C'mon... The movie has Gary Oldman in it. That's got to count for something. On the other hand, he was in The Fifth Element and I can't think of a movie I hated more than that one.

Posted August 17, 2008 8:20 AM by Serge

That was before we had to believe a president could have Alzheimer's or be just plain dim without a hand up his back, so our moviewatching minds told us that if the President thought of it, it was a good idea.

Posted August 17, 2008 8:44 AM by Manny

Actually the message I took from this movie was that, sooner or later, you guys would get embarrassed enough about diversity issues to have a woman VP. But of course, when the crunch came, all the furious backroom activity would be about who was *really* in charge, because, you know, after all she was only a gurrrl...

Posted August 17, 2008 8:54 AM by Wendy Bradley

A collection of other reviews of this film.

Posted August 17, 2008 9:53 AM by James D. Macdonald

Proof that there are two kinds of crap in the slushpile. The crap that will earn out, and the crap that won't.

Posted August 17, 2008 10:38 AM by j h woodyatt

Oh my god, the tagline on that poster just made me laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh.

Posted August 17, 2008 10:53 AM by ethan

I'm all out of wit today, so all I can add is I loved your review. Thanks for sharing.

Posted August 17, 2008 11:08 AM by Darlene Marshall

Whatever else the President of the US may or may not be, almost by definition he’s one of the best politicians in the world. His talents aren’t in punching people out—they’re in talking people into donating their pants to him. He should, just by talking and turning on his charisma, get the terrorists to offer him a date with their sister.

I believe you have confused our president for Jean Luc Picard.

Posted August 17, 2008 11:09 AM by Adam Rice

Serge: You gotta admit elements one through four were pretty cool though.

ok, anyway. I think it would be fun to write one of these just for the parts where you get to totally fuck up what everybody knows about history and laws and all that silly stuff that people don't care about. So you could have rules like the no applesauce rule for presidential succession.

So they´re talking about the president is kidnapped and the vice president needs to take over the chief of staff says whoa hold on the president is kidnapped when did this happened and the other guy who is younger and always seems like he's gonna sweat any second now says right after he ate his applesauce and then it turns out there was a 'no applesauce' rule of presidential succession because of fear of german infiltration during World War 2 and nobody ever took that rule off the books because of typical governmental incompetence and now the president is gonna die or something.

yep that would be pretty good.

Posted August 17, 2008 11:30 AM by bryan

bryan @ 9... True. It had wondeful designs and sets by Jean-Claude Mézières, and it had Ian Holm, but its tone rubbed me the wrong way. By the way, why did the Forces of Good wait until the last minute to send someone to Earth, even though they'd known for centuries what the Forces of Bad were up to? The result was that, when Plan A went wrong, they had to rely on Bruce Willis? I know: they waited until the last minute so that the movie could have Bruce Willis save the day.

Posted August 17, 2008 11:38 AM by Serge

All I remember of the film is that it had Harrison Ford hanging out the back of a plane on a piece of string. Ever since then, every time there has been a film with aeroplanes or Harrison Ford and there's a scene where someone goes to check something out, we've added our own dialogue:

"What was that?"
"Just Harrison Ford hanging out the back of an aircraft on a piece of string"

Posted August 17, 2008 11:43 AM by Neil Willcox

He should, just by talking and turning on his charisma, get the terrorists to offer him a date with their sister.

I believe you have confused our president for Jean Luc Picard.

I believe you have confused Jean Luc Picard with Captain Kirk.

Posted August 17, 2008 11:44 AM by Steven desJardins

His talents aren’t in punching people out—they’re in talking people into donating their pants to him

This is Harrison Ford we're talking about. He needs to punch someone into submission.

Posted August 17, 2008 11:49 AM by Christopher Turkel

Please note that this review was written prior to the revelation of the Monica Lewinski matter.

Posted August 17, 2008 12:11 PM by James D. Macdonald

As a point of procedure, shouldn't "evil terrorists" be rendered "Evil Terrorists"? Just asking.

My favorite moment is when it turns out the President is Okay, and Glenn Close gets to be relieved that she doesn't really have to act like the President and stuff. Cause that would be icky. And hard.

Posted August 17, 2008 12:16 PM by Madeleine Robins

I was a professional tech writer when this movie came out, and my favorite thing about it was that an unseen technical writer saves the day: the President is able to figure out how to use the cell phone because he reads the manual. Why anyone would carry their cell phone instruction booklet around with them is not explained.

