Just saw a trailer for The Grudge with SMG. Looks excellently creepy! Man. I’m gonna have to go see that. Makes me want to go watch The Ring, another creepy Japanese movie remake (haven’t actually gotten around to seeing it yet, just heard about it).
Archive for the 'Film' Category
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So my movie database continues to evolve. I guess first I should mention what it does at this point. Basically, I feed movie title in, my script searches for it in the IMDB, presents the possible matches, and then fills in all the info from IMDB (title, year, genres, director, stars, etc). Then I can easily edit it as needed. Tonight I added some basic caching of the main page. In other words, if you aren’t doing any sort of special query (ie list everything), it will dump the webpage to a file and simply display that if it’s current, and only recreate it when the database has been updated. Pretty cool.
McGuffin (aka: MacGuffin or maguffin) is a term for a plot enabling device, i.e. a device or plot element in a movie that is deliberately placed to catch the viewer’s attention and/or drive the logic of the plot, but which actually serves no further purpose – it won’t pop up again later, it won’t explain the ending, it won’t actually do anything except possibly distract you while you try to figure out its significance. More specifically, it is usually a mysterious package or superweapon or something that everyone in the story is chasing.
Possibly coined by Alfred Hitchcock. The perfect example is the “government secrets” that motivate the action in “North By Northwest” (1959). Another typical McGuffin is the Maltese Falcon. It gets the characters together, pits them against each other, but turns out to be worthless.
Also used by Quentin Tarantino in “Pulp Fiction” in the form of the suitcase with the mysterious glowing contents.
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