I'm curious about the professionals' opinions about the idea of duel directors. Some have done it for a long time (the Coen brothers) even before the directors' guild allowed it officially. But is it changing Hollywood much? Is auteur theory well and truly dead?

I'm sure it made for a very interesting shot.

James Arness was in Them!, tho. He was Peter Graves' brother.

So that would totally count if you were playing horseshoes.

I had a good time. Enjoyed the humor and action and lack of fridge logic in ways that push it over Oblivion despite the production design (that tech looked gorgeous; these suits looked really clunky).

It amazes me the way Cruise consistently finds interesting properties where he can play charming but utterly soulless characters. Cage has an enormous arc and yet still hardly seems human in the end.

The only real logical problem I had was the initial setup. The British general just randomly fucks with this American PR officer who is on TV all the time for no apparent reason. The mechanics of a front-line general getting this foreign guy reassigned without his knowledge was nonsensical.

Also Cage wouldn't blackmail him; he'd just go make some phone calls and get strings pulled. You don't get to be the military's spokesman without making friends in high places. And also none of the soldiers later recognize him from the news; that's strange.

By the way, if you're looking for sources that inspired this, see James Garner in The Americanization of Emily. He's the aide of an admiral who has a nervous breakdown and orders him to get a camera and shoot the D-Day invasion to catch the first death on film, only he's a coward and a playboy.

Wow. That is an unfair reading. He was talking about his emotions, not hers. And the soccer analogy is the heart of her argument. She wants to be picked to helm a big movie, but these these white guys keep getting picked. His point is that those white guys had much the same chance as she did but proved out the gate that they could make money, and she had flops.

Master Zangstromp is the quadcopter guy. ZAP!!

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Reading books about film making by Bogdonavitch and Ebert and others has been more instructive than reading Cinefex, tho. And listening to the director's commentary on the movie is better still. Here and there you get bits of film making philosophy dropped into the "it was so cold that day" stories.

I didn't mind Last Stand, but I hated First Class with great ferocity. I honestly can't fathom why people like it or Jennifer "I'm Unfamiliar With Your Hyoo-man Facial Expressions" Lawrence.

There used to be a lot of shop-girl romance movies (women who marry the boss). TV really started shifting that in 80s, with Who's the Boss? flipping it to a shop-boy (if you will) and Moonlighting and Remington Steele making the woman the brains. But you still had Scarecrow and Mrs. King and The Nanny. And teen romances often had the girl aspiring upwards: 16 Candles, My Chauffeur, etc. Love Actually had a couple of shop-girl romances. You've Got Mail's lowly bookshop owner falls for a rich bookshop mogul. Then there's Maid in Manhattan, Two Weeks Notice, Pride & Prejudice.... But they're certainly less frequent.

Most Disney princesses start at the top instead of marrying into it, but they used to marry princes of equal station and now often fall for commoners. The recent exceptions are Beauty and the Beast, Mulan*, and The Frog Princess, all commoners who marry up.

* I know Mulan is a peasant who marries a general, so she's not a princess, but tell that to Disney.

Yeah, there's some software I've heard of that can somehow pull audio from two different USB mikes. I don't have a second USB mike or I would have tried it.

EDIT: By the way, to return to your original question, I've been looking at the Rode Podcaster, which YouTube reviews suggest has pretty much all the advantages of the Heil PR-40 at 2/3 the cost and with a USB connection (the Rode Procaster is the XLR version). These are all dynamic mikes rather than condensers like the Snowball and my Samson C03U, so they don't pick up room noise or people on other mikes.

I have a very inexpensive ($18 back in 2008) boom arm stand for my mike that I'm really happy with, so don't think you have to pay a lot for that. I agree that it's waaay more convenient than a desk stand. And I wouldn't bother with a shock mount. Anyone with a decent setup and an ounce of somatic feedback can avoid bumping the mike. Also, I use a foam ball-type windscreen and immediately ditched the clumsy goose-necked pop filter I'd bought. (However, you have to speak directly into a dynamic mike, so a stand-out pop filter might be a little more effective than the foam ball.)

http://hollywoodlife.com/2014/05/26/jus … ena-gomez/

I like Paul Rudd a lot. He's got the chops to pull off a role like that. Comic actors (as oposed to comedians) are usually better actors overall anyway.