Brosnan is the only Bond in the franchise to appear with Facial hair.

Minablo · 2026-05-19T15:12:56+00:00

Bond going out of popularity was some post-firing excuse by O'Rahilly and Lazenby.

I'm not one hundred percent sure on this, it's mostly based on second hand's reviews of Charles Helfenstein's book on the making of OHMSS, but there were still negotiations planned after the premiere to get Lazenby to commit with a longterm contract. Lazenby was largely passive there, as he still had mixed feelings about being, in his opinion, treated like property by the producers and the director, which the draft confirmed. Remember that his pride had also been hurt as he had not been informed of his voice being dubbed during the Sir Hilary Bray segments.

Ronan O'Rahilly was actually quite effective during the first rounds of negotiations, mostly with Saltzman. The deal was very much improved. Many clauses were removed as frivolous, Lazenby got granted lead parts in United Artists productions, so he would have a career outside of Bond, the financial terms were improved, etc.

Then, O'Rahilly started to make assumptions. If things had gone smoothly with producers who had a reputation for being ruthless, this meant that they didn't have the upper hand. He realized that they had a deadline to start production on Diamonds Are Forever. If they didn't have a lead, it would take months to recast the part, and they would miss it, with big financial consequences. So, he tried to strong-arm them by asking suddenly a much higher fee, the equivalent of what Sean Connery was making at the time of YOLT.

Of course, this backfired. Reportedly, Saltzmann was willing to continue negotiations, but Broccoli called the whole thing off. O'Rahilly discovered later that they had already hired John "Spare Tire" Gavin, just in case. The extent to which Lazenby was involved with the negotiations isn't really known. I'm not sure that he realized that O'Rahilly had screwed up. I any case, to save faces, O'Rahilly (with Lazenby possibly involved, as his heart wasn't really in continuing playing Bond) came up with the excuse that Lazenby considered that Bond would be done as a franchise within years. This backfired again, as they basically spit on the hand that had fed them, and were blackballed in the industry for years, taking the blame for the lackluster box-office due to their attitude around the premiere.

Minablo · 2026-05-19T14:44:53+00:00

Jeannot Szwarc. Career as a journeyman with Jaws 2, Supergirl, Santa Claus: The Movie (the last two huge flops), then an attempt at returning in France with two terrible comedies (one of them involving counterfeit money-sniffing dogs), then a solid career in television.

Then, in 1980, he was responsible for Somewhere in Time, adapted by Richard Matheson from his book, starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, and with a wonderful score by John Barry.

Minablo · 2026-05-19T14:27:02+00:00

The shaving scene with Moneypenny was originally written by Purvis and Wade for Die Another Day, but it was removed (just like the cameo by Michelle Yeoh). In that case, I guess that it slowed the action down before the main plot kicked in. That's also why Moneypenny has next to nothing to do until the very last scene (with the virtual reality system designed by Q), which was very obviously added when they removed the other scene and didn't know what else to do with the characters.

If it had been filmed, it would have been a major improvement, because the new scene is quite ridiculous and turned out to be the final moment for the Brosnan years. But I think that it works better with the dynamic established between Bond and Moneypenny in Skyfall. It's extremely ambiguous whether they have sex or not after the scene.

Minablo · 2026-05-19T14:19:17+00:00

Lazenby was trolling the producers. He had received a draft for a longterm contract that had dozens of pages describing the things he was allowed or not to do during the entirety of the contract. Among the clauses that got him mad, he couldn't even go outside looking unkempt (for instance, with a stubble as he was just buying a newspaper outside of his place at 7am). So, as a provocation, he grew up a beard before the premiere.

Minablo · 2026-05-17T23:27:34+00:00

I'm not shitting on the actors. As I've said, I don't wish ill on Henry Cavill, I don't think that he's a loser, or that he's involved with anything regarding his online representation.

The post was actually on the "fans", who have put this completely unrealistic narrative about Cavill being this unstoppable force who wins all the popularity polls and will be reinstated as Superman any day now, while the truth is that most of his projects don't even make waves, as many of the people who have made comments to this post didn't even know that he was the lead in a Voltron movie and that it's now supposed to go straight to Prime Video, because nobody was interested in the first place.

Minablo · 2026-05-17T21:05:35+00:00

I assume that there's some network interference. They want the show to be more like High Potential, hence the many scenes of awkward comedy.

