| Charade is a 1963 American film directed by Stanley Donen, written by Peter Stone and Marc Behm, and starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. The movie also features Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy, Dominique Minot, Ned Glass, and Jacques Marin. It spans four genres: suspense thriller, romance, chick flick and comedy. Because Universal Pictures included no proper copyright notice, the film entered public domain in the USA immediately upon its release.[2] The film is notable for its screenplay, especially the repartee between Grant and Hepburn, for having been filmed on location in Paris, for Henry Mancini's score and theme song, and for the animated titles by Maurice Binder. Charade has been referred to as "the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made."[  Regina "Reggie" Lampert meets a charming stranger, Peter Joshua, on a skiing holiday in Megève. She returns to Paris, planning to ask her husband Charles for a divorce, but finds all of their possessions gone. The police notify her that Charles has been murdered, thrown from a train. They give Regina her husband's travel bag. At the funeral, Regina is struck by three odd characters who show up to view the body, including one who sticks the corpse with a pin and another who places a mirror in front of the corpse's mouth and nose, both to verify he is dead. She is summoned to the U.S. Embassy, where she meets CIA administrator Hamilton Bartholomew . He informs her Charles was involved in a theft during World War II. As part of the OSS (the predecessor of the CIA), Charles, "Tex" Panthollow, Herman Scobie, Leopold W. Gideon and Carson Dyle were parachuted behind enemy lines to deliver $250,000 in gold to the French Resistance. Instead, they buried it, but were then ambushed by a German patrol. Dyle was badly wounded and left to die; the rest got away. Charles doublecrossed them, digging up the gold and selling it. He was killed but the money remains missing – and the U.S. government wants it back. Reggie recognizes the oddballs from the funeral in pictures shown to her by Bartholomew. He insists she has the money, even if she doesn't know where it is. Peter offers to help. Reggie becomes attracted to him, even though he keeps changing his name (simultaneously amusing and confusing her) and unabashedly admits he is after her late husband's money as well. The dead man's partners in crime assume Reggie knows where the money is and demand their share. Unbeknownst to her, Peter is in league with them (under the pseudonym Alexander Dyle, Carson's brother), though none of the men trust each other. They begin turning up dead — first Scobie is drowned in an overflowing bathtub, then Gideon has his throat slit while sneezing in an elevator. Reggie and Peter go to the location of Charles' last appointment and find an outdoor market. They also spot Tex there. Peter follows him. It is Tex who finally figures out where the money is hidden. He sees several booths selling stamps. Charles had purchased rare stamps and stuck them on an envelope in plain sight just before he boarded his fateful train ride. The envelope was in his travel bag. Peter realizes the same thing and races Tex back to Reggie's hotel room. They come up empty. The stamps have been cut off the letter.
Soldier is a 1998 science fiction-action film directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. The film stars Kurt Russell as Sgt. Todd, a soldier trained from birth. The film also features Gary Busey, Jason Scott Lee, Jason Isaacs, Connie Nielsen, Sean Pertwee and Michael Chiklis in supporting roles  In the near future, as part of a new military recruitment and training program ("Project Adam"), a group of infants are selected at birth to be raised as soldiers. Undergoing extreme mental and physical training, they become virtual sociopaths, with no understanding of anything except military routine and war. A priority of the conditioning is that these soldiers are forbidden to speak unless spoken to, and they address whomever they are speaking to, women included, as "sir". At age 38, Todd (Kurt Russell) is a hardened veteran of many battles, but he and his unit are about to be replaced. Colonel Mekum (Jason Isaacs) introduces a new group of genetically-engineered soldiers, designed with superior physical attributes and a complete lack of emotions except aggression. Todd's unit's commander, Captain Church (Gary Busey) insists on testing the "new" soldiers' abilities against his own. But Todd, the unit's best soldier, is no match for Caine 607 (Jason Scott Lee). In the final trial, a fight between Caine and three "old" soldiers, two of Todd's comrades are killed, though Todd manages to gouge out one of Caine's eyes before he is defeated. Todd seemingly dies when he falls from a great height; but the body of a dead soldier cushions his fall, and he is simply knocked unconscious. Mekum orders their bodies dumped like garbage, and the remaining "old" soldiers are demoted to menial support roles. Todd and his dead comrades are dumped on the surface of Arcadia 234, a waste disposal planet with dangerously high wind velocities. Though badly injured, Todd limps his way toward a colony of humans who crash-landed there twelve years earlier, and have managed to survive and build a society from the planet's ubiquitous mountains of trash. Though they try to make him welcome, Todd has great difficulty adapting to the community due to his extreme conditioning. Todd's prior training of not speaking unless spoken to (and deliberately stunted social skills in general) make it difficult for him to answer questions in anything more than curt replies, and actually initiating a conversation is impossible for him. Many of the settlers are afraid of him, but he is sheltered by a settler named Mace (Sean Pertwee) and his wife Sandra (Connie Nielsen). Todd develops a silent rapport with the couple's mute son, Nathan, who had been traumatized mentally and physically by a snakebite. In a subsequent conflict with a curled snake, Todd teaches Nathan how to face it down and strike back to protect himself. However, his parents misinterpret the lesson, unsure of how to deal with Todd's apparent instability.
