Canada was a former English Colony and is in close proximity to the Continental United States (Alaska as well). Moreover, the original rendition of the Accused (2010) was produced in the United Kingdom.

[lifewithaview]

Kim Delaney and David Cubitt in 10.5 (2004)

Dir.John Lafia

The West coast of Northern America suffers an unprecedented series of major earthquakes in a matter of days, puzzling seismologists, including Dr. Jordan Fisher's team. His maverick assistant Samantha Hill comes up with a theory, which they confirm on site, that a deep tectonic rift links them and is likely to sink most of California into the Pacific. The only imaginable countermeasure are subterranean nuclear explosions. Three succeed, one rather causes a new problem. Meanwhile federal and other authorities as well as various people wrestle with side-effects like landslides and cope with a huge refugees exodus.

*2 part mini tv series but watched as a movie

[lifewithaview]

Lito Cruz,Concepción de Mederos and Martín Adjemián in Los taitas (1968) Short film

Dir.Hugo Santiago

Writers:Jorge Luis Borges,Roberto Cossa,Hugo Santiago

Two friends meet at a café every morning to devise schemes to make money. While reading the newspaper, they discover an advertisement in which a millionaire is searching for his grandmother, who disappeared twenty years ago.

[lifewithaview]

Ryan Phuong and Iain Armitage in Young Sheldon (2017) Rockets, Communists, and the Dewey Decimal System

S1E2

When Mary Cooper sees Sheldon eating alone in the cafeteria, she is worried with the situation. Sheldon loves to be alone to think, but decides to please his beloved mother and borrows a book from the school library to learn how to make friends. The system fails but he meets the Vietnamese Tam that also wants to make friends and loves also rockets' design.

*In The Big Bang Theory (2007), S01E04, The Luminous Fish Effect (2007), Sheldon makes reference to when he was a child and got into trouble with the FBI after purchasing uranium to use for generating electricity, a story also told in S08E23, The Maternal Combustion (2015). That event is depicted here.

[lifewithaview]

Clare Grogan and John Gordon Sinclair in Gregory's Girl (1980)

Dir.Bill Forsyth

Sixteen year old Gregory is an awkward, gangly Scottish lad who is in the midst of the throngs of puberty. The object of his affection is Dorothy, despite or in part because she is a talented striker who took his place on the school's boys' football team, he now demoted to distracted goalkeeper. Gregory tries to insinuate himself as much as possible in her life through her interests, such as learning the Italian language, without ever directly coming out and telling her that he likes her. Gregory's male friends are of no help in advising him on how to get into a relationship with Dorothy. The only person with whom he confides that provides any constructive advice is his ten-year old sister, Madeline. When Gregory finally gets the nerve to ask Dorothy out on a date, the outcome of the question is not quite what he expects. He learns that Dorothy talks to her girlfriends about such issues as much as Gregory does with his friends, each side strategizing to their own desired end.

*In all Clare Grogan's close-up scenes, she is filmed from one side to hide the scars on her left cheek. For the longer shots of her face (e.g. the dancing-lying-down scene), her cheek was filled with mortician's wax to hide the scar. Several months before filming, the actress received terrible injuries when a broken glass was thrust into her face as she was fleeing a brawl in a Glasgow bar.

[lifewithaview]

Tecla Insolia in The Art of Joy (2024) Episode 1

Sicily, early 1900s. After a tragedy that leaves her an orphan, Modesta is welcomed into a convent where she becomes the protégé of the Mother Superior.

*Italian tv series

[lifewithaview]

Gary Oldman in Slow Horses (2022) Work Drinks

S1E2

Episode two opens with a hostage given one day to live before a live beheading.As MI5 attempt to pinpoint the hostage’s location and save the student, the ‘Slow Horses’ at Slough House do their own digging. River is desperate to prove himself. Once again, he skips work to do some genuine investigating of his own. His pestering approach and dogged persistence ends in no further information, so he decides to stalk the fascist journalist, Robert Hobden, instead. 

