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Are you watching carefully? [SPOILERS]

The Natural Way

11:04 / 31.12.01

Pointless thread started by twart having just noticed something in The Big Lebowski that really got his caned head going....

Donny's last night. He DOESN'T get a strike.... This is a sacred, portentous moment. Just look at that *significant*, disturbed look on his face.

And now you can blather on about those little details you have noticed too and it will be fun and laughs.

[ 01-01-2002: Message edited by: The Return Of Rothkoid ]

15:08 / 31.12.01

Note the seagull crashing into the sea ending, as Donny's ashes are blown into their faces. V. Similar to end of Barton Fink.

The Knowledge +1

16:38 / 31.12.01

Most of you probably missed this, but in Citizen Cane, Rosebud IS HIS SLEIGH!

14:39 / 01.01.02

YEAH! and in that movie.. the one with the dead people.. Bruce Willis' character is one of 'em!
da DA

Robot Man Reformed

14:52 / 01.01.02

And Brad Pitt is Edvard Norton! And Gwyneth Paltrow got her head severed by Kevin Spacey!! Who's Keyser Soze!!!

The Knowledge +1

15:08 / 01.01.02

And Charlton Heston didn't land on another planet! THOSE APES ARE LIVING ON FUCKING EARTH!

18:53 / 01.01.02

wow this coulda been an interesting thread until knowledge popped in and missed the point...

yeah the part w/ donny not gettin the strike a bit of clever forshadowing... i know there's more of this in cohen bros. films but i can't think of them... in O Brother i was told in the 1rst tim i saw it that when they picked up tommy my date went on about how where they picked him up looked like the box of a movie where a boy makes a deal w/ the devil to learn to play guitar, and thne tommy says the same thing to them... i dunno i thought it was cool...

The Return Of Rothkoid

19:23 / 01.01.02

Guns 'N' Runces - just added a [SPOILERS] tag to the title of the thread; just in case someone has some viewing spoiled by some of the things written here...

Radjose; the O Brother story relates to the Robert Johnson story. Johnson, a blues player (some would argue the blues player) had, apparently, sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads in exchange for bitchin' guitar abilities. (I think this was retold in a movie called Crossroads, actually.) Anyway, I thought the O Brother thing was lame (imagine changing Robert to Tommy? You think we're gonna miss that trick?) until I found out somewhere that Tommy Johnson was another (unrelated) bluesman - and it's him who the film's meant to portray. Indeed, check this out: quote:Fellow bluesman Tommy Johnson (no relation) said, "If you want to learn how to play anything you want to play and learn how to make songs yourself, you take your guitar and you go to where a road crosses that way, where a crossroad is. Get there, be sure to get there just a little 'fore 12:00 that night so you'll know you'll be there. You have your guitar and be playing a piece there by yourself.... A big black man will walk up there and take your guitar, and he'll tune it. And then he'll play a piece and hand it back to you. That's the way I learned to play anything I want." (As told by LeDell Johnson to David Evans and quoted from Peter Guralnick's Searching for Robert Johnson, copyright © 1982, 1989.) Outside of unnecessary plot-spoilin', can anyone else think of any other foreshadowing in films? Vertigo has it all over the place, methinks; though maybe that's not really as special as the Coens' one, as the film is about recurrent behaviour.

19:48 / 01.01.02

As I remember it the story of Robert Johnson learning how to play the blues from the devil at the crossroads is actually an old blues legend that had been told about other blues players before him. It just stuck to him because when he was a youngster he used to sit in with other blues players and, while he was good for his age, he wasn't great. Then he left for a while and when he returned he was Robert Johnson. His hallucinations of Hell Hounds at the time of his death, caused by poisoning, only helped to cement the legend.

19:58 / 01.01.02

And if you pay really close attention and write everything down on a notepad and have seen all the deleted scenes...

you realise that Swordfish really does make no fucking sense whatsoever.

And now for sensible posting: well, foreshadowing happens massively in Angel Heart with all those wheels. Hell, I can't think of any more at the moment, but I'm very, very tired. Will post more when sanity is restored.

The Return Of Rothkoid

20:23 / 01.01.02

Worth mentioning, though - how much is foreshadowing built into the film as an integral part of the story, and how much is it built in to gratify those that're really paying attention? I think Angel Heart does both, frankly, between the music and the fans. But hey. Any other examples? I just think it's important to note that in a lot of cases, the foreshadowing's meant to give something more resonance, and is a bit different from easter-egg-like examples of same.

Or am I huffin' too much crack again?

09:03 / 02.01.02

Hmm.

I quite liked Swordfish. It had that glossy, neon-blue feel that Morrison finds so appealing to stick into Marvel Boy. Plus the Finnish guy actually looked European.

Plus i'm a sucker for Misdirection

"Do you know what misdirection is?"
"Sounds like a porn name!"