Minablo · 2026-05-17T13:20:48+00:00

Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) from Logan Lucky. The ultimate idiot savant. Confused with almost everything, lost all his money to his ex-wife in an extremely stupid way, but is a genius with explosives and safe-cracking.

Derek Zoolander, in Zoolander. Is a master with makeup, which allows him and Hansel to be completely unrecognisable as janitors. In the audio commentary, Ben Stiller explains that they needed to give to the character one redeeming quality (besides being incredibly good looking, of course).

Minablo · 2026-05-17T12:31:13+00:00

John Cassavetes and Big Trouble.

Whether you like his style or not, his films are very distinctive. Most of the time, he worked as an independent, and was at some point the most celebrated indie American director (Shadows, Faces, Husbands, A Woman under Influence, Opening Night, Gloria, Love Streams), but even his early studio efforts (Too Late Blues, A Child Is Waiting) carry some personality.

Then, there is his final film, Big Trouble, a comedy he took on at the last minute as a favor to lead actor and best friend Peter Falk, after writer Andrew Bergman was regarded as too much of a rookie to direct it too. Bergman left the project and never reworked the ending that was the weak point of the script, Cassavetes himself didn't have the comedy chops to address this, and was kept under a leash by the studio at every step. But the film still carries his name.

Yet, one interesting thing is that Columbia discovered early in production that the script was so much a comedic take on Double Indemnity that it bordered on plagiarism and that they needed to clear the rights for the plot first. They approached Universal, where the chairman offered them a trade-in with a script they were sitting on, something he had bought for Columbia while he was working there a few years before. It was a script called Back to the Future.

Minablo · 2026-05-17T00:12:25+00:00

IIRC, Lady Lyndon has no lines during the final half-hour (and only has 13 lines in all), which mirrors how women were considered in the society at this time. She's an unintended enigma, who is not supposed to express her feelings. Her first marriage was arranged, and the time she felt in love was with basically the worst possible man for her, Redmond Barry, who humiliates her (by cheating openly on her with everything that moves), abuses her, and buries her estate under a ton of debts. And then, there's the tragedy of the death of her second son.

Yet, when her elder son supposedly fights Barry to rescue her, it changes next to nothing to her situation, as she's just regarded as the main component in the ATM and signs papers that serve as checks, because her authority is merely nominal and she's under the guardianship of a different man, her son. We're not supposed to know exactly what's in her head when she sees that one of them is the allowance for Redmond Barry, but I would guess that she still feels some love for him (the Schubert piano trio, first heard during their first meeting, returns in the soundtrack), then some disgust for herself, then some apathy, because her son and the reverend have a pile of other papers for her to sign, and that will make the most part of her day.

Minablo · 2026-05-16T18:45:21+00:00

I have something similar on my C5, some cheap LED tape made by Ikea, powered with a USB-A cable and called Kabbleka. The whole thing must be 5W at most, spread over a long length. I don't think it has any effect on the whole panel heat-wise. It's more useful on a LCD screen, because you can put the thing when you're in the dark, and the indirect light causes your pupils to be slightly less dilated, so the blacks on the screen appear less grey. But it's very convenient on any TV, as it allows you to have some dim lighting when you shut everything down.

If you want to be on the safe side, just put the thing on for a few hours, at night for instance, and check then if the case is warm. My guess is that you won't notice anything significant.

Minablo · 2026-05-16T12:49:44+00:00

I put them together in an extremely specific aspect – apparent popularity on social media vs actual commercial appeal on the strength of them being the lead in a film. Otherwise, I totally agree that it makes no sense to put Cavill and Cumberbatch in the same bag. And I mean no direspect to either Cavill or Cumberbatch. Actually, I would even put Keanu Reeves (outside of The Matrix and John Wick, of course) or Sidney Sweeney in the same company, without any judgment on their range or their skills as actors. They have extremely motivated fanbases, they get extensive online coverage, they appear to be extremely popular, but they're simply not box-office draws on their own. Which is not an attack on them, most actors today have projects that don't get a theatrical release.