*Catherine Standish: What's wrong?Jackson Lamb: The fact that you're still here talking to me for starters.

[lifewithaview]

Kathy Najimy, David Herman, Mike Judge, and Pamela Adlon (voices) in King of the Hill (1997) Pilot

S1E1

Hank Hill is a proud and true American. He loves his job as a propane salesman, and respects and loves his family. But one day, after his son Bobby receives a black eye from a baseball game and Hank is heard raising his voice at the Mega-lo Mart, some women come to suspect Hank abuses his son. Word of mouth gets around and soon Hank finds himself under investigation by a skinny, neurotic social worker.

*According to Greg Daniels, the original script for the pilot written by Mike Judge had Hank as a more short-tempered and ornery character much like Mr. Tom Anderson from Beavis and Butt-Head (1993) whom he was based on. Fox executives thought Hank was unlikable and during the rewrite, Daniels made Hank Hill a more good-natured and easy going character.

[lifewithaview]

 Jaclyn Smith and Kim Basinger in Charlie’s Angels (1976) Angels in Chains

S1E4

The agency is hired by Christine Hunter, who is trying to locate her sister, Elizabeth Hunter. They are each other's only family. What Christine knows is that Elizabeth was arrested in Pine Parish, Louisiana on trumped-up drug possession charges as she was backpacking though the area, and sentenced to one-year incarceration at the Pine Parish Prison Farm for Women. Christine had never been able to see Elizabeth in prison, the prison officials always giving one excuse or another. What Christine has subsequently been told is that Elizabeth has since been paroled. However, Christine is certain that if Elizabeth had indeed been released, she would have been in contact. With only Pine Parish Deputy Sheriff Dan Winston helping them in being a contact - he who admits he has been kept on the outside of any of the prison's affairs - the Angels may be in for a difficult case as they have to get inside the prison as inmates themselves. Once inside, they have to gain the confidence of the other inmates to find any trace of Elizabeth having been there. This task may be difficult in that the other inmates are scared, many of whom are also on the inside on trumped-up charges of one form or another such as Elizabeth, and as the Angels faced themselves in getting into the prison.

*Kim Basinger auditioned to be an Angel but was rejected. Then she went on to Hollywood and became a bigger star than any of the angels ever did, including Farrah.

[lifewithaview]

Kika Markham and David Suchet in Poirot (1989) The Double Clue

S3E7

Chief Inspector Japp, afraid that he will soon find himself unemployed, needs Poirot's assistance in solving a string of jewel robberies. Japp is under intense pressure to catch the thief but Poirot counsels patience. When the jewel thief strikes again, Poirot and Captain Hastings go to the home of Marcus Hardman, a jewelry collector from whom an emerald necklace was stolen. Poirot is apparently quite taken with the exiled Russian Countess Vera Rossakoff and to Japp's great consternation, days pass with no progress in the case. With the famous detective otherwise occupied, Hastings and Miss Lemon decide to investigate on their own. Poirot however knows well who the criminal is.

*Poirot meets Countess Rossakoff again in The Big Four, but her character is omitted from the episode adaptation. He meets her for the final time in The Labours of Hercules (2013), this time portrayed by Orla Brady.

[lifewithaview]

Michelle Trachtenberg and James Tupper in Mercy (2009) Pulling the Goalie

Episode 4

Faced with pressure from Mike to start a family, Veronica has to decide whether her affair with Dr. Sands really is all in the past. And, as she fights to get treatment for a fellow veteran, Veronica's own unresolved issues from Iraq are brought to light. Sonia experiences the perks and drawbacks of dating a cop and winds up as the unwitting marriage counselor for two feuding patients with a quirky love-hate relationship. Meanwhile, Chloe tries to give hope to a cynical young patient and contemplates taking her crush on Dr. Sands to the next level.

