I just noticed that Once Upon a Time in America is on Netflix. And I’ve never seen it, which might be a character flaw. But it’s 3 hours and 49 minutes? Is this worth it? Should I take the day off from work, hide from my wife, and just watch this and The Irishman back to back?
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I am inclined to watch something like that in a few session.
Saw Dune last night. Loved the huge epic scale, all the shops and thopters etc looked awesome. Stuck pretty close to the beats of the book but I can’t imagine being someone who hasn’t read the book understanding much of what’s going on. For such a pivotal role Dr Yueh had like 2 mins of screen time. Plus they’re only on dune for like 5 mins before hell breaks out, a very truncated experience like you’d expect even at 2.5 hrs. Also I don’t know if this was just the theatre I was in but Jesus Christ it was loud. Like distractingly loud. To the point that you couldn’t concentrate on the actual film because your ears were being destroyed by the score.
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Oh geez, Baldwin himself fired the prop gun.
I’m assuming the prop master or similar is looking at some legal jeopardy.
What a terrible way to go.
Yeah, someone fucked up horribly. If there are guns being used that have the capability of firing a projectile, they have to be checked every single take to be sure nothing is in there. Even prop guns that shouldn’t be able to fire a real bullet need to be handled like they are real, loaded weapons. On one set I was on, the guns were clearly fake, but one extra still had his taken away because he wasn’t handling it safely.
On another (I posted a pic of this once), I pulled a trigger of what I think was a real gun a whole bunch of times, including pointing it at someone’s head point blank. Also had one aimed and fired at me point blank. I was a little nervous, but the armorer checked the guns before every take and showed everybody involved that the barrel and magazine was empty and pulled the trigger away from everyone to be sure.
Safety precautions can get tedious, but the alternative isn’t worth the risk.
I know blanks can still be dangerous, but this sounds like it was either a real gun that fired a real bullet or it was a situation like The Crow where there was some non-bullet debris in the gun for some reason that ejected and essentially acted like a real bullet. Obviously nobody checked the gun.
I’m wondering if Baldwin’s career is over because of this. How do you go back to this or any set after being the one to pull the trigger that killed someone? The mental trauma he must be going through and will go through has got to be immense.
Plus, he’s the (a) producer, so he has some responsibility, too. He’s likely not THE person at fault, but he does bear some responsibility. He bears a ton of responsibility if shortcuts were taken (not saying they were, just “if”).
When the actual gun scenes are shot, are the actors actually pointing them at people at firing, or is everything shot in a way that you’re firing in a direction of no people, but edited or made to look like people are shooting directly at each other?
Reason I ask is because I see a lot of “you always have to assume a gun is loaded and dangerous and never point it at anybody” type of takes re: this accident, which I understand, but I would have figured that at some point, aiming the gun at somebody and pulling the trigger is what is going to be done because that’s the scene you’re filming.
They are definitely aimed and “fired” at people. I know when I’ve been in scenes with guns they have been. I suppose my scene I referenced from “The Gifted” could have been done in a way where it could have been edited to look good, but overall, it just wouldn’t be possible (maybe today it could with CGI) to make it look decent if it wasn’t “real.”
But like I said, there should be someone who goes through safety measures before every take to make sure things like this can’t happen. One FB friend of mine who makes prop guns and trains actors in fighting and weapon play once told me that they shouldn’t even use real guns, safety precautions or not. I’m fairly certain the gun I used on “The Gifted” was real and it surprised him.
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Here you go. I was confident that everything was safe (and it was a lot of fun!), but I was quite literally thinking during this, “Please don’t let this be The Crow.”
In the bottom pic, we were aiming at an actor.
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Thanks.
Knowing very little about the industry, my first thought was perhaps the DP/Director were working with Alec to set up the scene, and as part of that he fired as he would in the scene, but I also wondered a) would you actually fire if it wasn’t “Action!”, and b) would Alec have a stand-in if they were just setting up the shot?
I should add that I only have experience as a BG extra, so beyond that, it’s only things I’ve read or have been told. I suppose maybe in some things, they point slightly away from the “target,” but film it in a way that looks real. I don’t know. In the above scenes, the guns were completely empty, not even blanks (I believe that would’ve been very dangerous point blank). They clicked on the first trigger pull, but we had to pretend on the rest of the pulls and we had to fake the recoil.
My wife was wondering something similar. How does he hit the DP and the director? My guess is that it was maybe either testing things without filming or it was a closeup of Baldwin and he was aiming out of frame. Fucked up either way.
I’m definitely not on expert. I’ve only handled guns on set a couple times and the above is the only time I’ve “fired” one. I’ve been in scenes where blanks were fired, but those were with machine guns, so it was a little different.
I would guess most of the time Baldwin would have a stand-in when setting up the scene, but that stand-in would not be firing any weapons. But he didn’t necessarily have one there (just depends on what he felt like doing at the time) and if it was just in between takes, it’s unlikely there was a stand-in at the moment. If it was rehearsal, it wouldn’t be a stand-in. I don’t think one would pull the trigger if they weren’t actually filming, but who knows? Someone messed up horribly, regardless.
My only thought about this is that perhaps it was an explosion/malfunction/shrapnel situation.
I dont remember, what happened to the prop guy woth the Brandon Lee incident? Id be surprised if ita any worse than involuntary manslaughter or negligence.
idk, I think two movies seems about right. Like 20% of the book is just absurdly elaborate descriptions of knife duels.
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Dune
6/10
Lol why are you going to put Dune on HBO Max on opening day? The movie should be seen in theaters. I wonder if anyone’s done any analysis on WB movies to see if they’re getting cannibalized.
I haven’t read the books so I was going in without knowing much beyond the broad strokes, but man does this whiff. World building it does a kind of good job at, but me personally green screens are a trap sometimes. They allow you to build crazy amazing visuals, but the world created don’t feel lived in. They have gigantic huge buildings, but like 3 people in them. It makes the world feel so hollow. There’s one scene when they’re talking about the city at night, but you don’t hear and see anything just a big CGI city. Also I don’t know why I should care about any of this. Why should I care about the fremen? They have one scene at the beginning, people kind of talk about them, and you see one or two of them, but by the movie’s end Paul goes native with them?
My second and main gripe is that no one has any agency in this movie. Oscar Issac takes over leadership of Arrakkas because the emperor has commanded it. Paul goes to Arrakkas because of his dad tell him to. Paul sticks his hand in a box because he’s told to. When shit goes down they escape because well that’s what you do. Paul goes native because he has visions that he’s supposed to go native.
The only person, and I do mean only person, who has an agency in the movie and whose actions have any weight is the the doctor who betrays them to save his family. That’s it! Also kind of weird that the doctor single handedly shut down the shields for the city and set up the capture of the royal family. Seems like pretty bad operational security when the family physician can single handedly collapse everything.
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Rumors on the “Rust” situation sound bad, and if this stuff is true somebody is going to get got for criminal negligence.
For me, Once Upon A Time In America is on par with The Godfather and Goodfellas.
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There has to be such a huge gap between how people experience Dune based on whether they’ve read the book or not. The exposition in the movie felt just barely enough to convey the main points but I have no idea how they’re going to pull off the rest of it. I also wonder if there’s like an 8 hour Zack Snyder cut coming so that characters like Liet Kynes can justify themselves.
Just finished watching Spiceworld, and I have no idea who Liet Kynes is
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