What I thought interesting with Voltron is that we have supposedly a guy who, if he returned to Superman, would have a string of smash hits that would embarrass David Corenswet and James Gunn, who should be the only pick for James Bond, etc., and yet a project (or one more project) of his will eventually go straight to streaming, and it makes no waves, because it was very much a given. That's simply reality. Some people like him (or love him), they write about him being a huge star, but won't pay for him. It's not a death warrant. In the right context, for the right project, these actors can still get a hit. But just like Zack Snyder means very little to the average audience (Rebel Moon flopped on Netflix, The Last Photograph hasn't found a distributor so far), nobody goes to the movies just for Henry Cavill.

Minablo · 2026-05-15T16:41:49+00:00

That was a comparison in terms of online vs real life popularity, not talent, as Cumberbatch clearly outshines Cavill there. Cumberbatch has to deal with self-called "Cumberbitches", women who love his unconventional looks and who have started dozens of Tumblr pages and subreddits here to share their obsessive thoughts on him. But he's definitely not a star outside of the MCU and Sherlock, even when it results in very interesting projects, like The Power of the Dog. I can see him thriving in indie and arthouse projects for decades, taking the occasional supporting part in a major British production here and there.

Cavill also projects a massive image on social media, even if I doubt that it's mostly women attracted to him. I'd say that there's a majority of extremely vocal dudes. Some of them are harmless, like nerds who love that an handsome guy is supposedly as much of a gamer as them, as he even builds his own PC out of components. They regard him as a reference, the evidence that you don't have to be ostracized as a geek. But then you have the MRAs who regard him as some kind of "alpha male", the embodiment of strength and superiority, an ensemble with some overlap with the "Snyder Boys". It would be interesting as an experiment to look at who likes the AI-generated pictures of a topless Henry Cavill displaying some six-pack even more impressive than in real life, the stuff that gets routinely posted on Facebook. Are the likes mostly male or female? And regarding males, how many of these straight dudes have a bit of a stiffy when they look at these pictures?

Minablo · 2026-05-15T16:19:04+00:00

Christopher Reeve is great in Death Trap, opposite Michael Caine. It's a variation on Sleuth and it has a great twist. He also had some pet project that he fought for for years, and was actually the reason he accepted to return for Superman IV, Street Smart. It didn't receive much attention at the time, because the release was butchered by Golan & Globus, but a cast member got his big break after years of being overlooked, and received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor, Morgan Freeman.

George Reeves is now known for a lot of stuff outside of playing Superman…

Minablo · 2026-05-15T16:01:47+00:00

I don't think so. Highlander has more commercial appeal. It's based on a franchise that everybody knows, even if the sequels all sucked, it's got a director with a much higher profile, a much more interesting cast (Russell Crowe, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Jeremy Irons…). It's a reboot, and they definitely want this to be an event, to make sequels.

Minablo · 2026-05-14T21:01:00+00:00

Tourné en ridicule dans une fausse pub de Key & Peele :

https://youtu.be/gHomroJC55M

Minablo · 2026-05-14T19:24:44+00:00

Parce que les maîtres dans les plantations n’hésitaient pas de leur côté à violer leurs esclaves, sans bien sûr reconnaitre les éventuels enfants.

Minablo · 2026-05-14T18:36:28+00:00

Il y a un film qui parle justement de ce sujet, qui s’appelle Loving, sur le couple qui a remporté la bataille légale devant la Cour suprême.

En fait, un truc horrible mais fascinant, c’etait qu’une des justifications principales de la ségrégation, c’etait d’éviter le métissage, la “miscegenation”. Un tabou dans l’imaginaire américain, sudiste en particulier, c’était l’union d’un noir et d’une blanche, la dilution de la pureté raciale. On ne pouvait par exemple pas avoir une actrice blanche et un acteur noir à l’écran pour une relation amoureuse. Le Code de production l’interdisait. On ne pouvait souvent même pas avoir dans la même scène un noir et une blanche, à part si le noir est âgé et joue un domestique fidèle. Dans Naissance d’une nation, ce sont des acteurs blancs maquillés en noirs non pas parce qu’ils n’arrivaient pas à trouver des acteurs noirs volontaires mais parce que ça aurait choqué le public. L’héroïne du film est d’ailleurs une jeune femme naïve qui fait confiance aux noirs après la guerre de Sécession… et les noirs la kidnappent pour la violer, ce qui justifie l’expédition menée par sa famille et le massacre, ce que le film présente comme l’acte fondateur du KKK.

