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Post by Ace on Sept 18, 2006 16:14:15 GMT -5
Variety weighs in with one of their top critics A Samuel Goldwyn Films and Destination Films release (in U.S.) of an Icon production. (International sales: Icon Entertainment Intl., London.) Produced by Bruce Davey, David Flynn. Executive producer, Stan Wlodkowski. Directed by David Von Ancken. Screenplay, Von Ancken, Abby Everett Jaques. Carver - Liam Neeson Gideon - Pierce Brosnan Madame Louise - Anjelica Huston Hayes - Michael Wincott Pope - Robert Baker Parsons... - Ed Lauter Minister/Abraham - Tom Noonan Henry - Kevin J. O'Connor Kid - John Robinson By TODD MCCARTHY Seraphim Falls" looks like something out of the ordinary solely by virtue of its rarity, but in 1956, it would have been a solid but unexceptional revenge Western. An unforgiving man's relentless pursuit of a Civil War-era adversary is played out across a magnificent backdrop ranging from snow-packed mountains to the lifeless desert floor, and John Toll's cinematography ensures the action is worth watching. Aside from spasms of brutal violence, however, there's nothing rousing or new here; the names of well-cast leads Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan won't be enough to muster more than modest theatrical B.O. for this very physical but familiar oater. Familiarity is entirely relative, of course. A large share of today's audience wasn't born when the "recent" major film this most resembles, Clint Eastwood's "The Outlaw Josey Wales," was released 30 years ago. Nevertheless, little in the original script by David Von Ancken and Abby Everett Jaques is fresh, from the dramatic format to the simple psychology and motivations of the characters; from the men's desire to say as few words as possible to the film's message of forgiveness. Long opening set-piece is a grabber. In Nevada's Ruby Mountains in 1868 (except for the river rapids scenes, which were shot in Oregon, pic was entirely lensed in New Mexico), salt-and-pepper-bearded loner Gideon (Brosnan) is shot in the arm. Forced to abandon his horse and rifle, he tumbles down multiple snowbanks, falls into a frigid river, plummets over a waterfall and loses his heavy coat before extricating himself and excruciatingly removing the bullet with his outsized hunting knife and cauterizing the gaping wound. With determined hunter Carver (Liam Neeson) and his four hired guns closing in, Gideon makes his way up a tall tree, from where, with expert aim, he manages to drop his knife smack into the forehead of one of his pursuers and then get away before the others find him, pausing only to cut the dead man's belly open to warm his own frostbitten hand. So off they go across the imposing landscape, Gideon staying a step or two ahead of his pursuers, who diminish in number along the way. There are intimations that Gideon committed some horrible atrocity that has provoked Carver's undying hatred, but revelation of its specifics is saved for a climactic flashback. In the meantime, Gideon shrewdly manages to turn adversity to his favor on several occasions, as he and his hunters cross paths with other humans, including a small pioneer family, fugitive bank robbers, a wagon train of the devout, railway workers, a cagey Indian trader and, saved to the end, Angelica Huston as a snake oil saleswoman wandering far from where she might find customers. For what it is, pic goes on excessively, with one final showdown too many. Its physical beauty notwithstanding -- Toll's work, which emphasizes the blues and greens of the forests, is always a pleasure to behold -- the film lacks a distinctive visual style, especially toward the end, when some hallucinatory heightening would have been in order. Gideon's frequent physical pain is palpable, and the killings are gruesome, but this motif doesn't translate into a feeling of pervasive harshness comparable to that found in, say, Anthony Mann's frontier pictures, such as "The Naked Spur," another film to which "Seraphim Falls" bears a passing resemblance. For genre fans, however, a new Western is always welcome, and this one makes its way through some of the conventions with relative dexterity. Of the two rugged Irish stars, Brosnan, for all his character's discomfort, seems to be having the better time. His lankiness sometimes reminding of James Coburn, whose turn in "The Magnificent Seven" also comes to mind thanks to Gideon's skill with a knife, Brosnan appears to relish his moments in the saddle as well as the gruff, minimal dialogue. For his part, Neeson also looks good out West but might have applied an extra edge of remorseless craftiness to his readings. (He also could have benefited from putting back the 20 pounds or more he appears to have lost of late). As two of Carver's henchmen, Michael Wincott and Ed Lauter are perfectly cast for menace and treachery but aren't given enough to do make their roles indelible. Harry Gregson-Williams' score is solidly in the classical old-school tradition.
