I like the novel better. The movie goes out of its way to make Walken's character sympathetic while Forsyth admits from the word go he's a bastard.
The aerial scenes had some potential, but they did not really work. They were done as a mish-mash of real war footage combined with some typical second unit material and the close-ups of the actors shot in a studio against rear projections. The shaky cam style looked modern, but there was always something missing, even some connecting shots missing to make the scenes work. And I never could figure out who was in which plane (except for Wayne, whose face a blind can recognize, they all looked the same) and who was shooting at whom (which is no problem in the fast edited films nowadays). But also I was never interested in the any of the film's characters, so I never cared who will survive and who not.Wayne and Ryan acted for me like they did not live in the same universe. Wayne was Wayne but Ryan was far less good than usual, and their conflicts left me cold. Do you think there was anything Ray specific in Flying Leathernecks?
I take it the poor black kid Shannon befriends isn't in the novel?
Unless memory's playing tricks on me, that whole section's pretty terse in the novel. I certainly don't remember Shannon getting captured and tortured at any point.
It was the first word that came to mind. I didn't put much thought into it.
funny, I was just discussing this with a friend a couple of hours ago: how do you define "terse"?My friend used "terse" to mean "brief," whereas I was under the impression that it doesn't merely mean "brief," but it means being brief with a rude connotation. Like, giving a terse answer means giving a brief answer with an implication of rude manner.Well, I checked it up on Google's definitions (which I do not like very much) http://goo.gl/Ko8195 and they consider it synonymous with "brief." But the Merriam-Webster online, owned by Encycopaedia Brittanaca (which IMO is better) http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/terse uses my definition, that it has a rude connotation.
Just saw The Lovers (1958). I just KNOW that DJ couldn't get enough of beautiful Jeanne Moreau in a beautiful sleeveless black dress lifting her beautiful arms to revealing a very unbeautiful patch of armpit hair
x-men: day of the future past - 5.5/10This is officially my favorite superhero film that goes by the book (that is to say outside the dark knight, watchmen and unbreakable). It's also every well shot for a blockbuster and the script is far from lazy. Still, bad over explaining dialogues and some ridiculous stakes all over the place. The modern days scenes are here to remind you how much superhero films usually suck. A few very good scenes though, such as the full bullet time scene (that convinced me to see the movie).