Here at FilmDrunk, we’ve long been fans of Al Pacino’s ACTING with a capital A and exclamation point. At his best, he doesn’t chew scenery so much as rip it apart like a Wolverine and have sex with its corpse. Now, Nelson Carvajal, who last gave us Every Best Picture Winner, has given us a supercut called “Pacino: Full Roar,” featuring six solid minutes of Pacino screaming his face off, which begins with this quote:
“I worked with Al Pacino, whose character was crazy. Before every take, he would roar like a lion.” -Robin Williams, co-star on Insomnia.
Two things: one, Al Pacino was playing a perpetually-tired detective who can’t sleep because summer never gets dark in Alaska in Insomnia, and still felt he needed to play it so “big” that he was roaring like a jungle animal. Two, how big do you have to be playing it for ROBIN WILLIAMS to say you’re crazy? “Whoa whoa, Al, this seems a bit… manic, don’t you think?”
The latest Uproxx Video from the 5-Second Films gang is called “In Foley We Trust,” and it highlights some of the unsung heroes of the movie business: the Foley artists. Few people realize it, but getting usable sound during a film or television production is almost impossible, on account of all the wind generated by the klieg lights. With most of the audio unlistenable from the wind noise (the microphones are mostly to make the actors feel comfortable, as they generally have the mental capacity of plow animals), productions must then try to recreate the sounds of the scene after the fact. That’s where the Foley artists come in. When a movie needs sound, the production turns to one of its most reliable technicians: Mick Foley, also known as wrestling’s Mankind. Few people know of his contributions on account of he’s so humble, but using only Mick Foley and a team of assistants, Foley can recreate virtually any sound known to or conceived by man, using nothing but a ladder, a folding table, and a burlap sack filled with sticks. He once traveled back in time and pushed a German into a swimming pool, a famous effect that became known as “the Wilhelm scream,” named for Wilhelm Strasser, an immigrant who could not swim.
In Foley We Trust is a comedic take on the subject, no doubt influenced by the French surrealist Jacque Tati, and a valuable contribution to the two-guys-in-their-kitchen genre. But there’s also a lot of history behind it, as I’ve tried to demonstrate here. Enjoy.
D’Barkashaw Fur-guson is the cuddliest linedog in the league! He plays left cuddle. Protecting the blind side.
I’d barely finished reading the title of NextMovie‘s latest supercut, “Great Moments in Animal Sports,” when I knew it was worthy of a FilmDrunk post. I mean, could this be any more up our alley? Let’s be honest, I once wrote a fictional career retrospective about the guy who directed Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch. I once interviewed a guy solely because he had a split-second cameo in a movie about a chimp hockey player where he was doing this:
So yeah, I like to think I know my way around movies about animals playing sports. A dog doesn’t so much as put on a sweater in this town without me knowing about it.
On the heels of their success with “Everything wrong with The Dark Knight Rises,” (1.2 million views and counting) CinemaSins has released a new video, Everything wrong with Looper in three minutes or less. It’s a nice mix of obvious stuff (the Bruce Willis makeup) and stuff hardly anyone noticed, like the special of the day in the diner being “soy steak.” They also call Paul Dano “discount Shia Labeouf,” which is probably true from a salary standpoint, but from a quality standpoint? Paul Dano is definitely in much better movies, but I won’t argue that he can be kind of obnoxious. I guess it’s your classic choice between guy who’s okay in bad movies vs. guy who’s not that great in good movies. (Excluding Transformers 3, in which LaBeef was a supernova of obnoxiousness). Anyway, something to discuss.
Some of these “sins” are valid – especially the body-disposal thing – others, not so much. Like the quick-cooking steak. Dude, maybe it was soy. You just said the special was soy steak. But I think the major difference between Looper and TDKR (and why I included Looper in my best-of-2012 list but not TDKR) is that Looper‘s “holes” were usually cutesy (often overtly so) ways to get to larger questions, whereas The Dark Knight Rises was mostly just an artful collection of holes. Unlike your mother, a particularly inartful collection of holes, covered in crabs and living in a trailer. Discuss.
Die Hard Director John McTiernan is Headed to Awesome-Sounding Prison |