 Casino Royale is a 1967 comedy spy film originally produced by Columbia Pictures starring an ensemble cast of directors and actors. It is set as a satire of the James Bond film series and the spy genre, and is loosely based on Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel. The film stars David Niven as the original Bond, Sir James Bond 007. Forced out of retirement to investigate the deaths and disappearances of international spies, he soon battles the mysterious Dr. Noah and SMERSH. The film's famous slogan: "Casino Royale is too much… for one James Bond!" refers to Bond's ruse to mislead SMERSH in which six other agents are designated as "James Bond", namely, Baccarat master Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers), millionaire spy Vesper Lynd (Ursula Andress), Bond's secretary Miss Moneypenny (Barbara Bouchet), Bond's daughter with Mata Hari, Mata Bond (Joanna Pettet) and British agents "Coop" (Terence Cooper) and "The Detainer" (Daliah Lavi). Charles K. Feldman, the producer, had acquired the film rights and had attempted to get Casino Royale made as an Eon James Bond film (i.e. one made by Eon Productions); however, Feldman and the producers of the Eon series, Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, failed to come to terms. Believing that he could not compete with the Eon series, Feldman resolved to produce the film as a satire.[1] The film has had a mixed reception among critics, some of whom regard it as a baffling, disorganised affair, with critic Roger Ebert branding it "possibly the most indulgent film ever made". On the other hand, Andrea LeVasseur called it "a psychedelic, absurd masterpiece"[2] and cinema historian Robert von Dassanowsky has described it as "a film of momentary vision, collaboration, adaption, pastiche, and accident. It is the anti-auteur work of all time, a film shaped by the very zeitgeist it took on."[      While this film of one of the epic struggles of WWII is over 50 years old, it still delivers the drama of the battle fought by Russian soldiers and sailors to defend Leningrad. Codenamed "Operation Barbarrosa" by Hitler, the battle was truly horrific. This documentary, The Great Battle of the Volga, focuses on the bravery and suffering of the Russian soldiers as they endure the tremendous attack by the well-equipped German army. That they could regroup and fight back with such ferocity is depicted, along with the terrible destruction caused by the Germans  |
Reggie had given them to her friend's son for his stamp collection. By chance, she runs into them at the market, only to learn that the little boy has traded them away. Fortunately, the stamp seller is honest. He puts their total value at $250,000 and returns them to Reggie.
Reggie hiding from the unmasked Carson Dyle. She returns to the hotel and finds Tex's bound body. Before he died, he was able to spell out in the dust the name of his killer: "Dyle." Figuring that Tex must have meant Alexander Dyle, a frightened Reggie telephones Bartholomew, who arranges to meet her. When she leaves the hotel, Peter spots her and gives chase through the streets of Paris and the subway. Peter tracks her to the rendezvous and Reggie is caught out in the open between the two men. Peter tells her that the man she thought was Bartholomew is really Carson Dyle and that he was the one who killed the others. Another chase ensues, ending with Dyle's death. Reggie insists on turning the stamps over to the proper authorities. Peter refuses to accompany her inside the embassy office. When she goes in by herself, she is shocked to find Peter (whose real name turns out to be Brian Cruikshank) sitting behind the desk. After proving to her that he is actually the government official responsible for recovered property, he promises to marry her...after she gives him the stamps. The movie ends with a split-screen grid showing flashback shots of all of Brian's different identities, while Reggie says she hopes that they have lots of boys, so she can name them all after him
Todd soon begins to experience flashbacks from his time as a soldier and mistakes one of the colonists (Michael Chiklis) for an enemy, nearly killing him. The settlers decide that Todd is too dangerous to live among them, so they give him supplies and order him to leave. Outside the colony, he sheds tears. He is confused, not understanding what they are, implying that this is the first time that he has cried. Shortly thereafter, Mace and Sandra are attacked by another snake, and are saved at the last second by Nathan, using Todd's technique. Mace then realizes that Todd has an important role to play in their community, and decides to leave on his own to find and bring him back. The new genetically engineered soldiers arrive on a training exercise. Since the planet is listed as uninhabited, Colonel Mekum decides that the colonists' presence is unlawful and, as practice, orders his troops to slaughter them. Spotted by the arriving troops, Mace is killed just after he finds Todd. Though outmanned and outgunned, Todd's years of battle experience and superior knowledge of the planet allow him to return to the colony and kill the advance squad attacking the settlers. Nervous that a much larger enemy force may be confronting them, Colonel Mekum, grudgingly accepting Captain Church's advice, orders the soldiers to withdraw and return with heavy artillery. Using guerilla tactics, Todd outmanoeuvers and defeats all of the remaining soldiers, including Caine 607, who is finished off in hand-to-hand combat. Panicking, Mekum orders his ship's crew, composed of Todd's old squad, to activate a portable nuclear device powerful enough to destroy the entire planet, then orders the ship to lift off before they are back on board. When Captain Church objects, Mekum shoots him in cold blood. Before they can take off as planned, Todd appears, and his old comrades, now recognizing him as the ranking officer as a side effect of their conditioning due to their dismissal by Mekum, silently side with him over the army that has discarded them. Todd and his comrades take over the ship, tossing Mekum and his aides out onto the planet, and evacuating the remaining colonists just as the bomb detonates. Todd orders the ship to set course for the Trinity Moons, the colonists' original destination, then picks up Nathan and points to their new destination, while looking out upon the galaxy.
      
 Part 1 of of a monumental documentary on the crusades produced by the History Channel entitled "Crusades: crescent and the cross".
Oscar Winner: On June 4-6, 1942, a large Japanese force attempted to capture Midway Island in the North Pacific, but was defeated by U.S. forces with a loss ratio of 4:1 in favor of the Americans. On hand was a crew of naval photographers directed by John Ford; their documentary footage was edited together with narration by Hollywood actors. The film covers the attack on Midway, some limited aerial footage, the search for survivors, and aftermath of the battle.   |
No comments:
Post a Comment