I also have fond memories of the Future Postmaster General fax scene.

As for the rest of the movie, you just can't stop to think about any of it or it falls apart. At least it makes more sense than the Die Hard movie where the terrorists are supposedly crashing planes by feeding incorrect information from ground control, but that's setting the bar really, really low.

Posted August 17, 2008 12:20 PM by Naomi Kritzer

I'm waiting for someone to post the sketch of a remake updated for the President Chimpy era...

Posted August 17, 2008 12:28 PM by Summer Storms

Naomi Kritzer @16

I haven't watched a Die Hard movie since the 2nd, but... it was my understanding that pilots in airspace controlled by... ground control... do what they're told. Now, this wouldn't apply to, you know, boring a hole in the ground. But it seems reasonable to the uneducated on the topic (me) that it could lead to mid-air collisions.
Assuming, of course, that the people who are pretending to be ground control are really good at figuring out speeds and directions that will make them crash.

Which is all my way of saying, "What's wrong with Die Hard [foo], in which they make aircraft crash by feeding them false information from ground control?"

Posted August 17, 2008 12:44 PM by Scott

Since the false information is how far away the ground is, I would have thought one glance at the altimeter would foil this dastardly plan.

I'm sure there are a million other things wrong with this scenario, but that seems like the obvious one.

Actually, that's so obvious I'm wondering if they did answer this in the film and I forgot. Die Hard 2 wasn't much fun, I only saw it once.

Posted August 17, 2008 1:17 PM by Vef

"Ground Control" sounds better than "Ground Suggestion." Ground control says things like "Cleared to land" and "watch for plane at 3 o'clock." They *may* even say things like "go to 1500 feet". Pilots actually pilot their planes, especially in complex airspace.

What're they going to do, say "Go to 0 feet"?

Posted August 17, 2008 1:22 PM by Sandy B.

If the Air Force One appears in a movie, is something likely to happen to it?

Co Pilot: What the hell happened, we got our engine back? What the hell is going on out there?
Air Force One Pilot: Fly. Just fly. We got... something. I ain't saying what it is. Just... trust me.

(from 1978's Superman)

Posted August 17, 2008 1:22 PM by Serge

On the other hand, don't they also arrange a collision? That at least sounds vaguely plausible (at night and during a snowstorm).

Posted August 17, 2008 1:24 PM by Vef

Sandy B @20

Why is it such a high-paid and high-stress job?

Not that I expect that "Pushing Tin" was a highly accurate depiction of the job... but if Ground Control is just an extra set of eyes on radars, isn't that a monkey job?

Posted August 17, 2008 1:53 PM by Scott

#20: What're they going to do, say "Go to 0 feet"?

Well, a friend of mine who is an air-traffic controller says he once told a pilot "Turn left 1440 degrees" ...

Posted August 17, 2008 1:58 PM by Jon Meltzer

Christopher Terkel @ 16:
His talents aren’t in punching people out—they’re in talking people into donating their pants to him.
This is Harrison Ford we're talking about. He needs to punch someone into submission.

If we're talking about Harrison Ford, I believe he would be even more qualified than any politician in persuading people to take their pants off. After all, the producers put him in the movie because they expected millions of people, male and female, would pay to see him in any kind of turkey movie.

Posted August 17, 2008 2:15 PM by Clifton Royston

Manny @2: That was before we had to believe a president could have Alzheimer's or be just plain dim without a hand up his back

Air Force One came out in 1997, three years after Reagan's Alzheimer's was made public knowledge.

And even well before that, everyone with any political savvy knew that Reagan was a dim bulb, a cardboard cutout in the shape of a president.

I just spent a few minutes trying (and failing) to find YouTube footage of the "puppet show" incident from Reagan's '84 reelection campaign, in which he was asked a question about arms control by a reporter, and hemmed and hawed for a few seconds before Nancy leaned over and whispered (loud enough to be picked up by the microphones) "We're doing the best we can", which he then repeated to the press.

Posted August 17, 2008 2:17 PM by Avram

The only thing I remember about watching "Air Force One" is where I saw it --- on a TV screen in the club car of an Amtrak train. I assume Amtrak has DVD's of every major movie about scary things on airplanes to show in their club cars.

