I saw the movie for the first time last night. I know, I know.
My impressions, which will probably not be found in any other review.
1) Wow, what a young Meryl Streep. What’s amazing is that she’s actually improved with age in many ways. A truly beautiful woman.
2) Wow, what a young Christopher Walken.
3) A young DeNiro is no big deal — I saw Taxi Driver.
4) There’s no way those mountain scenes were filmed in Pennsylvania — many of them were above the tree line. So I went and looked it up, and found out that they filmed in the Olympics. I would have guessed the Sierras, because they would have been closer to Hollywood. But why not just show what the Appalachians looked like? They were already there to film a lot of other scenes in town. To get points for cinematography? To me it detracted from the movie.
That is all.
And John Cazale doing one of the characters Cazale does best.
Not that he did that many characters in the movies.
4) Absolutely. I’m a Pennsylvanian, and I felt the mountain scenes were the low point of the film.
“But why not just show what the Appalachians looked like?”
they wanted something epic in those scenes?
5) “Cavatina” The piece fits the movie.
There are no fucking Glaciers in Pennsylvania!
That is what I screamed at the screen the first time I saw that.
I love when a show has mountains in Florida or shows a dry, arid California back lot as Georgia.
Yeah, that bothers me every time I see it. Similarly Cold Mountain, which tried to pass off Romania as the Appalachians,
Oh, and I can tell you that you aren’t the first review to notice that the mountains aren’t the Appalachians. I can remember at least one from when the movie was first released.
One thing I liked about Last of the Mohicans. They filmed in North Carolina instead of upper New York/Pennsylvania, but at least it was the right mountain range.
I second Karl; if you want beautiful Appalachians, the Carolinas are open to you. Roughly what New York and Pennsylvania used to look like, I suspect. Maybe NC doesn’t give film-makers special tax deals and Washington does.
I am not a fan of this flick. Too much 60’s angst and (typical Hollywood) anti-American BS for me and I don’t do Streep at all. I don’t ‘get’ her.
Carl,
NC does give tax benefits to the movie and TV folks. we do so to business period though on a near daily basis. Bev the Guv also wants to and sometimes gives tax breaks, coffee breaks, donuts breaks, bagels, cream cheese, cheddar cheese, M & M’s, mints, pillows with mints on them, hotels full of pillows with mints on them, blah, blah, blah. In an effort to entice business she and her predecessor have given away tons of stuff. (money really)
I guess it’s too easy to just lower our corporate tax rate and get BACK the businesses we lost when they RAISED the rate!
Yesterday they announced that Charlotte NC will get the 2012 Democrat Convention. As a Tea Party Member in good standing, I’ve already begun making racist signs and practicing my vitriolic rhetoric.
“…target, target, target…cross hair, cross hair, cross hair…Palin, Palin, Palin…”
As a white male living in NC , my hood and cloak are always clean. Some might say even, lily white!
There are no fucking Glaciers in Pennsylvania!
Global warming!!!
Then again, check back in Pennsylvania after this weekend…
Leland,
are you talking about the (soon to be) glacier just northwest of Erie? Along the (it used to be just) lake front?
“The Beer Hunter” with Bob and Doug MacKenzie is better. And less tedious/pretentious, too.
As for transformed locations, they are nothing new. In John Wayne’s “North to Alaska”, Hot Creek in the Owens Valley of California is supposed to be Alaska, and in “Rooster Cogburn” the Cascades of eastern Oregon and the Deschutes River are supposed to be Oklahoma. And the Overlook Inn outside shots in “The Shining” are actually Gov’t Camp Lodge south of Mt. Hood. Okay, whatever.
Simple. Pennsylvania has a large state income tax, Washington does not.
So send a camera team to take a few atmosphere shots in high tax Pennsylvania and then do the real filming in tax free Washington 🙂
The movie “Cedar Rapids”, which is ostensibly about Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was filmed in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
We can thank the people who made personal purchases using Iowa’s Film Tax Credit for that one, since the state pulled the incentive program after it was abused and cheated.
Of course, the location of Gotham City has changed from New York to Boston to Vancouver to Chicago, so there’s that, too…
In other, *POSSIBLY* related news, I just saw “A Man For All Seasons” for the very first time last night.
Coincidence? YOU decide. 😉
I just saw “A Man For All Seasons” for the very first time last night.
Well, what’s the rest of the story? Did they film it in Pennsylvania or the Olympic Peninsula?
Rand — you’ve gotta connect the dots! Take off the tinfoil! Isn’t it *obvious?*
They filmed it in England.
This means that the Bilderburgers are behind it, right?! 🙂