[lifewithaview]

Clayton Moore and Silver in The Lone Ranger (1949) The Lone Ranger Fights On

S1E2

Still fighting the man who betrayed the Texas Rangers, The Lone Ranger starts with him hanging off the side of a cliff. Afterwards, he meets his white horse named Silver and decides that the only bullets he will shoot with are silver bullets.

*The Lone Ranger and an old friend, Jim Blaine, show Tonto the secret silver mine, concealed by a ramshackle old shack. The Lone Ranger tells Jim he wants some of the silver refined and made into silver bullets, to serve as a symbol of "justice by law", so all who see the silver bullets will know the Lone Ranger only lives and fights to see the eventual defeat and proper punishment by law of every criminal in the west.

[lifewithaview]

Bob Odenkirk in Lucky Hank (2023) Pilot

Episode 1

Hank rants against Railton College, calling it "Mediocrity's Capitol," and the administration is pressured to fire him. Hank and Lily contemplate a future outside of Railton.

*When a college professor is given tenure, they are given a form of job security, where it is very difficult to fire someone, unless they have done something very egregious. They are given the academic freedom, which is necessary for all who teach and conduct research in higher education, even if members of the faculty, executive board, or the student body are at odds with it.

[lifewithaview]

Johnny Depp and John Turturro in Secret Window (2004)

Dir.David Koepp

Writers.Stephen King/David Koepp

Mort Rainey is a successful writer going through a rather unfriendly divorce from his wife of ten years, Amy. Alone and bitter in his cabin, he continues to work on his writing when a stranger named John Shooter shows up on his doorstep, claiming Rainey stole his story. Mort says he can prove the story belongs to him and not Shooter, but while Mort digs around for the magazine which published the story in question years ago, things begin to happen around Shooter. Mort's dog dies, people begin to die, and his divorce proceedings with Amy continue to get uglier. It seems that Shooter has Mort over a barrel, but perhaps Mort has his own ideas on how to resolve all the problems that plague him lately.

*The movie's premiere date was moved up a month to ride the coattails of Johnny Depp's success in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), which earned him a SAG award and an Oscar nomination.

[lifewithaview]

Kirk Douglas and Kim Novak in Strangers When We Meet (1960)

Dir.Richard Quine

The awarded architect Larry Coe lives a boring marriage with his wife Eve Coe and their two young sons in the suburb. Larry is designing and constructing an unique house to the successful writer Roger Altar (Ernie Kovacs) on the top of a hill. Margaret 'Maggie' Gault is a sexy blond sexually neglected by her husband Ken Gault that lives in the same neighborhood and they have a young son. When Larry meets Maggie at the bus stop of the school bus, he unsuccessfully hits on her. But soon they encounter each other again and they have a love affair. They fall in love with each other, but when their despicable neighbor Felix Anders discovers their affair, they have to decide between loyalty and respect to their families or love.

*Kim Novak reportedly enjoyed a lot of latitude on the set because she was involved with director Richard Quine and used that latitude to make unsolicited suggestions to various crew members. However, when Novak tried to make suggestions to Kirk Douglas on how he should be acting, he took offense and the result was a chilly relationship between them off-set.

[lifewithaview]

Antonio Banderas,Johnny Depp and Eva Mendes in Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)

Dir.Robert Rodriguez

Return of the mythic guitar-slinging hero, El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas), in the final installment of the Mariachi/Desperado trilogy. The saga continues as El Mariachi makes his way across a rugged landscape on the blood trail of Barrillo (Willem Dafoe), a cartel kingpin with one last score to settle who is planning a coup d'etat against the president of Mexico. Enlisted by Sands (Johnny Depp), a corrupt CIA agent, El Mariachi demands retribution.

*Johnny Depp shot all of his scenes in eight days, but after filming was done he didn't want to leave. So he suggested to Robert Rodriguez that he play a small part, the priest that Antonio Banderas talks to in the church, and used his Marlon Brando impression.