@Nrdsb4, I remember Ralph Lauren becoming popular while I was in college and this movie is set in my high school years. I came home and googled it to confirm my memory was correct. I’m sure for most viewers, they will just think it was consistent with McNamara’s very preppy image. I also noticed that some of the photos in the background used cast members, but there were some photos that I believe were actually of Katherine Graham and the photo of Phil Graham was his image. Graham’s memoir, Personal History, is one of my favorite books, so she has been on my radar for some time. I will look forward to seeing the movie when it releases for streaming so I can check that fact.
On a separate note, when they flashed up the newsroom with the IBM Selectric typewriters, it was a personal flashback for me to my one semester typing class in high school. While not an honors class, it was one of the most valuable classes I took in high school. I am constantly amazed that our kids learn to keyboard in other ways. My S never had any formal instruction and my D got some keyboarding in elementary school.
@2VU0609, having done continuity on movie sets in an earlier life, I noticed that as well. Not so much a continuity issue, but incongruous, at least to my eye. Glad you looked it up - I meant to, but didn’t. I thought perhaps I was mistaken and it was a Lacoste alligator rather than a Polo pony…but clearly not!
@doschicos, what I found yesterday from Wikipedia (useful, although I don’t let my students cite it) was this: In 1977 Ralph Lauren Corporation introduced a signature cotton mesh Polo shirt in various colours. Featuring the polo player logo on the chest, the shirt became emblematic of the preppy look—one of Lauren’s signature style
Prior to 1977, there were button-down shirts with the polo pony embroidered on the cuff starting in the early '70s.
According to a Time magazine article from 2015, Lauren introduced the Polo (with a capital “P”) shirt with his ubiquitous pony appliqué for the first time in 1972. Still too late for the 1971 reference in the movie!
“Since its introduction in 1972, the Ralph Lauren polo shirt has become a lasting icon of the preppy culture and lifestyle. Debuted that year in 24 signature colors and a single fit, the polo has come a long way in style and design, though the original remains true to fit and form.”
I saw Victoria & Abdul last fall and really enjoyed it. For those watching Victoria on Masterpiece, it’s a real contrast between the young queen we see there and the older version portrayed in this movie.
Very gritty, graphic, and intense but worth watching is Thank You for Your Service dealing with returning vets and PTSD. Good acting all around especially by Miles Teller (I’ve really grown fond of him as an actor) and Beulah Koale.
A few weeks ago, I rented Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit, which came out last summer and pretty quickly sank below the waves. @doschicos promoted it in this thread, which shows her good taste. It’s a terrific movie, and a reminder that women are capable of making terrific movies about something other than their relationships with their mothers when they were teenagers. (I kid. I liked Lady Bird a lot. But it feels very slight next to Detroit. And my wife still hasn’t forgiven Greta Gerwig for being Noah Baumbach’s trophy girlfriend, a near-clone of the wife he left for her, but 20 years younger.) Anyway, Detroit is a powerful, upsetting movie about a real incident during the Detroit riots where white policemen searching for a nonexistent sniper essentially executed two young African-American men and tortured several others, as well as two young white women who were with them, with the complicity of the National Guard. It was completely riveting and felt very true to its time period.
I also watch Dunkirk this week. On the small screen, it didn’t come across nearly as intense as some have described it here (nor did the score put me on edge). It was a very good movie, and a beautiful one, but very, very conventional. And for sure it didn’t pass the Bechdel test. It didn’t pass any component of the Bechdel test. I don’t think you would need all of your fingers to count the number of words spoken by women on screen during the movie – the longest line, and a typical one, would have been “Like some tea?” Also, I had a great deal of difficulty telling the young 20-something white British men apart. During the credits, I was reminded that Harry Styles had made his acting debut in the movie. (To his, and its, credit, you would have absolutely no idea that a pop star was in the film.) I went back and watched a bunch of scenes, and while it wasn’t hard to figure out which character Styles had played, I still couldn’t track him reliably from one scene to the next all the time.
^^ I love the movie “Frances Ha”, and Greta Gerwig is very charming. I really like her quirkiness.
Regarding Dunkirk, the most interesting review I have read is about its lack of color: there is nowhere on the screen where you saw British soldiers of Indian (mostly today’s Pakistan) origin, they were the largest contingent for the UK armies yet you would never have known that fact watching most if not all movies about World War II.
Not sure if I expect every movie to pass the Bechtel test. Given its focus and time period and what its creators were hoping to accomplish, I’ll forgive Dunkirk for not passing. In fact, I don’t think we could expect it to without it being a tad contrived given the storyline of the movie.
I’m all for empowering women in Hollywood and for portraying women beyond mere fodder for men in movies but I don’t need to be beat over the head with it either. Yesterday, we saw The Post, which I mentioned in the Oscar thread I started. We liked it, found it worth watching but we didn’t love it. One of the reasons is because I found certain scenes a bit contrived and manipulative, scenes which were pushing the whole “Kay Graham, powerful and admired businesswoman” agenda. It felt like the movie’s creators were hitting me over the head with a hammer with the theme rather than letting it come across in the story telling and character development.
“Also, I had a great deal of difficulty telling the young 20-something white British men apart.”
That was one of my few complaints about the film.
Dunkirk is at its best on the big screen, for sure.
“It felt like the movie’s creators were hitting me over the head with a hammer with the theme rather than letting it come across in the story telling and character development.” this about to sum up the feelings I have towards many of Spielberg’s “serious” movies. @doschicos
Speaking of Spielberg, in the news today is that he is remaking West Side Story. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’m not a huge fan of musicals but I love West Side Story.
@makemesmart Were the Gurkhas (and other brown British troops) “the largest contingent for the UK armies” in France? I doubt that! A lot of soldiers were on duty in the Empire on which the sun never set, but most of them weren’t posted in Europe. India (and Burma, and Malaysia, etc.) was a lot bigger than Great Britain, and had a lot more people, too. It took a big army to defend that, and East, West, and South Africa as well.
@doschicos I agree that a movie about WWII combat isn’t likely to have a lot of meaty roles for women, and that it isn’t necessarily welcome if parts get contrived for political correctness. On the other hand, I suspect women’s involvement in the Dunkirk evacuation was likely more than we generally acknowledge – nurses, auxiliaries, boat owners, not to mention wives/mothers/sisters/girlfriends, and not to mention French civilians abandoned to the German army. Part of the deep conventionality of the film is simply to accept the presence of a few women in the background like wallpaper. Nolan chose not to explore their experience at all, and he also chose not to acknowledge their absence, either. (Lawrence of Arabia, by contrast, didn’t have a single woman speak a line on screen, but it had a stunning moment when the Bedouin army is riding out of camp in Wadi Rum to attack Aqaba and all of a sudden you hear hundreds of unseen women ululating a salute. A powerful reminder that men were not the only ones present.)
This is a small point about a large, high quality film, although I think it’s emblematic of that conventionality, which is less a small point.
Hostiles is a violent but quiet movie.
Beautifully shot and cast.
Finish your popcorn during the previews or your loud crunching will get you side eye by your neighbors.
Big crowd on Day 1 of opening wide…
Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike, Wes Studi are excellent.
What can’t Timothee Chalamet do?..he plays piano, speaks French and rides a horse…
Saw Phantom Thread today. Beautifully filmed. Daniel Day Lewis and Vicky Krieps were convincing in their roles. But…if this is the Best Picture of the Year…yikes… Just didn’t connect for me. Glad I went with a friend—pretty sure H would have walked out half way through…and it felt a lot longer than 2:10…