Posted August 17, 2008 5:09 PM by Jim Meadows

At least The Fifth Element warned you. The names translates as Boron, The Movie, and it is.

Posted August 17, 2008 5:38 PM by Jim Lund

The only airline to show Rain Man uncut was Quantas. For obvious reasons.

Posted August 17, 2008 6:03 PM by Bruce E. Durocher II

If you’re big on watching Harrison Ford get beaten up and suffering, this is the movie for you.

Brad Pitt getting the snot beaten out of him was definitely one of the major draws of Spy Game, while we're at it. Watching that movie in a mixed group was interesting.

Posted August 17, 2008 6:15 PM by Michael Martin

Michael @30:

Mixed group how? male/female? black/white? American/European? drunk/sober?

Posted August 17, 2008 8:14 PM by Doctor Science

The trouble with this movie is that it caused the Iraq War.

OK, not really. But IMHO it helped, building on the groundwork laid by Independence Day.

What I mean by that is:

1) it's about Macho Sue

2) who is the President

3) and it gave us visuals of a US President as action hero.

Without movies like this, I don't think we'd have seen a President performing his own stunts. Or having his own non-satiric action figure.

Seeing is believing -- the movies made us see it, so people were ready to believe it.

Posted August 17, 2008 10:35 PM by Doctor Science

Serge at # writes:

> C'mon... The movie has Gary Oldman in it. That's got to count for something. On the other hand, he was in The Fifth Element and I can't think of a movie I hated more than that one.

Splutter? _The Fifth Element_ is pretty much the only SF movie ever made with a sense of style. It's like a Moebius comic (or bande desinee if you talk fancy) come to life.

I'm with you on Gary Oldman though - he raises the tone of anything he's in.

Posted August 17, 2008 11:18 PM by Steve Taylor

I saw this in the theater and in the first scenes when they show Air Force One, all the promo for the movie suddenly came crashing down and I realized I had just paid money to see Airport 97: Die, President! Die!

And where was George Kennedy? There should have been George Kennedy.

Posted August 17, 2008 11:19 PM by markdf

Serge at #10 writes:

> By the way, why did the Forces of Good wait until the last minute to send someone to Earth, even though they'd known for centuries what the Forces of Bad were up to?

But surely that's the realistic part of the movie? They had some meetings, and time got away from them.

Posted August 17, 2008 11:28 PM by Steve Taylor

I actually loved _Air Force One_ the first time I saw it. Every now and then I need to see a big dumb action movie where things blow up, and I'm willing to forgive almost any amount of stupidity. In fact, you could say that the stupidity's what I'm there for in the first place. But...

A couple of weeks ago my wife was out of town at a conference, and did the right thing and laid in some junk food and bad videos, as one must on these occasions.

I had a go at watching _Air Force One_, and this time I just couldn't make it all of the way through. It was the American Triumphalism that got me - the movie felt like a version of that Fry and Laurie skit where Hugh Laurie plays a grand piano and sings "America... America... America..." with a constipated look on his face. Except with explosions. I don't know if this is more ignorable if you are American, but to an Australian it can get to the point where you either have to turn off the tv or start throwing things at it.

And yeah - even the first time I saw it, I spent the whole movie waiting to hear how and why the secret service guy had turned traitor. Even Tom Clancy usually remembers to mention this kind of thing.

Posted August 17, 2008 11:39 PM by Steve Taylor

I wrote:

> A couple of weeks ago my wife was out of town at a conference, and did the right thing and laid in some junk food and bad videos

Aaargh. *I* did the right thing and watched some bad videos. She doesn't watch garbage. But I love her anyway.

Posted August 17, 2008 11:41 PM by Steve Taylor

Steve @36:

It was the American Triumphalism that got me - the movie felt like a version of that Fry and Laurie skit where Hugh Laurie plays a grand piano and sings "America... America... America..." with a constipated look on his face. Except with explosions.

As accurate a prediction of the run-up to the Iraq War (at least in the US) as one could ask for. I'm not saying the movie caused the war directly, but IMHO it helped.

Posted August 18, 2008 12:25 AM by Doctor Science

Scott @18:

it was my understanding that pilots in airspace controlled by... ground control... do what they're told.

