Member Review Tom Hanks' "News Of The World"

I thought New of the World was an OK movie. When compared to other current movies, I thought it better than some but not super good. It was entertaining enough that my wife purchased a DVD so she could watch it again.
 
Take it from someone who has been an extra. I had a couple of 12 hour days on a set, for in my case a total of about 25 seconds of screen time. It does require some creature comforts - a place to sit down, get off your feet, have a bite to eat, a cup of tea, etc.
I know too well how it goes. I've been hired as a gun coach/weapons coordinator several times then had to do bit parts, work my behind off organizing epic western gunfights only for a distributor or whoever up the chain axe it.

Show biz is a trip.
 
Take it from someone who has been an extra.
Back during the late 1980's, my ex-wife & her friends answered the call from production companies for "extras" every time a movie was filming in our area.

I had no idea it was so involved.

Not an audition, but a very detailed interview.
Although, none of the girls were selected ... that was a very interesting day !

Some of my employees... apparently knew what to say during said interview.
I guess their initial interview remained on file back in Hollywood.
:bounce:

They all became extras in such local films as " A Time to Kill " , "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou" ,
" Mississippi Burning" and " My Dog Skip" ... just to name a few.

By the time " The Help" was being filmed, they were not cast.

Too old even for an extra perhaps ?

:D


I actually found myself on IMDB

That is too cool !
 
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This is a great chat. Have not seen the movie. With a daughter in LA i sorta understand the business. Like others have mentioned I would prefer genuine acting to accurate scenery!
As a resident of Fort Worth, Texas, nothing is more inaccurate than monument valley in Utah portrayed as north Texas in The Searchers,
still a great movie though.
The final word on this topic is that people should stick to the book over Hollywood depictions.
 
Tom Hanks' new western News of The World is yet another contemporary semi-political diatribe with a tenuous connection to the Civil War and Reconstruction. Hanks portrays a character named Captain Kidd - but obviously no relation to the legendary pirate of the same name! - who is a veteran of the 1st Texas Infantry who is now "getting by" reading semi-current newspapers to audiences of settlers on the Texas frontier in 1870, hence the title. I don't know just how authentic this mode of support might have been, but since various lecturers, evangelists, and hucksters performed in a similar manner, it is at least plausible. Among his travels from community to community he encounters many rough "frontier" types, among whom many are former Confederates who are, other than the Captain himself, almost universally portrayed as racists at best and outright pedophiles at worst who naturally get what's coming to them.

The best thing about the film is Hanks' co-star, a presumably twelve year-old actress named Helena Zengel who plays a German immigrant captive rescued from the Kiowa and whom Kidd takes on a long journey to reunite with her relatives in the Texas Hill Country. The worst thing - other than the mangy ex-Confederates, that is - is that like both movie versions of True Grit the makers of this made NO effort at all to accurately portray the topography where it allegedly takes place, North and Central Texas in 1870. It begins in a reasonable facsimile of Wichita Falls along a much-too-large and flooding river that I suppose is supposed to be the Red where Kidd first encounters the girl, who is much too clean-looking to have been a captive of the Kiowa. From there they go first to Dallas, complete with a cattle drive passing through it and MOUNTAINS off in the distance! He has taken her there to find the nearest Federal Reconstruction troops to turn her over to. Failing that, he decides to take her to her relatives in Castroville in the Hill Country. Along the way they follow some river through the desert with those same mountains still off in the distance; on their trip they encounter more Kiowa. Naturally Castroville looks NOTHING like the Hill Country; San Antonio comes off a little better, though there's no sign of the Alamo anywhere. I stayed through the credits to see where this was in fact filmed: NEW MEXICO, which as we all should know looks little like North Texas, especially the mountains!