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Post by Yuliya on Sept 18, 2006 22:38:57 GMT -5
Far be it for em to ever suggest anyone re-read Victor Hugo Why? You don't like him? Uglier, in that Javert starts off by merely seeking a criminal for a rather petty offense and turning it into some psychological life grudge match in some bizarro belief that he's enacting justice. Ugly in that it consumes him as a man until the hunter is all he is. Or at least that's what I get from the story. The details are a bit fuzzy; I was 12. (Yes, it was too early. Much of the book was lost on me. But I do remember that the most fascinating part was the one about Paris' sewage system.) What was the particular petty offense? Robbing the pious, charitable bishop, who was loved by everyone in the entire county, escaping from prison, or was there something else? The way I remember it, it wasn't about being consummed by a grudge (I don't remember whether there was a grudge) but about fulfilling one's duty. I thought that's why Javert killed himself - after Valjean saved his life, knowing who he was and what he was after, his honor went against his duty. Of course, a 12-year-old has a different perception, so some ugliness and some nuances might have escaped me.
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Post by Ace on Sept 18, 2006 23:23:38 GMT -5
I like Hugo though he's not a re-reading kind of author for me. There's not enough humor there for me, at least not that I recall. Petty in that it all starts with poor Valjean being sentenced to hard labor for 19 yeras for stealing a loaf a bread to feed his starving family. Escaping prison therefore should hardly be judged harshly, or Valjean as some master criminal and social devient but Javert is more concerned with the law and duty than he is actual justice, compassion and common sense. Yes his inability to reconcile his duty with what he finally sees as the truth about Valjean leads to his suicide but that in itself shows what a rigid myopic figure Javert was, tragic in his inability see and accept more than one world view/reality/truth at the same time and adapt. He's rather like a computer in a sci-fi novel/movie/tv program that when confronted with two seemingly opposing absolutes and then self destructs or blows a fuse from the trauma.
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Post by Ace on Sept 19, 2006 10:09:17 GMT -5
There's a very nice 4 minute interview with Pierce & Liam on TributeI hope that loads and plays for everyone. If not I'll upload it later.
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Post by Yuliya on Sept 19, 2006 13:33:25 GMT -5
I like Hugo though he's not a re-reading kind of author for me. There's not enough humor there for me, at least not that I recall. Humor? Good Lord! I bet Le roi s'amuse (a.k.a. Rigoletto) was his idea of writing a situations comedy. Yes his inability to reconcile his duty with what he finally sees as the truth about Valjean leads to his suicide but that in itself shows what a rigid myopic figure Javert was, tragic in his inability see and accept more than one world view/reality/truth at the same time and adapt. He's rather like a computer in a sci-fi novel/movie/tv program that when confronted with two seemingly opposing absolutes and then self destructs or blows a fuse from the trauma. [/quote] Interesting that both your arguments work perfectly well if you look at the events from today's point of view, when punishments are a lot less severe and moral standards are a lot more lax. Just recently I had a conversation with a colleague in regards to punishments. "Raskolnikov killed two people and all he got was a 10-year sentence." I suppose I never thought about it, but it probably sounds very easy, compared to what I think the English system was, where the usual punishment for almost about anything was a one-way ticket to Australia followed by years of labor. However, crimes and punishments do differ for places and times. I don't remember the details of Valjean's first prison sentence. Maybe it was extremely cruel even for his time. However, it was not Javert's job to judge, even if he knew what Valjean had originally been sentenced for. It was his job to bring a hardened, dangerous criminal to justice – and he was hardened and dangerous by that time, down to robbing bishops of their church utensils (or whatever that stuff is called) - and even if Javert knew Valjean had repented and abandoned his old ways (which I don't think he knew,) it was still his job to bring an escaped criminal to justice. He considered himself an honest, honorable man who was bound to do his duty. Letting Valjean go was a dishonest deed. By the more rigid moral standards of that time there was only one way out of it; for an honest man, reconciliation was impossible since it meant a compromise with one's consciousness. Or at least, that's my impression of what their standards were; maybe I shouldn't read too much. Not to say it can't be the other way around, a la "A Retrieved Reformation." I wonder how soundly Ben Price slept after he told Jimmy Valentine he mistook him for another man. The situation was different, though, and he had no proof anyway. Still, I bet he would spend the rest of his life trying to catch him if there were another robbery. And it looks like bank robberies weren't considered such terrible crimes, too, since one got off a lot easier. Well, anyway, I'm not saying you're wrong, I don't even remember the book well enough, but I do think there may be a different point of view in this case.