It has been a while since I saw the movie, but the way the bad guys engineer the crash is not to cause a mid-air collision, but to cause a plane to crash into the ground by sending false information to its altimeter. Immediately after seeing the movie, I e-mailed my friend who works in aviation to ask if this was in any way possible, and he confirmed what I would have assumed, which is that a plane's altimeter does not rely on ground control for its data, and even if it did, the scenario in the movie required a completely brain-dead pilot. (Maybe Rayford Steele was in the cockpit?)

I looked up a summary just now (it's Die Hard 2, if you're curious) and this reminded me of the other thing that drove me crazy: there are all these planes in holding patterns, acting like the only thing they could possibly do is to continue to circle Dulles. Rather than diverting to -- say -- Washington National.

Many movies do not hold up well on close inspection but when the big explosions fail to distract me from the huge problems, they're doing it wrong.

Posted August 18, 2008 1:14 AM by Naomi Kritzer

Serge, #1, I don't care about The Fifth Element's plot, but I love the costumes and the settings. When Amazon had it on sale for $5, I got it, so I could look at those closer.

Naomi, #39, planes are very rarely directed to National from Dulles. Usually if a plane has to be redirected from Dulles, it goes to BWI. This was true before 9/11. National has some of the most dangerous runways in the country for a major airport.

Posted August 18, 2008 2:35 AM by Marilee

Serge: I love the Fifth Element! The plot and story are excrement, but the rest of it is worth it (Visuals, dialogue, insane set pieces... plus "Multipass." OH, and aliens singing Opera.)

I admit, 90% of the time, a bad plot/story ruins a movie for me, no matter how pretty, but that one pulled everything else off. Or did it with the kind of Dreadful that has Style, and is therefore worth watching.

Posted August 18, 2008 3:11 AM by Lenora Rose

Scott @ 23:

Since incompetence by Air Traffic Control can occasionally cause planes to crash into each other, there's some incentive to hire competent people, and some grounds for stress. My understanding is that pilots generally have to rely on ATC to steer them into approaches, altitudes, and landings that do not have other aircraft dangerously close, because they cannot keep track of a local airspace full of dozens of planes -- they're rather busy flying their own plane.

According to the Wikipedia article on ATC, "Ground Control" technically refers to the control of aircraft on the ground, off of the main runways, and is one part of what ATC does. Naturally, they have to coordinate with other parts of ATC to make sure that a runway is clear if they need to send an airplane across it.

Thinking nastily, I suppose the easiest ways to screw things up in a "Die Hard 2" situation would be to: a) arrange mid-air collisions between planes; and b) arrange high-speed ground collisions -- after all, the worst aviation disaster in history was a ground-based collision. Trying to get planes to fly into the ground is rather unlikely to work, for reasons people have pointed out. (Though I recall that was a plot element in an SF novel called The Adolescence of P1: the rogue AI, intending to kill one of its creators, seized control of an ATC system and fed bad altitude information into the controller's display, so that the controller told the airplane (carrying the intended victim) to keep on descending.... Another writer unfamiliar with altimeters, I guess.)

Posted August 18, 2008 4:46 AM by Peter Erwin

The bad guys in Die Hard 2 cause the crash by interfering with the Instrument Landing System, setting a much steeper glideslope so as to cause the aircraft to land short. Which is at least borderline sensible as a threat.

However, the crew ought to notice a) that the VSI is showing a much faster rate of descent than on the approach plate, b) that the altitude checks are coming at the wrong DME distance readings if it's an ILS-DME approach, c) that they are too high when they intercept the ILS and too low later on, d) if they aren't using DME, that their own cross-check between time-and-distance (or GPS) and radio altimeter is wrong, e) when they reach the decision height they should be able to see the approach lights, and they will be far too low on the PAPIs, so unless they are completely hopeless, it shouldn't have been enough.

Really, the bad guys would be lucky for only one of those to go off, in which case the plane would go-around and be off to an alternate, yelling over the radio to everyone who can hear that the ILS is mysteriously untrustworthy.

Posted August 18, 2008 5:35 AM by Alex

Dr Science @32 The trouble with this movie is that it caused the Iraq War... Seeing is believing -- the movies made us see it, so people were ready to believe it.

I think you may be right! Initially I was going to say the fault lies with the choice of movie our leaders chose to emulate, but then I had a quick glance at a list of popular films from 1997.