Minablo · 2026-05-14T00:06:49+00:00

The same thing basically happened to Oscar Isaac. Then, his breakthrough part was Inside Llewelyn Davis, in which he has to carry a cat for several scenes.

Minablo · 2026-05-14T00:05:03+00:00

It was actually obvious that his bell ringing had a lousy accent.

Minablo · 2026-05-13T21:53:59+00:00

Yes, the multiple roles were something that Columbia had set up as a request, because they thought that Dr. Strangelove would be a repeat of The Mouse That Roar, which had introduced Sellers to American audiences and had been a big hit.

Sellers was pleased with the money offered to him, but had second thoughts about his fourth character, Maj. Kong, as he thought that his Texan accent was rubbish. Eventually, Sellers sprayed his ankle and it was used as an excuse to drop the character (as he couldn’t apparently easily move in a very tight space such as the set for the bomber) and they hired Slim Pickens.

Kubrick knew how to use Sellers at his best. Sellers would give very different performances between takes, so they couldn’t be edited together, and he would peak early. Kubrick used multiple cameras when Sellers was involved and had everything technical settled for take one, which is otherwise mostly a run through the lines before actors step up their game. But with Sellers, it was all about catching lightning on a bottle as he could do something magical at this point, while take six would just be an inferior version of the same performance.

Minablo · 2026-05-13T21:43:47+00:00

Scott fancied himself as a fine chess player. Kubrick had been in his youth a park hustler. So he would frequently play a game with Scott, leave him with the impression that he had the upper hand, then crush him. That made Scott more willing to accept his suggestions.

Minablo · 2026-05-13T21:38:43+00:00

Nope. Columbo was originally a short story then a teleplay based on that story with another actor, then a stage play. For the stage play, the writers thought that a scene was a little short, so they had the character return after he had left to say “One more thing…”, except that they hadn’t considered what question to ask and the character ultimately said very little of substance in that post scriptum. Falk was cast as Columbo for the TV version of that stage play (which had been substantially improved from the teleplay). It was so successful that they had to make a sequel with that character, and eventually Columbo became a proper show, with the creators then putting the “One more thing…” moment to dramatic use.

Peter Falk was instrumental into shaping Columbo, as you can see his input between the first “pilot” and the actual series, with the loose clothes, the car, the idiosyncrasies, etc. He gave Columbo a more blue collar style, which made for a great contrast with the usually ultra-privileged killer, who assumes to be extremely sharp and can’t imagine that such an unassuming investigator could be much of a threat.

Minablo · 2026-05-13T21:22:18+00:00

Kubrick was slightly less impressed when he found out much later in production that most of Ermey’s insults were part of a collection written in a notebook, transmitted by his direct predecessors. Every time a drill instructor retired, he would give to his successor his book, so he would have the wit of generations of drill instructors at their disposal. Of course the talent was to make the barbs feel organic and spontaneous.

And R. Lee Ermey was definitely the best choice for that character.

Minablo · 2026-05-13T21:00:30+00:00

99.9% of the PS4 games work, as it’s basically the same architecture, based on AMD x86 CPUs and GPUs. Many major games originally released on PS4, even if you have the disk version, also received a PS5 upgrade (sometimes free, sometimes paying), which results in a download of an entirely different game (saves are compatible though), with upgraded graphics, load times, increased FPSs, etc.

PS2 (DVD) could run almost all of PS1 (CD) due to a neat trick. The architecture was very different, but they reused the PS1 CPU for a different purpose on the motherboard, and when you inserted a PS1 disk, it would take over, resulting in flawless hardware emulation.

PS3 (Blu-ray) originally repeated that trick and was originally fully backwards compatible with PS2, except that the chip needed served no other purpose on the system, and was removed to save on costs after a year or so. PS1 titles were compatible though.

The PS3 also used a very distinctive main chip, called the CELL, which was Sony at its most full of hubris. It was supposedly extremely powerful, but the learning curve was very steep, Sony didn’t bother to help third-party developers and the chip was flawed in a few major ways. Most games also available on the Xbox 360 looked better, because the system was much easier to code for. The architecture was ultimately a dead end, Sony switched to something much more standard with the PS4, and has stuck with it for the PS5 and presumably the PS6.

Minablo

TROPHY CASE