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Post by Ace on Sept 19, 2006 13:59:07 GMT -5
Common place or not Hugo stacks the deck with Valjean's crime to show just how unjust the sentences and society was. Otherwise he'd have started off Valjean with the robbery of the bishop (and even that's not a violent crime or taking from someone that couldn't afford to lose it -- it's also probably a bit of commentary on the church's propensity to horde and collect expensive things while those around them starve and suffer). 19 years of hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's starving family is ridiculous for any right thinking man at any time, and that's Hugo's point. That the system is wrong, not just the criminal side but a system that forces a man to steal to feed his family because there is no work at sufficent pay and no social network to help.
Hugo is definitley making a social statement about how men are not born criminals but are made criminals by an unjust system and even when they cease to be criminals and become immense contributors, over a span of many years, to the good of society they are still seen as criminals. Javert is part of the machinery of the law, and he is upholding it and beleives what he does is just and right he but in reality he's not part of a greater machinery of justice and humanity until the end, and when he can't conconcile that to a duty that he has believed in and pursued his entire life and still believes in, he kills himself.
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Post by Yuliya on Sept 19, 2006 14:26:06 GMT -5
Hugo was making a social statement; that's why Valjean is the most likeable of the lot, including his angelic charge, which used to annoy me a great deal.
However, Javert isn't just a part of the machinery, he's also a human being, who probably doesn't think about the system or question it. He has his moral codex and lives by it, and it so happens that aspects of his codex come into conflict. That this conflict has a society to blame may not occur to a little man like Javert, but if his codex was so rigid, maybe it wouldn't matter to him anyway.
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Post by Ace on Sept 19, 2006 14:36:14 GMT -5
Exactly and that's why Javert's life and death is a tragedy.
Of course in Seraphim Falls, Gideon is no Valjean. By all accounts he commits a war time atrocity which most likely ranks far above a loaf of bread and some silver and Carver's hunt is personal.
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Post by Yuliya on Sept 19, 2006 14:50:58 GMT -5
Well, I hope Carver is no Javert, either, even if he does let Gideon go (which I think we already know he does.)
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Post by Ace on Sept 20, 2006 8:51:55 GMT -5
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Post by Ace on Sept 20, 2006 18:03:17 GMT -5
THE IRISH TIMES: When fact and fiction collide
09/20/2006
The movies that generated the most attention in Toronto were those dealing with political issues, writes Michael Dwyer , Film Correspondent
Although the media coverage of the 31st Toronto International Film Festival was dominated by all the star wattage on the red carpet - not surprising given that the festival is the best in the world and attracts celebrities in droves - the movies that generated the most attention were those dealing with political issues and reflecting on the edgy times in which we live.
One of the most popular films was Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing, an absorbing documentary charting the repercussions after the group's lead singer Natalie Maines declared at a 2003 London concert: "We're embarrassed that the president is from Texas." Another notable documentary, The US vs John Lennon, deals with the former Beatle's five-year period under threat of deportation from the US because of his outspoken anti-war comments.
Spike Lee's four-hour documentary, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts explicitly targets the White House for mishandling its response to Hurricane Katrina last year. The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair deals with Yunis Khatayer Abbas, a journalist who was working with a British television crew in Iraq when he was arrested, held and interrogated at Abu Ghraib and released without charge after nine months.
The hottest ticket of the festival, however, was Gabriel Range's provocative Death of a President, which had international distributors waving their chequebooks and had the press queuing in such numbers that a second preview had to be added. A fictional film meticulously structured as a documentary, it begins on October 19th, 2007, when President Bush arrives in Chicago where the streets are lined with angry anti-war protesters.