Of note: LA Confidential - themes of corruption and brutality
Men in Black - To keep the public safe we have to keep them ignorant
Tommorrow Never Dies - The right story in the news can start wars
Titanic

(Liar, Liar would do equally well as the last entry, but the actual plot doesn't fit. The only thing we can be thankful for is that there's no attempt to recreate Starship Troopers)

Posted August 18, 2008 5:56 AM by Neil Willcox

Whatever else the President of the US may or may not be, almost by definition he’s one of the best politicians in the world. His talents aren’t in punching people out — they’re in talking people into donating their pants to him.

Much better film idea. (OLDMAN: "My pants! Where are they? What just happened?")

I would love to see an action movie in which the hero triumphs because of his super-persuasive arguing skills. (Actually, I think this is basically the plot of "The Warrior's Apprentice".)

42: the Bashkirian/DHL midair collision was partly caused by ATC. Basically what happened was that the two aircraft were on converging courses at close but different flight levels, too close for the ATC to tell which was higher. Onboard collision-avoidance radar told the DHL pilot to climb, which he did, and also told the Bashkirian pilot to descend; but at the same time, ATC came on and told DHL to descend and Bashkirian to climb. The DHL pilot was Western trained, and thus followed his own instruments over ATC directions. The Bashkirian pilot was Russian trained, and trained to trust ATC over his own instruments. Both aircraft climbed - and collided.

So "causing collisions by taking over ATC" would work - if you were dealing with Russian pilots.

Posted August 18, 2008 6:07 AM by ajay

Lenora Rose @ 41... I love the Fifth Element! The plot and story are excrement.

And let's not forget Chris Tucker's contribution to the experience.

Marilee @ 40... Great costumes and sets indeed. Still, I found myself wondering if the film's French director was testing the stupid American audiences, to see how much crap they'd put up with before they decided to storm the studio and burn it to the ground.

That being said, The Fifth Element is a betetr movie than Ishtar.

Posted August 18, 2008 6:38 AM by Serge

My problem with the terrorists' plan in Die Hard 2 was that it depended upon a horrible snowstorm. Don't follow a plan that requires weather be perfect for it!

Trying to cause mid-air collisions would be fun, but despite all our fears, I think what you'd end up with is a lot of near misses, and a lot of pilots confused by your frantic vectoring.

And the altimeters wouldn't necessarily give away the ILS landing trick, if they updated the automated broadcast to include incorrect altimeter settings. But when a pilot got to decision height, as has been discussed, he makes an appropriate decision.

He doesn't wait until he sees the ground and then cover his face with his arms and start screaming. You don't pass your first check ride if you ever do the cover-the-face-and-start-screaming thing.

Posted August 18, 2008 7:23 AM by Nanglator

Steve Taylor @ 36:

that Fry and Laurie skit where Hugh Laurie plays a grand piano and sings "America... America... America..." with a constipated look on his face. Except with explosions.

So of course I had to look it up on Youtube. I was pleased at Fry's reaction in his three seconds of screen time. Nicely pragmatic.

Posted August 18, 2008 7:38 AM by A.J. Luxton

You bastard! You caused me to reread the review of V*nn* B*nt*'s Fl*ght again!

Posted August 18, 2008 8:22 AM by Martin Wisse

#44 (... The only thing we can be thankful for is that there's no attempt to recreate Starship Troopers)

You'll be happy to hear that Starship Troopers 3 just hit the Direct To DVD racks.

Posted August 18, 2008 8:43 AM by James D. Macdonald

"Now this is where it really falls apart. Whatever else the President of the US may or may not be, almost by definition he’s one of the best politicians in the world. His talents aren’t in punching people out—they’re in talking people into donating their pants to him. He should, just by talking and turning on his charisma, get the terrorists to offer him a date with their sister. That would have been a better movie, IMHO, but we didn’t go that way. "

Well, the president is good at persuading gullible Americans to do things, and to make bargains with richer, better-informed Americans (e.g., donate $100K's, and get $100millions back). Trying to persuade foreign terrorists who start off with serious hatred would be a Vorkosigan-level trick.

Posted August 18, 2008 9:42 AM by Barry

Jim #50: You'll be happy to hear that Starship Troopers 3 just hit the Direct To DVD racks.

And it's currently on top of my Netflix queueueueue. I still say that the first one is one of the five best movies of the 90s.