- MINIpossible

09:16 / 02.01.02

Um, not to complain, but just adding 'Spoilers' is not specific enough to keep this thread from ruining films for people. Maybe if you added a caption saying 'ANYONE WHO WATCHES FILMS PLEASE AVOID THIS THREAD'. Yeah, that'd be effective.
And the chick in The Crying Game is really a man.

The Return Of Rothkoid

09:33 / 02.01.02

Well, if you've any hints on where we can send particular posters to rent a clue, then that'd be a start, you know...

Within the remit of moderation on this site, [SPOILERS] is about as good as it's gonna get.

09:33 / 02.01.02

Ok, did anyone pay attention to Clarice Sterling's car plate in HANNIBAL??

The Return Of Rothkoid

09:33 / 02.01.02

Please say it was FAVABEAN...

09:33 / 02.01.02

Yeah I'd noticed the Big Lebowski thing, its actually the only time in the movie he doesn't get a strike - there's more on the imdb site - like the Dude doesn't bowl at all in the movie - I love movie trivia...

a little bit silly but also on the site -

quote:In the supermarket, the Dude pays for his milk with a cheque. In the background we hear George Bush Sr saying "this aggression will not stand..." and the handwritten date on the cheque clearly says September 11. In the light of recent event this is peculiar at least.

There's probably some theory on the net that the Coen's are behind everything -

anyway here's all the trivia -

The big lebowski

09:33 / 02.01.02

What’s favabean?

And no, it was F8H

The Return Of Rothkoid

09:33 / 02.01.02

FAVABEAN? From the first movie. You know; ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti...

Christ. First day back at work and I lose the ability to spell the word "liver". Liva? Fuck's sake.

[ 02-01-2002: Message edited by: The Return Of Rothkoid ]

11:38 / 03.01.02

Well, for foreshadowing, one of the more recent examples was Fight Club. You've got five or six flash images of Pitt in strategic locations, and then there's his first full screen appearance, where he and Norton pass each other (on conveyor belts, no less) as Notron muses, "If you slept long enough, could you wake up as a different person?"

Or something like that. For some reason that's the only recent example I can come up with. bah.

11:48 / 03.01.02

12 Monkeys. Obviously.

The Return Of Rothkoid

11:48 / 03.01.02

[rot]
ROCK! You're back from Texas? Neat.
[/rot]

Yeah. I was cheating a bit because I'd read the book when I saw the film, and so clued into what Pitt's appearance in places (like by the photocopying machine, etc) was meant to signify. Which was a bit of a bummer; it's the sort of film I would've liked to have seen while ignorant of the story...

The Return Of Rothkoid

11:53 / 03.01.02

Just a thought, too; would some of the films mentioned not qualify as having easter-eggs in 'em if the storyline necessitates that scenes are presented in such a way to ensure the film's effect? Just thinking that things like Donny's lack of strike are more tangential than some of the examples cited? How many of these filmmakers are sticking these things in for fun's sake, and how many are using them as struts for the story they're telling?

12:06 / 03.01.02

[rot]
Yep. Back. Howdy.
[/rot]

Anyway. Yeah - I'd classify Donnie's lack of a strike not as foreshadowing, but perhaps as, eh, Logical Follow-Through. That's something the Coens traffic in often - their films are very concerned with setting up a logical internal mechanism, so that when an event deviates from that, you know shit's up. Donnie's death is just a follow-through on the lack of a strike, which is based in turn on the fact that things are changing around their group. So, yes - this sequence is essential to the structure, more foreground than foreshadowing. ahem.

00:55 / 04.01.02

quote:Originally posted by The Return Of Rothkoid:
Radjose; the O Brother story relates to the Robert Johnson story.

Also of note, at the beginning of "Sullivan's Travels", the protagonist wants to direct a movie called (surprise!) "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

03:19 / 04.01.02

Of even greater amusement, trivially speaking, in O Brother keeping in vein with the Odyssey...when they are betrayed by Pete's brother (AKA Circe) they are turned into the pigs (also made slightly easier to spot by the name Hogwallop and the pig that the kid is left with.)

11:05 / 09.01.02

Almost the same vein - Get Carter. In the opening of the movie when Carter is travelling on the train you see a hand carrrying a newspaper, that hand has a ring on which bears a J (I think) that is the only thing you see of the assasin who will later get Carter on the beach.

Not quite the same but similar - The Cincinatti Kid has Steve McQueen playing a game with a kid all the way through which involves throwing coins at the wall. He beats the kid all the way until the end after he has been defeated by "The Man" when he loses. "Guess you ain't ready for me Cincinatti Kid". Similar to Donny but occurs afterwards to show his total loss rather than before to warn him.

Different but interesting - Apocolypse Now. Has anyone noticed that whilst the crew go up the river in Nam not one member of the crew dies but as soon as they enter Cambodia people start dying almost instantly? It's like we are being shown the difference in their mission. Whilst they are in Nam they are at least engaged in fighting war, justifications aside, they are meant to be there. When they enter Cambodia it's illegal, it's assassination, and worst of all it's to get an American, one of their own, and as soon as they enter the actual part of the mission they start dying. Almost like a biblical curse.