Having addressed a business forum at a downtown hotel, the president is leaving the building when he is fatally shot. What follows is speculative, involving a rush to judgment when a Syrian immigrant becomes the prime suspect. Tensions rise in the Middle East and president Cheney introduces draconian amendments to the Patriot Act.
Range's film seamlessly blends archival footage (raising questions in the process about media manipulation) and interviews with fictional White House aides and security agents. The build-up to the assassination is remarkably effective, skilfully building suspense in the style of a superior thriller.
It takes a non-judgmental view of the president himself, prompting the viewer to care for his plight as the gunman prepares to strike. The film - on which prolific Irish film-maker Ed Guiney is one of the producers - was sold in Toronto to distribution companies around the world, although it will go directly to television here when Channel 4 screens it next month.
ACTOR, WRITER AND director Emilio Estevez employs a similar technique on an elaborate scale to confront a real-life assassination in Bobby, which is set at the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles over the course of a single day, June 4th, 1968, culminating in the killing of presidential candidate Robert Kennedy.
As with Bush in Range's film, Kennedy is featured exclusively - and extensively - through archival material, in this case chosen to celebrate his idealism and all the promise he offered in those turbulent times, when the US was involved in another unpopular war, in Vietnam.
Estevez layers his movie with multiple overlapping stories involving fictional characters in the hotel on the day, and this proves distracting initially as it brings on so many well-known actors. There's William H Macy as the hotel manager, with Sharon Stone as his beautician wife, Christian Slater as his racist catering manager, Anthony Hopkins as the lonely, retired hotel doorman, Demi Moore as an alcoholic singer and Estevez himself as her husband, Ashton Kutcher as a hippie resident who turns two naïve young Kennedy campaigners on to LSD, Lindsay Lohan as a bride marrying a friend (Elijah Wood) to save him from Vietnam, and the excellent Freddy Rodriguez as an immigrant working a double shift in the kitchen.
Espousing the liberal values he inherited from his father Martin Sheen (who features as a hotel guest), Estevez laces these neatly juggled storylines with heartfelt sorrow for Kennedy's fate on the day he won the Californian primary. His film raises the intriguing "what if" scenario had Kennedy lived to run against Richard Nixon in the presidential election five months later.
Yet another politically charged drama that opens on establishing newsreel material, the new Shane Meadows film, This Is England, is set at an unprepossessing English coastal town over the summer of 1983, during another divisive war, this time far away in the Falkland Islands. The patriotic fervour fuelled by the Thatcher government is taken to violent extremes when a rabidly racist ex-convict (Stephen Graham) takes an impressionable 12-year-old boy (remarkable newcomer Thomas Turgoose), whose father was killed in the Falklands, under his wing. The consequences are unflinching and chilling in this powerful, necessarily violent film.
Extremes of wealth and poverty collide in Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering, set in present-day London as the King's Cross area undergoes an urban regeneration scheme. Jude Law plays a landscape architect whose hi-tech office is burgled several times, bringing him into contact with one of the thieves, a 15-year-old boy (Rafi Gavron) who lives with his mother (Juliette Binoche), a struggling Bosnian refugee. Although it relies on a few coincidences too many, this strand of the movie proves far more interesting than the problems in the architect's strained relationship with his wife, a Swedish documentary-maker wanly played by Robin Wright Penn.
The illegal trafficking of immigrants is the timely theme of writer-director Steve Hudson's bleak first feature film, True North, featuring Gary Lewis as a Scottish trawler owner faced with losing his boat. His son (Martin Compston, very impressive) accepts a lucrative offer to smuggle a dozen Chinese immigrants on the hazardous journey home from Ostend. Peter Mullan and Steven Robertson complete the trawler crew in a grim drama that vividly captures the fear and desperation of the immigrants. The film was shot (under the title Dragnet) on the eastern and southern coasts of Ireland.