Posted August 18, 2008 10:32 AM by ethan

At least some aircraft use radar altimeters. Might be a bit difficult to fudge the readign on one of those. (I had a job, many years ago, building microwave delay lines that were used in radar altimeters: 2000 foot delay line = 2000 feet out and 2000 feet back, or 4.064 microsecond delay.)

Posted August 18, 2008 10:41 AM by P J Evans

Starship Troopers 3 isn't out here in the UK until September, so obviously I haven't seen it, but I can assure everyone it's better than Starship Troopers 2, if only because of singing sky marshal Omar Anoke.

Posted August 18, 2008 10:54 AM by Neil Willcox

54: "Starship Troopers - The Musical"? Well, I suppose Neil Patrick Harris was in the first one, so he's ready to go...

Posted August 18, 2008 10:58 AM by ajay

P J Evans:
4000 foot microwave delay lines? I assume there is some trick you can use other than coiling up a very long tuned tube of precise cross section. Ive seen the optical equivalent for optical time-delay-reflectometers -- a carefully measured coil of fiberoptic as a delay line to induce enough of a phase difference so that small lengths could be measured. I'm assuming that your delay line was for a similar purpose?

*A time-delay-reflectometer sends a signal down a wire or fiber and finds where the break (or other flaw) is by measuring how long it takes for the reflected signal to arrive. It's really expensive to directly measure that short of a delay, so they actually use phase comparison to do the measurement.

Posted August 18, 2008 11:02 AM by John Houghton

Naomi Kritzer @16:

I have my cell phone manual in my backpack. It goes everywhere with me, so if the phone starts acting up I can check the troubleshooting section of the manual.

I guess I must be weird, I thought everyone did that...

Posted August 18, 2008 11:04 AM by Lori Coulson

they’re in talking people into donating their pants to him

Didn't Air Force One come out when l'Affaire Lewinsky was... ah... exposed?

Posted August 18, 2008 11:08 AM by Serge

Neil Wilcox:
A cheerful upbeat pop anthem about being a "good day to die"?
Is there a way to selectively kill the neurons that were exposed to that song?

Posted August 18, 2008 11:09 AM by John Houghton

Didn't Air Force One come out when l'Affaire Lewinsky was... ah... exposed?

It came out a couple of months before.

Posted August 18, 2008 11:13 AM by James D. Macdonald

John @ 56

Something like that, yes. These were bulk acoustic lines: the signal went in through a transducer, became physical waves running through a carefully cut crystal (usually grown sapphire), and went out through another transducer.

The most quirky order I remember was the one for a large batch of single-frequency one-microsecond delay lines, to be used as oscillators in goose-collar radio transmitters 'because geese can't carry the big packages that alligators can'.

Posted August 18, 2008 11:36 AM by P J Evans

All I can say is, if you watched Air Force One for plot cohesiveness, you were watching it for entirely the wrong reasons.

Posted August 18, 2008 1:55 PM by Leigh Butler

John Houghton @59

Why did I follow that link? Somebody pass me a can of extra strength crystal Brāno®.

Remember, once a week, Brāno® in every brain . . .

Posted August 18, 2008 6:38 PM by Claude Muncey

The only thing that could save Starship Troopers 3 is full-frontal female nudity.

Posted August 18, 2008 7:26 PM by James D. Macdonald

Marilee @ 40: Q: What's the shortest flight in America?

A: National to the 14th Street Bridge.

Thanks! I'll be here all week! Don't forget to tip your dead baby waitresses!

Posted August 18, 2008 9:37 PM by hamletta

Jim, the shower scene was a highlight of the first movie, but it didn't save the movie (I was amused at the time that most of the authentic references to the novel were not necessary to the plot. What makes you think that more explicit nudity might save #3? It would take more that eye candy to save it if the song is any indication of the merits of the movie as a whole.
Besides, one whole side in the war is pretty much naked all of the time, and it doesn't seem to do much to excite the earthling audience.

Posted August 18, 2008 10:05 PM by John Houghton

Enough gratuitous nudity will save almost any movie. (There are exceptions: Angel of H.E.A.T. still stank even though it featured Marilyn Chambers running around starkers for most of it.)

Posted August 18, 2008 11:00 PM by James D. Macdonald

hamletta, #65, Ow. I still remember that. Although the runway length was not the only problem.

