Maybe he was about to shoot some amateur porn in his bedroom?

I'll have to look for that. It's really a fun, clever movie.

Watch The Godfather this morning.

Believe it or not, it was my first time ever seeing it, though I obviously am familiar with a good portion of it from it's proliferation through pop culture.

I found it to be a 99% excellent movie. Powerful, well paced, a rare movie that I felt deserved to be 3 hours long.

However I found one major shortcoming that kinda bugged me. In a 3 hour movie, they couldn't find the time to make Michael's transformation from war hero all American boy to mafia Don make some sort of sense? I mean, sure it's obvious that he was driven to it by the attempt on pop's life. But we aren't shown the tiniest bit of that transformation. I think Michael has all of 3 lines of dialog between, "That's my family, not me," and, "I know, I'll shoot those two guys and become king of the underworld!"

I just saw that "Starship Troopers 3" is now out on DVD/Blu.

I think the most interesting thing about that is: There was A Starship Troopers 2?

I can't begin to imagine what kind of horrid this movie must be.

Although I did enjoy the original Starship Troopers even if it did mangle Heinlein's sublime concept of power armor. I'm a sucker for naked Denise Richards.

They certainly didn't want to telegraph the transformation, or the end would have been less powerful. I guess they might have erred in going too far with that ... but i haven't seen the film in a long, long time and won't be watching it any time soon. (Mafia movies freak me out ... um, these particular folks who lived in my home town and who's grandkids I played with freak me out even more.)



* * * * *

Ya know, if you cut out about half the stuff in the middle of the picture, Peter Jackson's King Kong is absolutely brilliant. I LOVE LOVE LOVE all the New York stuff that bookends the film, the sailing to Skull Island is brilliant, the stuff on the Island is fantastic through Kong's 1st appearance and from Jack's rescue of Ann onward.

There's really only that pesky middle part. Half of that stuff is very good, and the other half is godawful.


You tend not to think about it, but the New York segments are full of special effects. Jackson shows amazing restraint and demonstrates a keen ability to show just enough to tantalize, but not enough to induce growning. Yet he seems to lose all sense of that when dinosaurs are concerned. It's like two different people directed this movie.


Hmmmm, come to think of it, it's like two different people directed Lord of the Rings also. Maybe he's got a Smeagol problem.

I've never read the Godfather novel. I wonder how Puzo handles the transformation.

The novel is very good.

Being able to handle the internal better it provides deeper insight into that aspect, but it is still a pretty abrupt change from "I want no part of this" to "Well, I have to help keep dad alive" then in Italy it all hardens.

What was cut out of the movie (to my recollection) is the giant vagina and all of the Las Vegas stuff and most of the Hollywood stuff.

That was the first thing CP said too.

Sure they didn't want to telegraph that he was going to become the new Don over Sunny, but they made no bones about the fact that he was now ready willing and able to kill for revenge. That leap was made with no insight into his character. One second he was a war hero who wanted nothing to do with the family business, the next he was putting bullets into criminals' brains.

It's not even like it would have taken much to fill that in. The motivation is straight forward, they tried to kill his dad. Just show something to let us know what he was thinking. Was it an easy decision? Did he struggle with it? Does he miss his identity as a hero or was it easy for him to let that go? There was just nothing that reconciled the guy who clearly wanted no part of the family business with the guy who concocted an elaborate high profile revenge killing.

Better see which library branches have the book.

Reading these comments (it has been years since I last saw The Godfather) one thing that maybe the book did that the movie did was work through the politics and logistics that meant Michael was the only one who had a chance of making the hit and how he came to that conclusion and accepted that this was to be his role and that it was a Rubicon that couldn't be uncrossed.

Yeah, that wasn't handled well. They sort of addressed it and it was obvious that the reason he had to do it was that he was the only one who could easily disappear afterwards. But he was instantly on board, and actually came up with the plan, which just didn't make much sense from a guy who, to that point, had been presented as loyal to the family but entirely removed from the business.

I saw the commercial for the ST3 disc on SciFi and had that exact reaction! When the hell did ST2 come out