What is the Most Famous Movie Scene?

[mariab]

The Good Michael wrote:
Return of the Secaucus Seven is better than the Big Chill. It felt real. The Big Chill felt contrived... to me.
The big chill felt contrived to me too, still it has its moments. Particularly the parts realistically covering what long lost friends do when staying overnight together, like having confesionnal talks while watching horror movies on TV late at night, etc.. Has anyone seen Grand Canyon?
(Which brings me to another visually impressive movie scene: Thelma and Louise driving over the cliff in slow motion.)
There's a French film genre parallel to The big chill called film de chorale (could be translated into “group film“), exemplified by the films of Danielle Thomson. I have a couple of them, and they're pretty good. Ruby might have seen them...
I've been trying to establish a list of movies to watch during my 2 (possibly 3) days long Xmas bash, and so far I've came up with episodes Amends and Pangs from Buffy the vampire slayer, The big chill, Unfaithfully yours (the remake), and one can always rely on German TV to feature It's a wonderful life and relative stuff. Although a few years ago for some reason German TV featured a horror flick festival on Xmas Eve, and I remember we were eating Xmas duck while watching Anaconda. It was kind of twisted.

[Rubyretro]

No -I haven't seen Film de Chorale -I HAVE seen The Big Chill ...but despite admiring the acting (and the soundtrack), I didn't enjoy it...too contrived puts the finger on it..

[Rubyretro]

No -I haven't seen Film de Chorale -I HAVE seen The Big Chill ...but despite admiring the acting (and the soundtrack), I didn't enjoy it...too contrived puts the finger on it..

I hated Thelma and Louise, too !!!

(loved The Duellists though...and a new copy has just been released...I'm a big fan of Harvey Keitel ).

[mariab]

Rubyretro wrote:
Gus van Sant is the same (like Todd Haynes, he gets the BEST performances from his actors
My favorite by van Sant is Drugstore cowboy, I own the DVD. It's an excellent flick on all counts. A few years ago I watched a van Sant flick about the death of Curt Cobain, but I almost fell asleep, it was too much like reality TV.
Has anybody seen Agnčs Varda's Sans toît ni loi {The Vagabond}?
With films de chorale by Danielle Thomson I meant Fauteuils d'orchestre, Le code a changé, etc..

[Pontius2000]

I believe it was Richard Dreyfuss who uttered the boat line. Again, this is a famous line moreso than a famous scene.

No, it wasn't.

[Derrick]

No, it wasn't.

correct; it was Roy Scheider during his never ending shift on the chum line.

But the scene where Shaw and Dreyfus are swapping scars is brilliant. Scheider takes a sneak at his appendix scar and then decides not to intervene. Priceless.

Then Robert Shaw tells the story of the USS Indianapolis. It is one of the most immediate scenes in all film history. Although cinematic it becomes real and leaves all of the visualising to the audience, as Hitchcock would do to ramp up the tension. Speilberg is a rare genius who can make both breathless entertainment and stomach churning realism. He is a truely precious talent.

I remember first seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark. I didn't know anything about it on entering the cinema. Come the intermission, half way through, I said to my brother "what the bloody hell was all that about" in true amazement. I have never had that experience before or since with a film on first viewing. It was like a true rollercoaster ride. Proper Saturday morning pictures fare.

Star Wars seemed light years away in true escapism. Never liked Star Wars films anyway....far too childish for my liking. The best IMO was the Empire Strikes Back which was a lot darker than any of the others.

The closest I have come since Raiders to standing up and cheering, in a cinema, was during Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 when Moore exposed Bush and his cronies for the war mongering profiteers that they are.

When Moore takes Lyla, a service mum who has lost a son in the 2nd Gulf War, to see how Iraq war protesters are being treated by average walk by Americans is both maddening and heartbreaking at the same time.

Derrick

[mariab]

Derrick wrote:
But the scene where Shaw and Dreyfus are swapping scars is brilliant. Scheider takes a sneak at his appendix scar and then decides not to intervene. Priceless.
It's Shaw and Scheider swapping scars, and Dreyfus pointing to his heart, and when the 2 others inquire, he says “Loretta. Broke my heart.“
But even more clever is introducing Shaw by having him scratch the blackboard during the reunion of the city council to get their atttention.

Derrick wrote:
Then Robert Shaw tells the story of the USS Indianapolis. It is one of the most immediate scenes in all film history. Although cinematic it becomes real and leaves all of the visualising to the audience, as Hitchcock would do to ramp up the tension. Speilberg is a rare genius who can make both breathless entertainment and stomach churning realism.
Yeah, NOT showing (as when the skinny dipping chick is attacked, or when they find the girl's corpse, or when they get the underwater pictures, or when the dog disappears) is done very cleverly in Jaws. Spielberg learned from Hitchcock in this. Pacing is most important for horror. Still, I don't think Spielerg managed to do as well as in Jaws anywhere else. Besides, maybe, Saving Private Ryan and the first half of Encounters of the third kind.

[Rubyretro]

Doesn't anyone else think 'Duel' is as good as Jaws ?

[sleekviper]

Spielberg is about to go on a rampage in Hollywood. I truly hate when they do this since they seem to disappear for several years once it happens. He had seemingly been someone to follow entertainment with serious or vice versa; Jurassic Park is followed by Schindler's List, Lost World by Amistad, Saving Private Ryan by A.I., and so on. Now, he seems to want to do it all in short order. He will have his war film, War Horse, his fantasy, Robopocalypse, documentary, Interstellar, and kiddie vehicle, Adventures of Tintin. Addition of his role as producer brings 13 more films to the table. Looks as if a five year usual cycle has been dropped to under two.

[mariab]

Rubyretro wrote:
Doesn't anyone else think 'Duel' is as good as Jaws?
What is this Duel? Never heard of it...

[Robert]

Duel was a fantastic film and shows you don't need to spend a fortune on special effects to make a great movie.

[sleekviper]

Hello Ruby. I see a higher refinement of terror in Jaws. In Duel, it was a situation where the hero is pretty much going to live till the end no matter what happens between, in Jaws, we lose that security blanket and it becomes a further refinement of terror. I really liked both, but in Jaws it was never clear who would live from one minute to the next when first viewed. When there is no defined evil, it is more fear involved for characters in the situation. Technically the people have invaded the sharks domain, so they are the evil, if anyone, and that makes anyone of them justifiable lunch to a creature just living as usual. That is scary, since placed on the Duel platform, the shark should have won.

[Robert]

If the following is wrong, my apologies - especially to the sharks, with whom I am anxious to keep on friendly terms - but I think the line "Smile you sonofabitch" may have been inaccurate. I believe that in the great white shark world, it's the females that are the really big ones.

[Pontius2000]

Choosing not to show the shark was not really Speilberg's idea. the mechanical shark didn't work half the time so he basically said, "we'll just go most of the movie without showing it."

In the book version of Jaws, the Dreyfus character is killed by the shark (sorry for the spoiler for whoever has not read the book). He lived in the movie only because they could not get the mechanical shark to eat him.

When I was a young kid, I thought the shark was a real shark that they had trained. When I got older, I realized how ridiculous that is. But watching the Jaws documentary, the producers said they did not foresee the problems with the shark because they thought sharks could be trained like most other animals. lol.

[sleekviper]

I am not sure if we really know which get larger. The ocean is such a mystery, no telling what really is the way things occur. We had thought that Architeuthis Dux was the largest squid for ages, until a few years ago Colossal squid came to light which blew giant Dux out the water for size and ferocity.