Flavorwire: Nine Thins We Learned At Last Night's Princess Bride Reunion.
Elwes and Patinkin did all their own fencing. Though stunt people were used for some of the flips and gymnastics, Reiner says that Elwes and Patinkin did their sword-fighting themselves. “Rob said from the beginning, I don’t want stuntmen, I don’t want shots of arms,” Patinkin says. “I want you guys to film it, I want wide shots where we see the two of you.” Reiner felt tremendous pressure to stage the scenes well. “In the screenplay,” he recalls, “before the first swordfight, it’s described by Bill Goldman, it says, ‘What you’re about to see is the second-greatest swordfight in movie history. The first-greatest comes later.’” The duo trained and practiced for months — with two teachers, one for the right-handed fighting, and one for the left — up to and including the shoot, where Reiner scheduled the fight at the end of production so they could work on it as long as possible. “Cary and I would film separately for most of our scenes,” Patinkin remembers, “so during lunch and dinner was when we had the chance to work together.” When the time finally came to shoot, it led to “the only depressing moment” of the production for the actor: “When Rob would say, ‘Cut, print, we got it,’ and I would look at Cary and I’d go, ‘That means we don’t get to do that part anymore!’”
Awwww, they were loving their sword fight training.
Ooh, that's lovely. Thanks, Hecubus. I saw the quote about Goldman wanting to write a sequel going about, but didn't know what it was from.
... I rather hope he doesn't. Some things shouldn't have sequels. (At least, not official ones.) You can't put the lightning back in the bottle.
I just read a tor.com article on how stupid Looper was (things fall apart), and in the related items section is "This Year's Best Sci Fi Movie By Far:
Looper"
Fine, it's a website, not a hive mind. And suddenly I blank on all the other competitors for the title, so I ain't even mad at the writer. But...
Writer-director Rian Johnson’s third feature, Looper, is one of the best science fiction movies I have ever seen.
I’ve been writing about science fiction movies here at Tor.com for a couple years now. I love science fiction and movies, and I don’t make greatest-of-all-time announcements lightly. But sometimes it’s necessary, and with a movie as richly imagined, gracefully and stylishly executed, and emotionally overwhelming as Looper, it is. The only SF movie I can unambiguously call better, 2001, is sufficiently different to make the comparison meaningless. The point is, Looper is a work of cinematic art so profoundly and deeply beautiful in its fierce, dark vision of a terrifyingly, vividly real future, that its equal in SF will not be seen for a very, very long time.
Oh, good lord. I....maybe I'm stuck in grump more forever. In a week where I'm unhappy with Supernatural, I'm clearly unhappy with life.
See, it's reviews like that that are why I was somewhat disappointed in
Looper.
Because apparently it was supposed to make me ejaculate from all my orifices or something.
Because apparently it was supposed to make me ejaculate from all my orifices or something.
Okay, don't sneeze near me.
I wanted to believe that the writer was like 18 because then I could maybe understand. But nope.
On the other hand, the negative review over there may be even more bewilderingly ignorant, so I think I'll go back to not knowing tor.com exists.
It's not the greatest anything, but I liked Looper. Partly because it's fundamentally the same story as Drive.
I haven't seen Drive (the Blu Ray I received was woefully faulty), but does Drive put itself in a place where the inconsistency of the central conceit sabotages the...well, the everything else?
I like a movie like Memento, where you're sure there's a hole, and you'll find it, if maybe you see it again, and tug at all the threads carefully, not one where you're watching the credits thinking "But hey, if...?" Never mind the clumsy gyrations made to get the people in the right positions on stage at the right time, which is why I couldn't give it more than a guarded rec.
There were a lot of things to enjoy about it, but I can't imagine what your viewing history has been like if this is the best genre movie you've seen since 2001. And you seem to write reviews for money.
