Conference bookie::movies

    No apostrophe.  ;^)
    

    Well, I did think this was a great movie.  I've seen it three times so
    far, and plan to see it again.  It's one of my all time favorites.  I'm
    thrilled that Emma Thompson got the oscar for Best Actress since her
    Margaret is one of my all time favorite female characters, from a
    movie.
    
    Lorna
    

    Finally got to see this, on video though.
    
    Excelelnt movie, though I though the editing was a little....abrupt at
    times.  I say this only because I don't usually notice the editing and
    in this movie there were several scenes that were just cut to black and
    the scene changed....like the seen after Anthony Hopkin's daughter's
    wedding when Margret and Mr. Wilcox were discussing what happened -
    Margret obviously though the conversation was over yet the scene came
    back 3 times.....well those who have seen it will know what I mean.
    
    I thought the character of Helen was 'over done' at times and I
    sometimes found her annoying but the costumes and scenery and attention
    to detail were fabulous and I just loved all the beautiful shots of the
    hospital and the city streets and even the interiors of the homes
    looked wonderful!
    
    I'm glad I rented it
    Joyce
    
    

I had the same feelings about the editing.  It had a rough, documentary feel 
to it in a couple of places.  Really strange for this genre.  The other 98%
was consistently normal editing.

All in all, I liked it.  

Bob

    Re the editing,
    
    I haven't seen Howards End yet, but it sounds like the same type of
    editing Merchant and Ivory chose for A Room with a View. It's been
    years since I read HE, but I recently re-read RWAV, and the editing
    follows EM Forster's writing in that book. The book is a series of 
    vignettes that follow the characters, rather than a smooth story.
    The vignettes tend to end abruptly and the story picks up at another
    place and time.
    
    Perhaps the book in Howards End was written the same way, since it 
    was also by EM Forster.
    
    
    Marilyn

>    I haven't seen Howards End yet, but it sounds like the same type of
>    editing Merchant and Ivory chose for A Room with a View. It's been
>    years since I read HE, but I recently re-read RWAV, and the editing
>    follows EM Forster's writing in that book. The book is a series of 
>    vignettes that follow the characters, rather than a smooth story.
>    The vignettes tend to end abruptly and the story picks up at another
>    place and time.
    

In HE it is something different.  It's not a cut from one scene or vignette 
to another, but a cut from one part of a conversation to a later point in 
the same conversation with a one-second blackout in between.  It looks like
the editor wanted to trim the scene and couldn't do it any other way.


Bob

    Thanks Bob - thats just how I would have liked to describe it....it
    felt uncomfortable and thats just how I felt - like the director/editor
    or someone just randomly cut out several minutes of dialouge
    
    Joyce

    I enjoyed the movie, but was rather surprised by it; all the
    commentary and clips I'd seen previously had suggested that it was a
    beautiful costume piece, whereas I found it a rather lacerating study
    of interpersonal and inter-class relationships (with some beautiful
    scenery thrown in to make the rest seem even nastier by contrast!).
    
    Lots of fine performances, though I thought the younger sister was a
    bit too mercurial, and I did have a little trouble believing Emma
    Thompson as quite so meek (though she did have her moments). James
    Wilby as the tick of a son was delightfully nasty. And the guy who
    played Leonard Bast showed the edginess and defensiveness of someone
    who feels himself beyond the pale very well indeed; when the sisters
    kept trying to put him at ease, his longing and mistrust were palpable.
    
    <spoiler>:
    
    
    I found it - of note, I suppose - that at the end, the lower-class
    Basts were simply forgotten... Not a hint as to whether either of the
    sisters had even thought about the widow. [Today, of course, she'd have
    brought a major lawsuit against the family, been on all the talk shows,
    and maybe gotten a TV movie deal out of it, but back then one could
    safely ignore "such people". At least, that's the feeling I was left
    with...]
    
    -b

    Could the moderator please remove the apostrophe from the title?
    
    Thanks,
    
    - Dave