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The Quick Question Thread


rpvee

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In Last Crusade, how is it that the hat that dude gave to Indy would last for so long into the 1930s retaining its shape, let alone it'd end up a perfect fit for Indy as an adult? I'd be willing to bet that guy had it tailor made for himself, so why did he give it up so easily?

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6 hours ago, Stefancos said:

Do we know for sure its the same hat?

 

Dunno. Unless Indy visited a hatsmith in his early adult years, brought that one with him and asked for one to be made just like that one, only with his measurements. He might have even had a few made, since he might have lost his hat at the end of Raiders. The one he wears on the stairs at the end appeared to be a different hat. And his hat in KotCS would obviously have been another hat after 20 years.

 

Maybe it's like that shot of Batman's wardrobe in Batman Returns.

batman-returns-disneyscreencaps.com-8563.jpg

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3 hours ago, dougie said:

Dunno. Unless Indy visited a hatsmith in his early adult years, brought that one with him and asked for one to be made just like that one, only with his measurements. He might have even had a few made, since he might have lost his hat at the end of Raiders. The one he wears on the stairs at the end appeared to be a different hat. And his hat in KotCS would obviously have been another hat after 20 years.

 

Overthinking much?

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Can anyone recommend a good news podcast/radio program in Ireland? Not the short things you listen to in the car for five minutes every hour, things like NPR's Up First and the BBC Six O'Clock News on Radio 4.

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So I was watching The Sound of Music and something rather dark hit me about this movie. If Maria had never set foot in the Von Trapp house or even if she never returned after she fled back to the convent, would Captain Von Trapp have joined the Nazis when he was drafted by the German navy?

 

Was that the influence she had on his life? When we first meet the guy, he's a control freak with the kids and forces them to march and practice excessive levels of discipline. But when Maria is hired as their governess, the impact she has is more than the Captain bargained for. She slowly frees him from his rigid persona and he embraces his goofier side.

 

But imagine if that never happened, and instead the inevitable Nazi annexation of Austria leads to the Captain continuing his unbending ways, accepts his post, and is likely killed during the imminent war. His sons would probably have been killed too and his daughters, uh, ravaged by the Soviets.

 

As for Maria? Well, who knows?

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3 hours ago, dougie said:

So I was watching The Sound of Music and something rather dark hit me about this movie. If Maria had never set foot in the Von Trapp house or even if she never returned after she fled back to the convent, would Captain Von Trapp have joined the Nazis when he was drafted by the German navy?

 

Was that the influence she had on his life? When we first meet the guy, he's a control freak with the kids and forces them to march and practice excessive levels of discipline. But when Maria is hired as their governess, the impact she has is more than the Captain bargained for. She slowly frees him from his rigid persona and he embraces his goofier side.

 

But imagine if that never happened, and instead the inevitable Nazi annexation of Austria leads to the Captain continuing his unbending ways, accepts his post, and is likely killed during the imminent war. His sons would probably have been killed too and his daughters, uh, ravaged by the Soviets.

 

As for Maria? Well, who knows?

No, he was resistant to the Nazis from the start.  He wasn't German, he was a Naval commander in Nazi occupied Austria and as the Nazi ideology became more clear, he became more convinced to reject it.  In 1938 he was offered Naval command of a Nazi fleet which he declined knowing full well he could be arrested. The film overplays Maria's influence on the family for theatrical purposes. 

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4 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

A naval officer in a landlocked country? Hmmm....

 

It wasn't landlocked back then.  It was the Astro-Hungarian empire where he commanded and attacked submarines in WW1.

 

image.png

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I also wonder during the scene where Maria and Von Trapp dance and she suddenly backs away from him, did she feel his hardwood pressing up against her, and this shocked her? It obviously would have been something she wasn't all that experienced with, being a nun and all. He didn't seem too phased by it though.