Two Irish actors born within a year of each other in the early 1950s, Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan, take the leading roles in David Von Ancken's striking western, Seraphim Falls, set in the aftermath of the American civil war. This handsomely photographed film takes the form of an extended chase involving two men who fought on opposite sides in the war, with Brosnan as the prey and Neeson his dogged pursuer. Dialogue is minimal in this gripping action movie with an underlying anti-war theme.
After 20 years working on such Hollywood blockbusters as Total Recall, RoboCop and Basic Instinct, Dutch director Paul Verhoeven returns home for Black Book, a war movie set in 1944-45 during the German occupation. Inspired by factual events, it features the spirited Carice van Houten as a resourceful young Jewish woman willing to do anything to survive, even if this entails having sex with Nazi officers. Verhoeven skilfully orchestrates the many vigorous action sequences while indulging one of his primary preoccupations in liberally peppering the picture with nudity and sex scenes.
The sex in the Australian psychological drama, The Book of Revelation, is aptly anti-erotic, given that its theme is the abduction of a ballet dancer who is subjected to rape and sexual humiliation. The twist is that the dancer is male and his abductors are women. Played by Tom Long, he finds himself incapable of expressing the details of his traumatic experience in a film that's as bold and confrontational as Head On, the previous picture from writer-director Ana Kokkinos.
Monsoon Wedding director Mira Nair continues to pursue her interest in contemporary Indian identity in the acutely observed and thoroughly engaging serious comedy, The Namesake, based on the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri, who has a cameo role. It spans three decades from the 1970s, when a young bride (Tabu) leaves the warmth of family life in Calcutta for the lonely, unfamiliar surroundings of New York. The dramatic focus eventually shifts to her son (Kal Penn), who has assimilated the American way and has to choose between his devoted white lover and a confident young woman who shares his Indian heritage. Penn reveals a depth and maturity untapped in the silly comedy, Harold & Kumar Get the Munchies.
Ethan Hawke's second film as a director (after the pretentious Chelsea Walls) is the relationship drama, The Hottest State, based on his semi-autobiographical novel of a young Texan (Mark Webber) who moves to New York to further his acting ambitions. He falls for an attractive singer-songwriter (Catalina Sandino Moreno), but their affair becomes fraught with problems. Hawke features as the actor's father in this rambling, all-too-loquacious movie.
BY CONTRAST, Infamous sparkles with the bitchy wit of its subject, Truman Capote (Toby Jones), before it turns deeply serious in tone as Capote is drawn to Perry Smith (Daniel Craig), one of the two Kansas killers who became the subject of his innovative non-fiction novel, In Cold Blood. This is the second movie in a year to cover the same scenario, following Capote, for which Philip Seymour Hoffman won the best actor Oscar this year.
Directed by Douglas McGrath, whose screenplay is based on George Plimpton's book on Capote, Infamous is bolstered by a particularly strong cast that also includes Sandra Bullock (never better) as novelist Harper Lee, Jeff Daniels as the Kansas district attorney, Sigourney Weaver as New York socialite Babe Paley, and in a singing cameo, Gwyneth Paltrow as Peggy Lee.
Although McGrath's film is the equal of the earlier Capote in many respects, and there is no denying the fascination exerted by the story it tells, it inevitably suffers from a sense of deja vu. Unfamiliar English actor Jones uncannily captures Capote's personality, appearance and distinctively fey speaking voice. In one of the funniest scenes, he calls the district attorney's office in Kansas and the receptionist tells him the DA doesn't take calls from strange women. To which he protests, "I'm not strange!"
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Post by Lauryn on Sept 23, 2006 13:42:49 GMT -5
Well, I hope Carver is no Javert, either, even if he does let Gideon go (which I think we already know he does.) It's been a great while since I've re-visited the book and the sorrows of Jean Valjean, but it's interesting on one another level that this came up, and not just as such cultural short-hand naturally would in a "chase" film (as Ace points out it). Since the post-traumatic stress of the American Civil War runs through the movie, I was reminded that soldiers in Robert E. Lee's thinly stretched Army of Northern Virginia (with equal parts fatalism, romanticism, and grim humour) often called themselves "Lee's Miserables." Not too surprising that Hugo's novel ended up in a lot of Army haversacks, because of course it had a tremendous impact on the culture. I have no idea if it was as popular as campfire reading for Northern troops, but Southerners could certainly identify with its themes of social upheaval, whether or not they accepted that the whirlwind they were reaping was so much of their own making. If Brosnan's character had the opportunity to make a war-time trade of say, some supplies for a copy of the novel at least its epic thickness could stop a bullet. Too bad he appears to get shot in the shoulder, either not while reading, or perhaps the shot, meant for the chest, was actually deflected.<wink>
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Post by IcyCalm on Sept 24, 2006 10:13:41 GMT -5
Shot in the shoulder again, eh? Another "knitting accident." -IcyCalm
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Post by Ace on Sept 24, 2006 11:53:54 GMT -5
Ala, this time no lovely Salma Hayek to help him remove his wayward needle.