Posted August 19, 2008 2:12 AM by Marilee

I've hinted at what my review of Starship Troopers 3 would be in the footnotes of a review of Labyrinth and a sci-fi film meme I got tagged with under my bad sci-fi reviewing pseudonym. I've only hinted as I can't have watched it legally and anyway I saw it at a friend's after we'd been to the Great British Beer Festival so it's a little hazy. There's certainly some breasts (I think 6) and bums in it.

Posted August 19, 2008 4:48 AM by Neil Willcox

Besides, one whole side in the war is pretty much naked all of the time, and it doesn't seem to do much to excite the earthling audience.

What, no one else thought the Tank Bug was hott?

Posted August 19, 2008 4:48 AM by ajay

James McDonald @ 67... Enough gratuitous nudity will save almost any movie.

Even 2001's Swordfish?

Posted August 19, 2008 10:28 AM by Serge

Even 2001's Swordfish?

There wasn't enough.

Posted August 19, 2008 11:32 AM by James D. Macdonald

Jim #72: Maybe there wasn't enough, but I'm sure that what little there was set some kind of a record for gratui...gratuity? Gratuitousness? I'm not talking about tips here.

Posted August 19, 2008 11:41 AM by ethan

Even 2001's Swordfish?

There wasn't enough.

I agree--Hugh Jackman had his shirt on for far too much of that movie.

:)

Posted August 19, 2008 12:40 PM by Carrie S.

On the other hand, Jackman's buns were revealed in Someone Like You.

Posted August 19, 2008 12:41 PM by Serge

So Jim, you're saying that there are movies that would only be saved by 100% nudity? May I present Bo Derek's Bolero as a possible counter example?

Perhaps 100% nudity and no sound...

Posted August 19, 2008 1:02 PM by John Houghton

Air Force One came out when I was just shy of 15, so of course I saw it on the big screen. All I really remember about it is that I had ("Had." Ha. Still have.) a crush on Gary Oldman and that it was the first movie I remember seeing where it was pretty damn obvious that Harrison Ford was slowing down too much for action movies. Also, there was a bit with some parachutes.

I tried to watch it on TV a couple of years ago, when I flipped it on in the middle. I think I managed about 10 minutes, despite Gary Oldman.

(Also, Carrie S. @74: Word. Every movie would be improved by shirtless Hugh Jackman. Even Casablanca.)

Posted August 19, 2008 1:27 PM by Suzanne M

Suzanne M @ 77... Every movie would be improved by shirtless Hugh Jackman

You'll get your heart's desire, if one is to believe the Wolverine theatrical ad.

Posted August 19, 2008 1:32 PM by Serge

Serge, I am unreasonably excited about that movie. While it's partially because I like the X-Men, I have to admit it's mostly because of the eye candy.

Posted August 19, 2008 9:33 PM by Suzanne M

Suzanne M @ 79... I am unreasonably excited about that movie

Suzanne, please meet Sue, my wife, who could also be described as unreasonably excited about Wolverine.

Eye candy?
What eye candy?
Oh, you mean Liev Schreiber as Sabertooth.

Posted August 19, 2008 10:35 PM by Serge

Yes, Serge, him too.

Posted August 19, 2008 11:32 PM by TexAnne

I missed the howlers. What I got from the movie is "The Most Powerful Man in the World finds himself reduced to the status of some schlub in a bank filled with armed robbers. And still manages to save the day." In that context, it made perfect sense to me that the Prez was a bit slow and a bit stiff.

Posted August 20, 2008 2:06 AM by Jenny Islander

I missed the howlers. What I got from the movie is "The Most Powerful Man in the World finds himself reduced to the status of some schlub in a bank filled with armed robbers. And still manages to save the day." In that context, it made perfect sense to me that the Prez was a bit slow and a bit stiff.

Posted August 20, 2008 2:06 AM by Jenny Islander

TexAnne @ 81... Him too? Who else is there? Oh, that guy from Australia. By the way, I'm quite perplexed as to why paperback hero hasn't been released on DVD. I mean, Hugh Jackman as an Outback trucker who also secretly writes romance novels?

Posted August 20, 2008 9:12 AM by Serge

Despite much reading about the film industry, and talking to more than one film director, I still don't understand it at all. For example, in an hour or two, musing about a movie most of us had seen years before, this crowd (admittedly not a representative audience, but still...) was able to come up with three easy-to-make fixes that would have been cheap to do, and made the movie solidly better.

