Let's Find Chinks In The Armor Of Our Sacred Cows - Page 2

When people start nitpicking films like The Godfather, saying certain scenes look fake here and there, it drives me crazy. Movies are fake. Their purpose is not to be realistic. Some are, some are more then others. But Rear Window looks fake. It's a giant set. The Passion of Joan of Ark looks fake. When Charlie Chaplin goes through the assembly line looks fake. But they're all still magical, and realism is so besides the point.

I love the look of the zombies in Dawn of the Dead, by the way.

I guess if we're going by Phil's definitions and talking about "faults" that become "favorites," I understand this thread. But talking about how "Sonny is a dick" and how that "takes someone out of the movie"...I don't know what to do with that. Make a sandwich with the "violence doesn't look real" and the lack of observation that Don Corleone's sons are carry distinct parts of his own personality...and all this thread makes me want to do is force someone to watch The Godfather again and pay attention this time.

This makes sense. I'm finding Sonny obnoxious because he's supposed to be. Look at the set-up. Vito isn't getting any younger. Pretty soon he's going to have to hand the keys over to someone. But who? You've got Tom, who can't technically take over the family. You've got Sonny, who we see right off the bat is too temperamental for the job. You've got Fredo, who as Michael says in Part II is "weak, and he's stupid, and this is life or death." And you've got Michael, this noble kid just out of the military who seems to want to put as much distance between himself and the Family as possible. So of course the job goes to Michael by default, and it kills his soul.

In brief, every scene where Sonny is a dick moves the story forward. His reaction to the Carlo/Connie situation: Vito would never have done that. He would have sighed, full of regret that he would soon be depriving his daughter of a husband, because he would've known someone was trying to draw him out, just as happened to Sonny.

So I guess this turned me around from thinking of Sonny as a flaw. I still personally can't stand the character. Fredo, weirdly, is the most human of any of the brothers, and the most likable despite everything, and that's Cazale all the way.

I've paid as much attention to The Godfather over the years as anyone alive whose name isn't Coppola. All it means is I have a different take than you do. Decompress.

Who doesn't know that the three sons represent parts of Vito's personality? Vito had Michael's brains, Sonny's capacity for violence and Fredo's compassion/feeling. The tragedy of the sons is that they each only got one thing and not the other things, which fucked them all up to different degrees. That's Godfather 101. That wasn't my point.

As per usual the pre-emptive bitching and snark about the basic idea of this thread is far more tiresome than any of the arguments being made in it.

You know what there is some interesting discussion happening in this thread, if you don't like it then don't bother reading it.

And as usual the bitching about the bitching is fucking tiresome, what's your point?

ETA: My point was to wonder why this thread needed to exist. I think Erix did a decent job answering it from his perspective but some of the shit in this thread is just stupid. Bruce's lower chin in Jaws? Seriously, people?

Dr. Grant fighting off the two raptors with a shotgun.

If you have the dvd, I do believe that the story boards for that scene are in there.

Maybe "relatable" is the word I wanted. I mean, we've all had our Fredo moments. And Cazale somehow locates Fredo in the period and at the same time comes off like a guy from the neighborhood you might see around today. There are times, maybe more in Part II, where Pacino comes off a little too contemporary, mainly in his scenes with Keaton.

And Christ, Kay is the one I really should've gone after. Keaton plays a '40s-era woman like a '70s-era woman who's all too aware of what's wrong with the marriage. I mean, that's part of the character — Kay isn't of Michael's world and will always be on the outside — but especially in Part II Keaton seems to bring an extra consciousness to Kay that shouldn't be there. One critic or another said that the arguments between Kay and Michael in Part II play like acting exercises, and that was right on.

Tom would've made a great Don except for the fact that he probably thought he would've made a terrible Don. He was more comfortable advising those in power than actually being in power, I think.

Same problem I had with Goodfellas.