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whiskeypriest
Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2018 3:06 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
Joe Vitus wrote:
The payoff for protecting spoilers is pretty minimal. One viewing of "oh my gosh." It's every viewing after that that proves the most rewarding.

I would agree that there's a spectrum. I was kinda bugged when the AV Club gave away the "surprise" that occurs about mid-way through Laura, specifically because it's a delicious moment that only works if you don't know it's going to happen. But that's pretty small reward considering what you get from movies you already know and ruminate about.
I would love to have watched Psycho without knowing that SPOILER the lead character gets killed half way through while taking a shower END SPOILER, let alone having seen it disembodied, as it were, a couple of times before I saw the movie per se. Same with Crying Game. I agree that the true test of a movie is on repeat viewings, but the movie is designed by its maker to lead you places, and the first time at least you should follow it.

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Joe Vitus
Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2018 11:11 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
The funny thing about seeing The Crying Game when it came out was that I hadn't encountered spoilers and the character was bothering me. I kept saying "That singing voice more like a man than a woman." Seriously. Kept throwing me out of the movie. Then the big reveal. "Oh! Now I get it!"

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bartist
Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2018 11:38 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
Might be a fun thread topic to ask if there are movies that ostensibly have spoilers, but in fact the twist had already been used enough that film fans would see it coming.

For example, "The Others" came out two years after "The Sixth Sense," so I felt that audiences were primed to spot the twist in advance, given that people who saw TSS were likely to see a film like TO. (TO also has several elements familiar to those who've read/seen "The Turn of the Screw") I guess the operating principle I'm working with is that the more derivative a film is, the less potential to be spoilered. That said, a lot of films are aimed at a demographic that may be too young to recognize derivative. If I'm at a film website with more young adult and teen participants, I'm inclined to be more cautious about spoilers.

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Joe Vitus
Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2018 9:45 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
That is interesting. Hard for me to think of examples off the top of my head.

I picked up an old book at Half Price a few years ago, a mystery, and it seemed obvious that the butler did it, but I thought, there's no way the butler actually did it. Well, he did, and it turns out that the book in question is the one that created the "the butler did it" cliche: Mary Roberts Rhinehart's The Door.

That doesn't count, though, because it's seminal, not derivative.

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carrobin
Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2018 12:08 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
I knew a woman who read a lot of books, but she didn't read murder mysteries because, she said, she always figured out the killer too early. I wondered how many she'd read before she came to that decision. (Maybe just early Ellery Queen mysteries, which stopped at a certain point to indicate that all the facts were now in place for him to solve the case, giving the reader the chance to do the same? I never solved them that way, though the easy way was just to figure out who the absolutely least likely suspect was.)
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knox
Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2018 1:19 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 18 Mar 2010 Posts: 1245 Location: St. Louis
I can recall seeing quite a few tv police procedurals where you can easily deduce that the most high-profile guest actor is the guilty one. The other suspects are always lesser-known actors - they are going to get fewer dramatic lines and are often checked off early. Another giveaway, if that doesn't work, is that the more emotional suspects, especially if they say violent and uncouth things, are invariably innocent.

Too bad that last rule doesn't apply to...current events.

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carrobin
Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2018 1:39 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
For our film class, we had a murder mystery in which one name actor seemed to be the killer, but at the end he's cleared and a stranger we hadn't seen before was the guilty one. It was a bit weird, and sure enough, at the discussion afterward we found out that the original outcome had been so easy to guess that the script was changed at the last minute. Not a good option, dramawise. And I don't think the film did very well at the box office.
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Joe Vitus
Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2018 5:06 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
carrobin wrote:
I knew a woman who read a lot of books, but she didn't read murder mysteries because, she said, she always figured out the killer too early. I wondered how many she'd read before she came to that decision. (Maybe just early Ellery Queen mysteries, which stopped at a certain point to indicate that all the facts were now in place for him to solve the case, giving the reader the chance to do the same? I never solved them that way, though the easy way was just to figure out who the absolutely least likely suspect was.)


In the early aughts, I started reading Agatha Christie and I gave up because I predicted the ending in advance. But one of them was a book my brother had owned when we were kids, and one was Death on the Nile, which we saw the movie of when we were kids. So it may be I wasn't great at solving mysteries, maybe my subconscious memory was just activated.

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whiskeypriest
Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2018 9:29 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
knox wrote:
I can recall seeing quite a few tv police procedurals where you can easily deduce that the most high-profile guest actor is the guilty one.
As in, why would you have Colin Firth in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, pay him Colin Firth money, and give him three lines.

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whiskeypriest
Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2018 9:32 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
Joe Vitus wrote:
carrobin wrote:
I knew a woman who read a lot of books, but she didn't read murder mysteries because, she said, she always figured out the killer too early. I wondered how many she'd read before she came to that decision. (Maybe just early Ellery Queen mysteries, which stopped at a certain point to indicate that all the facts were now in place for him to solve the case, giving the reader the chance to do the same? I never solved them that way, though the easy way was just to figure out who the absolutely least likely suspect was.)


In the early aughts, I started reading Agatha Christie and I gave up because I predicted the ending in advance. But one of them was a book my brother had owned when we were kids, and one was Death on the Nile, which we saw the movie of when we were kids. So it may be I wasn't great at solving mysteries, maybe my subconscious memory was just activated.
True story. When we were maybe 11 (me) and 12(my sister), we both read a lot of mysteries. My sister gave me her copy of Murder on the Orient Express to read. As I neared the end she asked me if I had it figured out, and I said "I don't know; I think they ALL did it."

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Joe Vitus
Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2018 11:28 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
Very Happy

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bartist
Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2018 11:56 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
Aaiiee! Spoilers!





Very Happy

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bartist
Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2018 12:27 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
As well as Paradise lost, some long-used movie and TV sets have burned....

Quote:
The fast-moving wildfire also scorched a historic movie site known as Western Town, which has served productions as far back as the 1920 and was most recently used by the HBO series Westworld.

-- The Guardian (11-10)

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billyweeds
Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2018 12:45 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
Joe Vitus wrote:
That is interesting. Hard for me to think of examples off the top of my head.

I picked up an old book at Half Price a few years ago, a mystery, and it seemed obvious that the butler did it, but I thought, there's no way the butler actually did it. Well, he did, and it turns out that the book in question is the one that created the "the butler did it" cliche: Mary Roberts Rhinehart's The Door.

That doesn't count, though, because it's seminal, not derivative.


Similar with Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders, which was a template for many other mysteries with the same plot twist, which I will not reveal because SPOILERS.
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Joe Vitus
Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2018 4:18 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
Very Happy

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