Old Movies

Paul Keating wrote:Red,

You might know. Rachel answered this for me a while ago, but foolish me cannot remember the answer

In what context would you use 1980s and 1980's?

Thanks

At university we were taught that 1960s, 1980s etc. should never include an apostrophe, though it often erroneously does. Nonetheless if you abbreviate it to 80s, you should say '80s.

And also Red, please give me an example of when to use DVDs and DVD's

Paul Keating wrote:And also Red, please give me an example of when to use DVDs and DVD's

I'm not going to keep rising to the bait; I'm sure you know the answer to that.

Red wrote:

Paul Keating wrote:Red,

You might know. Rachel answered this for me a while ago, but foolish me cannot remember the answer

In what context would you use 1980s and 1980's?

Thanks

At university we were taught that 1960s, 1980s etc. should never include an apostrophe, though it often erroneously does. Nonetheless if you abbreviate it to 80s, you should say '80s.

Of course, Pete, many scientific journals readily accept 1980's as correct usage

No it's a serious question.

Rachel (the resident grammar pedant along with Taily) actually came up with two examples with them both being correct.

Bradman wrote:And yeah I tink he's still doing Pitt. He's still a crap writer but he knows how to sell books.

Last one listed Clive and his son as authors. Thay are all at it. Dick Francis and Jonathan Kellerman being other examples.

Paul Keating wrote:No it's a serious question.

Rachel (the resident grammar pedant along with Taily) actually came up with two examples with them both being correct.

This explanation may help:

Because the decade of 1980-1989 is abbreviated from the 1980s, the apostrophe belongs at the beginning of the number, and because there is no need to show possession for the decade, there is no apostrophe between the number and the S.

I meant DVDs and DVD's, Red.

I think the explanation was something like.

"Let's go to the my place and watch some DVDs"

"The introduction of DVD's in the 1990s revolutionised............"

Paul Keating wrote:I meant DVDs and DVD's, Red.

I think the explanation was something like.

"Let's go to the my place and watch some DVDs"

"The introduction of DVD's in the 1990s revolutionised............"

Fair enough but I thought you asked about 1980s and 1980's.

The principle is similar to it's and its, and of course the latter is regularly butchered.

DJ_Smerk wrote:For any post-modern noir fans: The Long Goodbye (1973) with Elliot Gould as Robert Marlowe.

Aye, thanks Red. I think I was thinking of Robert Altman and Philip Marlowe.



Plus, it was late, so I need allowance for mistakes. Diolch.

taipan wrote:

Bradman wrote:And yeah I tink he's still doing Pitt. He's still a crap writer but he knows how to sell books.

Last one listed Clive and his son as authors. Thay are all at it. Dick Francis and Jonathan Kellerman being other examples.

'Jesus is Dick Francis still alive?

Red wrote:

The technically correct spelling is all right.

I'm always trying to dissuade people from writing alright.

The following are some of the most commonly misspelled words in English. For many of the words listed below, the common misspelled form of the word is in parentheses.
Spelling Tips

• a lot (mistakenly written as alot)
  
• all right (mistakenly written as alright)
  
• convenient
  
• definitely (mistakenly written as definately)
  
• dessert (as in the sweet stuff, not the geographical term; mistakenly written as desert)
  Tip: Remember that dessert has two s's because it tastes so good that we want more of it.
  
• forty (mistakenly written as fourty)
  
• its (for showing possession; mistakenly written as it's, the contraction for it is)
  
• lose (as in "unable to find"; mistakenly written as loose)
  
• receive (mistakenly written as recieve)
  
• restaurant (mistakenly written as restuarant, restraunt, and countless other ways)
  
• separate (mistakenly written as seperate)
  
• truly (mistakenly written as truely)
  
• you're (contraction for you are; mistakenly written as your, which is for showing possession)
  
• weird (mistakenly written as wierd)
  

An interesting list Red.
A lot - I agree but don't really care.

all right - Although what you say has some merit in official usage i disagree and think the common usage should be made official. The term "alright" means that the subject is not all right but merely acceptable.

Lose and Loose are interesting as the number of o's influences the pronunciation of the following letter (the 's') but does not affect the pronunciation of the 'o' component of the word.

You're and your. This is one that annoys me as well (Whose and who's is another one)

vilkrang wrote:They really don't make them like they used to do they? Had a bit of a Clint day with a few mates today though was more of a Man With No Name/Dirty Harry day. We finished with For a Few Dollars More as we are all in agreement that it's the best film he ever did.

Very few films in recent memory come even close to matching the epicness of the ending. Truly godlike filmaking, thanks in large part to the legendary score by Ennio Morricone.

I can't even remember the ending of FaFDM, and I watched it last month.

Clint didn't really learn to act until the nineties. IMO he is a much better director than actor, and his best film is Billion Dollar Baby.