They have test audiences; they have industry audiences (beta readers?) -- why do so many movies have such glaring plot holes?

Posted August 20, 2008 12:37 PM by sherrold

Coming this Saturday night on the Skiffy Channel, Flu Bird Horror.

At least the title has the quality of saying exactly what it's about. What's next? Chicken on a Plane?

Posted August 20, 2008 1:11 PM by Serge

Chicken on a Plane?

Better than Chicken on a Möbius Strip, no?

Posted August 20, 2008 1:31 PM by Joel Polowin

sherrold: The short answer, becuase people, by and large, don't care.

I used to work test screenings. The questions were, "what moved you", "what excited you", "what bored you", "when X did Y did it scare/thrill/exite/bore you", none of it (at the level the surveys were built) was about, "what bits of it blew you out of the illusion?"

Most people don't think (as I did; at 13) the good guys ought to hole up in the command area and keep a 24/7 watch for the Alien.

What they comment on is the squick value of someone not being completely dead when they see the hanging body (that's from my mother, who was in a test audience for Alien, and mentions that as one of the changes).

The don't like Glenn Close, "Getting Away With It" in Fatal Attraction, and demand the wife do her in.

What they talk about are the big emotional swings.

When all is said and done, Air Force One made money, so the plot holes don't matter (I can solve,Die Hard II; even if we accept the McGuffin of the Final Approach Machine (which didn't take over the planes, just reprogrammed the Glide Slope indicators, in forty-five minutes real time. I can do that because the airport they used is on the Eastern Seaboard, but what cranked me was the scene at the beginning where they go from blanks to live ammo in fully automatice weapons: It doesn't work that way).

By the time they get to the test audience phase, correcting the plot holes is too expensive. If movies failed because of that, they would fix it at the scripting stage.

But they don't, so they don't.

Posted August 20, 2008 1:54 PM by Terry Karney

The bottom line is that movies don't have to work as hard in the storytelling dept because, unlike novels, they set the pace at which you experience them. Only much later do you go waitaminnit and start asking yourself the obvious question of why James Mason used a cropduster to try to eliminate Cary Grant. Only later do you ask yourself how come people knew Charles Foster Kane's last whispered word when there was nobody else in his room.

Posted August 20, 2008 2:05 PM by Serge

Serge (89): how come people knew Charles Foster Kane's last whispered word when there was nobody else in his room.

Surveillance cameras. Duh.

(Not invented yet? That's what They want you to think. Mwahaha.)

Posted August 20, 2008 3:42 PM by Mary Aileen

Mary Aileen, 90: Surveillance, aka "the servants," who were fired if they weren't inconspicuous enough. I've always assumed it was some little tweeny who then made her fortune by selling the sad tale to one of Hearst's^H^H^H Kane's own newspapers.

Posted August 20, 2008 5:59 PM by TexAnne

TexAnne @ 91... Apparently, when a fan approached Orson Wells and asked about this, Welles made it quite clear that the fan wasn't to bring this up again with anybody. Obviously, Charlton Heston didn't feel bound to a vow of secrecy. since his 1993's autobiography is where I first read about this.

Posted August 20, 2008 6:03 PM by Serge

About the Wolverine movie, if you go to YouTube and type in "wolverine origin", you'll come across an entry titled "origin". After the first minute, you'll see something that'll please fans of eye candy.

Posted August 20, 2008 6:06 PM by Serge

Just watched the Singing Sky Marshal Omar Anoke.

Good lord.

Aaaand ST3 goes straight onto the rental list.

Posted August 21, 2008 6:26 PM by ajay

re Citizen Kane

Kane dies in a series of very tight close-ups. I don't think the script ever specifies that he's alone in the room. Morever, as he whispers "Rosebud," he drops the snowglobe he's been clutching and it shatters; reflected in the convex glass we can clearly see someone (a nurse IIRC) entering the room. I assume she had pretty good hearing. She is never seen again, and the reporter winds up talking to the butler, who had overheard Kane say "Rosebud" *earlier,* also with regards to the snowglobe - so even if the nurse had only half-made out the word, the butler could probably have confirmed it for her.

Posted August 22, 2008 12:24 PM by Sarah