Director Ted Kotcheff has passed away.
Kotcheff directed a lot of classic films but perhaps the most influential was 1982’s First Blood. In today’s scene that I love, John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is arrested by Sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy). Teasle may think that he’s keeping his community safe and teaching Rambo a lesson about respecting authority but, needless to say, he’s making a huge mistake.
Today’s scene that I love is a little scene from 1995’s Heat.
This isn’t a scene that regularly gets mentioned when it comes to discussing the many iconic scenes in this film but I picked it because it features good work from two actors who are no longer with us, Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore. Add to that, Danny Trejo’s pithy comment at the end — after all the discussion that’s happened before it — is simply perfect.
Today would have been the 92nd birthday of international screen icon, Jean-Paul Belmondo.
Belmondo spent the majority of his career in France, where he was one of the early faces of the New Wave and also a prominent action star, famed for doing his own very dangerous stunts. In America, he was best-known for his starring turn in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. In Breathless, Belmondo was the perfect existential outlaw, living life day-by-day and obviously doomed but still so incredibly magnetic and stylish.
In tribute to Belmondo, today’s scene that I love is the final moments of Breathless, with Belmondo and Jean Seberg.
Today would have been the 83rd birthday of special effects maestro, Douglas Trumbull.
Today’s scene that I love come from 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The famous stargate sequence was designed by Trumbull and it remains one of the most influential science fiction moments of all time. In one of their greatest oversights, the Academy neglected to include Trumbull when they nominated the film for its special effects. As a result, the Oscar only went to Stanley Kubrick. Trumbull was not happy about that and, sadly, Kubrick and Trumbull did not speak to each other for years afterwards.
Despite not being included in the nomination, Douglas Trumbull’s work has stood the test of time.
I need to rewatch this film soon. I wonder what the eye in the sky is seeing right now. From 1995’s Casino:
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to the great character actor, Michael Rooker.
For today’s scene that I love, we’ve got a fairly silly scene from a fairly silly movie. Micahael Rooker and Tom Cruise play racing rivals in 1990’s Days Of Thunder. In this scene, we see just how dedicated they are to always trying to be the first to make it to the finish line.
In this scene, from Roger Corman’s 1968 film The Wild Angels, Peter Fonda sets forth a manifesto for living. It’s not exactly a manifesto for living for a long time but it certainly seemed to work for him.
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to Oscar-winner Robert Downey, Jr.
This scene that I love comes from 1987’s Less Than Zero. It features Downey as the self-destructive drug addict, Julian. Downey has said that this role wasn’t too far from his real life at the time. Julian’s father is played by the great character actor, Nicholas Pryor.
Happy birthday to Robert Downey, Jr! I’m thankful that, unlike Julian, he got a second chance.
Today’s scene that I love comes from a 1968 episode of the iconic cop show, Dragnet. A group of hippies want to leave the United States and start their own country. Joe Friday (Jack Webb) and Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan) set them straight!
It’s always kind of easy to laugh a little at these episodes of Dragnet because it’s obvious that Webb had never actually met or dealt with any real hippies. But I don’t know. This episode, entitled The Big Departure, and this speech still feels relevant, even if I doubt it actually changed the mind of anyone planning on starting their own nation.
Through the Shattered Lens 