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Post by Ace on Sept 24, 2006 11:57:29 GMT -5
Well, I hope Carver is no Javert, either, even if he does let Gideon go (which I think we already know he does.) It's been a great while since I've re-visited the book and the sorrows of Jean Valjean, but it's interesting on one another level that this came up, and not just as such cultural short-hand naturally would in a "chase" film (as Ace points out it). Since the post-traumatic stress of the American Civil War runs through the movie, I was reminded that soldiers in Robert E. Lee's thinly stretched Army of Northern Virginia (with equal parts fatalism, romanticism, and grim humour) often called themselves "Lee's Miserables." Not too surprising that Hugo's novel ended up in a lot of Army haversacks, because of course it had a tremendous impact on the culture. I have no idea if it was as popular as campfire reading for Northern troops, but Southerners could certainly identify with its themes of social upheaval, whether or not they accepted that the whirlwind they were reaping was so much of their own making. If Brosnan's character had the opportunity to make a war-time trade of say, some supplies for a copy of the novel at least its epic thickness could stop a bullet. Too bad he appears to get shot in the shoulder, either not while reading, or perhaps the shot, meant for the chest, was actually deflected.<wink> Very interesting and a historical footnote I knew nothing about though I do think I've heard the term Lee's Miserables before but evidently never added 1 and 1. The thickness of that book might just absorb the force of a bazooka, but being a Civil War era guys there's no need. But absorbing a bullet -- very 39 Steps. Mr. Steele would approve. Ace
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Post by IcyCalm on Sept 24, 2006 17:16:35 GMT -5
Getting it in the shoulder seems to be the way to pierce Brosnan. How many knitting accidents has he had so far? Saraphim Falls, After the Sunset, Robinson Crusoe - any more? At least Mr. Steele avoided it for 5-1/2 years. Cracked ribs, broken legs, and clunks on the head were his forte. Mr. Bond hurt his shoulder in TWINE - doesn't qualify for the knitting accident but I'd give him points. -IcyCalm
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Post by sparklingblue on Sept 24, 2006 18:57:42 GMT -5
Getting it in the shoulder seems to be the way to pierce Brosnan. How many knitting accidents has he had so far? Saraphim Falls, After the Sunset, Robinson Crusoe - any more? At least Mr. Steele avoided it for 5-1/2 years. Cracked ribs, broken legs, and clunks on the head were his forte. Mr. Bond hurt his shoulder in TWINE - doesn't qualify for the knitting accident but I'd give him points. -IcyCalm He also got shot in the shoulder in Live Wire and The Deceivers. I wonder if that's the end of the list or whether anyone can add another movie.
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Post by Ace on Sept 24, 2006 20:12:16 GMT -5
Does The Fourth Protocol count? He was shot so many times he must have been hit in the shoulder at least once.
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Post by sparklingblue on Sept 25, 2006 12:10:50 GMT -5
I think it counts. (Gee though, I can never really bear to watch that scene ) I thought of another one: Manions; Rory got shot in the shoulder too.
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Post by IcyCalm on Sept 25, 2006 19:45:57 GMT -5
I never can watch the endings to Fourth Protocol either. Nor to the ending of Don't Talk To Strangers. I do hope he survives Saraphim Falls for this reason.
So PB is at least a 6-time knitting accident victim. Remarkable. He should be more careful. Can't believe I forgot him writhing on the stable floor in The Manions. Who shot him then?
-IcyCalm
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