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14 minutes ago, Richard said:

For me, the biggest question is...why the fucking hell did Von Trapp choose Maria over the sexy-as-fuck Baroness?! I mean, Eleanor Parker is ice hot!!!

 

She'd have it from me! Every day!

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1 hour ago, Fabulin said:

The timpani at the end of ESB and SW, in the last seconds of the credits...

Was it a staple of movies in the golden age? Or have these particular beat sequences been uniquely composed for Star Wars? 

I have a Mandela Effect of sorts...

 

That stuff goes way back.  In the old days timpani would usually be tonic and dominant.  So like C and G for the key of C major or C minor and weren't tuinable.  So you would often in romantic works get these huge G-C-G-C-G-CCCCCCCCCC endings.  Like here in Mahler 3 from over 120 years ago, you get the two timpanists finally in sync as they bash out that humongous tonic dominant in unison as a way to hammer the arrival of the transformation to the tonic after 100 minutes of tumult.  JW is doing something like that...an operatic sweeping gesture to a drama which remember early film took opera as the model (Korngold/Waxman/Steiner/etc).

 

Of course in Shosti 5 too (same tonic dominant) another example of just a very resolute conclusion as the symphony goes from D minor in the opening to D major at the cataclysmic ending.  Every string is playing just one note.  D. 

 

another but here is a variant of the same idea where the timpani plays the opening motif at the finale.  Shout out to fellow JW fan and trombonist @jimnova who performed in the below concert.

 

Ok, one more on the final shot of Elliot.  But you see where this stuff comes from.

 

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24 minutes ago, karelm said:

Like here in Mahler 3 from over 120 years ago, you get the two timpanists finally in sync as they bash out that humongous tonic dominant in unison as a way to hammer the arrival of the transformation to the tonic after 100 minutes of tumult.

 

Ah, Mahler showing his Bruckner roots.

 

Perhaps the most famous example?

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1 hour ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

Ah, Mahler showing his Bruckner roots.

 

Perhaps the most famous example?

Definitely the same musical idea BUT the complete opposite structurally.  The bold opening with big drums and organ play C major which Strauss uses as the identity of the universe but the piece ends very ambiguously instead of with focused clarity and tonal resolution.  We end with extremely quiet C major (universe) in the lowest strings against highest winds playing a B major (humanity) as they recede into infinity forever linked.  The low strings are playing the C-G-C at the end which is the same thing as the trumpet fanfare at the start.

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Yes, I was just referring to the timpani 4th, even if Strauss didn't use it as a resolution there. Incidentally, I like using that timpani figure as a mental help to compensate for my poor sight-reading (and barely existent sight-singing) skills in choir practice whenever a 4th or 5th comes up that's not clear to me from the melody itself.

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Does anyone know anything about this “digipak” version of the ‘97 A New Hope soundtrack? Is it rare?

 

https://amp.cdandlp.com/en/john-williams-the-london-symphony-orchestra/star-wars-a-new-hope-original-motion-picture-soundtrack/cd-x-2/r118356588/

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4 hours ago, Stefancos said:

I have the ANH and ROTJ digipacks. 

 

It wasn't rare here initially, they provide are now. The TESB one was always rare.

 

They had "limited edition" stickers on them though. And they were released in odd intervals. I first saw Star Wars at the local (now long gone) Virgin Megastore and bought it. Then a while later, ESB and ROTJ popped up in stores, so I went around all of Vienna trying to find the booklet versions of both. They had ROTJ nearly everywhere, but nobody had ESB. So I bought the booklet ROTJ and the jewel case ESB. A couple of weeks later the booklet ESB showed up at a local store, so I got that and sold my jewel case version to a friend.

 

It's not a digipak, by the way. It's an actual small book, with sleeve pockets for the two discs. Scratches them quite a bit over them, but aside from that, it's probably still the most deluxe packaging I've seen for soundtracks, together perhaps with the double height 2CD booklets Rhino did back in the day (Ben-Hur etc.).

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