Paul Keating wrote:And also Red, please give me an example of when to use DVDs and DVD's

This is not as clear cut as it may appear.

If DVD was a word (deeveedee?) rather than an acronym then the normal plural/possessive distinction would apply. However the apostrophe is not universally regarded as wrong when indicating a plural of an acronym. Certainly, where an acronym ends with S it can look weird (e.g. "I have several alternative CVs"). It gets a bit too picky to say that the plural apostrophe is acceptable for some acronyms but not for others.

1980s and 1980's is also interesting since "the 1980s" is a plural to start with. At the very least the possessive should be 1980s' but it is never written that way. I prefer to see 1980s when simply refering to the decade and 1980's when refering to things belonging to that decade. However this doesn't apply to single numbers (e.g. the phrase "1's and 2's" is easier to read than "1s and 2s"). As with acronyms, I think it's too picky to have one rule for single digit numbers and a separate one for multi-digit numbers, so I'm not at all upset by 1980's as a plural as long as the context of the sentence removes any ambiguity.

Rob I wrote:

vilkrang wrote:They really don't make them like they used to do they? Had a bit of a Clint day with a few mates today though was more of a Man With No Name/Dirty Harry day. We finished with For a Few Dollars More as we are all in agreement that it's the best film he ever did.

Very few films in recent memory come even close to matching the epicness of the ending. Truly godlike filmaking, thanks in large part to the legendary score by Ennio Morricone.

I can't even remember the ending of FaFDM, and I watched it last month.

Clint didn't really learn to act until the nineties. IMO he is a much better director than actor, and his best film is Billion Dollar Baby.

They made a sequel?

FWIW, I hated Great Expectations when I first read it.

Dirty Garry was quite goog though.

Lean's best adaptation of probably Dickens' best novel was his 1948 follow-up to GE, Oliver Twist with the great and glorious Alec Guinness as *****, in a performance widely condemned as anti-semitic at the time, only 3 years after WWII, Robert Newton (who would later go on to play Long John Silver) as Sikes and a young Anthony Newley as the Artful Doger and a cameo from a young Diana Dors as the Sowerberrys' maid. The boy who played Oliver would later become a BBC producer and give us Monty Python's Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and Mr Bean among others.



I quite liked Sir Carol Reed's lighter 1967 adaptation of Lionel Bart's musical version with Ron Moody as *****, Sir Carol's nephew Oliver [sic] as a (non-singing) Sikes and the surrogate father of Michael Jackson's children as Oliver (keeping faith with the Lean version as a blonde).

Speaking of GE has anyone else seen the truly awful 1998 remake (with someone called Mitch Glazer listed as co-writer with CD) with Dickens' story updated to modern-day New York with Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anne Bancroft and Robert De Niro as the Magwitch character (called Lustig in the film)? This must rank as one of the worst films ever made. Even Ms Paltrow's much hyped nude scene was so discreetly shot she might as well have been wearing a flannellette nightshirt and probably was.

Apart from Se7en when [spoiler alert] she had her head cut off I am not an especial fan of Ms Paltrow's mannered performances such as in the dreadful 1998 (obviously a year for remakes) remake of Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder where she and Michael Douglas reprised the Grace Kelly and Ray Milland roles. The only film of hers I really liked was a 1996 production entitled Hard Eight aka Sydney where she played a drug-addicted prostitute who is given the third degree by the always excellent Phillip Baker Hall. The director, Paul Thomas Anderson, got to direct Boogie Nights straight afterwards.

The greatest entrance in cinema history:



Classic.

Btw, what has the board got against the Dickensian Jewish pickpocket?

Invader Zim wrote:Blade Runner

Only the director's cut. The Hollywood version, with the voice-over tacked onto the end explaining the plot for thick Americans is a travesty.

Harrison Ford hated having to go back and do that after the film "tested" badly with audiences.

Demelza wrote:I watched Shawshank last night for the first time ever. I enjoyed it but was maybe expecting too much cos everyone says how great it is. Could've done to be an hour less!

I really enjoyed it first time around as I hadn't heard anything about it, didn't even know what it was about. It was a pleasant surprise.

But the ending dragged on too long. Could've shaved 30 minutes off the movie, easily, without diminishing the quality.

Red wrote:

I'm, also partial to The Third Man and A Touch of Evil.

A Touch of Evil is another movie that was butchered by the studio executives to the point that the director disowned it.

There was a version released in 1998 that was re-edited, based upon the notes of Orson Welles, detailing how his original vision was supposed to be put together.

It's a subtle improvement - a lot of the original footage had long since been destroyed, so they weren't able to make massive changes.

Even the original version had the greatest opening sequence in cinema history - one single crane tracking shot.

OW - a true genius.

Yes, but that isn't the original version - the original had the opening credits all over it, something that Welles resented.

That clip is from the 1998 re-edited release.

Right as usual, Dell, but what does the board have against the 'F' character in OT?

Eh?