The story itself isn't bad, assuming you can pretend it's happening somewhere else, and Hanks and especially the girl are very good, believable and ultimately likeable characters. After my recent reading about conditions on the Texas frontier during Reconstruction and desperadoes like Ben Bickerstaff, Bob Lee, and John Wesley Hardin it makes some of the characters they meet seem more plausible, though as usual for a movie they're far too exaggerated. Also, the stupidity of bringing them to Dallas - what happened to Fort Worth, where the cattle drive belongs; or even better and more correct, Fort Griffin, which I doubt the novelist who wrote the book this was taken from had even heard of. There is also a Hell-roaring camp of buffalo "hide skinners" that might've also not been too out-of-place in the Fort Griffin area, though once again the shenanigans that occur there strain credulity a bit too much. I won't bother you with any more details of the plot in case you decide to check it out for yourself, but you get the idea; surprisingly, I enjoyed it overall and recommend it for the acting and characterizations of the principals, but with the obvious reservations I've mentioned here.
Thanks for the review. I won't wast my time on it.
 
Except for "Jaws".
From what I read about Peter Benchley and "Jaws," he regrets writing it. The book sent people into a shark hunting/killing frenzy for years following publication/movie. Woods Hole Oceanography Institute scientist Simon Thorrold even stated the book legitimized the wholesale killing of sharks.

Peter Benchley on "Jaws": “What I now know, which wasn’t known when I wrote Jaws, is that there is no such thing as a rogue shark which develops a taste for human flesh,’’ Benchley told the Animal Attack Files in 2000. “No one appreciates how vulnerable they are to destruction.’’
 
From what I read about Peter Benchley and "Jaws," he regrets writing it. The book sent people into a shark hunting/killing frenzy for years following publication/movie. Woods Hole Oceanography Institute scientist Simon Thorrold even stated the book legitimized the wholesale killing of sharks.

Peter Benchley on "Jaws": “What I now know, which wasn’t known when I wrote Jaws, is that there is no such thing as a rogue shark which develops a taste for human flesh,’’ Benchley told the Animal Attack Files in 2000. “No one appreciates how vulnerable they are to destruction.’’
Yes , the idea of a vengeful shark was pure fantasy . The book and movie had a terrible impact on many shark species . I think people are more educated now , but a lot of marine life is still suffering . On top of that Orcas ( ironically the name of the boat) are killing great whites to eat their livers.
 
Yes , the idea of a vengeful shark was pure fantasy . The book and movie had a terrible impact on many shark species . I think people are more educated now , but a lot of marine life is still suffering . On top of that Orcas ( ironically the name of the boat) are killing great whites to eat their livers.
My daughter is a "shark nerd." She'll read anything and everything about sharks that she can get her hands on. Her hero is Dr. Greg Skomal, marine biologist & shark expert with the Mass. Dept. of Marine Fisheries. Her idea of a great vacation? Go to Cape Cod to look for Great White Sharks.

I nearly died of embarrassment, when at the age of 12, she gave a couple of kids at an aquarium a lesson in differentiating male/female sharks using correct anatomical terminology in referring to reproductive anatomy. The kids asked their parents how to tell the difference and she launched into her lecture. The aquarium staff though was quite impressed. LOL

We used to see orcas in the wild where we lived - near Puget Sound. They would occasionally come into the inlet near our house.
 
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My daughter is a "shark nerd." She'll read anything and everything about sharks that she can get her hands on. Her hero is Dr. Greg Skomal, marine biologist & shark expert with the Mass. Dept. of Marine Fisheries. Her idea of a great vacation? Go to Cape Cod to look for Great White Sharks.

I nearly died of embarrassment, when at the age of 12, she gave a couple of kids at an aquarium a lesson in differentiating male/female sharks using correct anatomical terminology in referring to reproductive anatomy. The kids asked their parents how to tell the difference and she launched into her lecture. The aquarium staff though was quite impressed. LOL

We used to see orcas in the wild where we lived - near Puget Sound. they would occasionally come into the inlet near our house.
My niece used to work in Alaska on the tourist ships that did whale watching (Seward and Ketchikan) and sent me a video of a pod of about 20 orcas coming up right next to the ship . Your daughter sounds like a great person !
 
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