V-Vz Movies

V  for Vendetta (2005)  In the not too distant future, Britain is filled with torture cells, unfair punishments, prejudice against minorities. However in the mist of all this chaos, one man known only by the name V dares to stand up to the government and is labeled as a terrorist. One night V rescues a mild young woman called Evey Hammond and an unlikely bond between the two emerges which results with Evey becoming Vs ally. But though V may be charismatic and have a passion for justice he also is bitter and has his own personal hatred of the government for something they did to him long ago. As November the 5th, the day V says he and those who will follow him will stand up to the government once and for all approaches, Detective Finch becomes more and more determined to uncover the truth about V, however his search leads him to ask to question whether or not he is on the right side.

The domino scene, where V tips over black and red dominoes to form a giant letter V, involved 22,000 dominoes. It took 4 professional domino assemblers 200 hours to set it up.

The line about God playing dice with the universe comes from Albert Einstein's objections to quantum theory, in which he said that "At any rate, I am convinced that [God] does not play dice."

"Not only does God play dice, but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen." Stephen Hawking.

V. I. Warshawski (1991)  Victoria "V.I" Warshawski is a Chicago based private detective who agrees to babysit for her new boyfriend; then he is murdered. Being the detective type, she makes the murder her next case. In doing so she befriends the victim's daughter, Kat, and together they set out to crack the case.

This was originally meant to spawn a franchise for Kathleen Turner, but the film's dismal US box office performance soon put an end to that.  Which was really too bad, since the idea and the cast were quite good.  Kathleen did end up playing V.I> Warshawski on BBC radio.

Valley of the Dolls (1967)  Anne Welles, a bright, brash young New England college grad leaves her Peyton Place-ish small town and heads for Broadway, where she hopes to find an exciting job and sophisticated men. During her misadventures in Manhattan and, later, Hollywood, she shares experiences with two other young hopefuls: Jennifer North, a statuesque, Monroe-ish actress who wants to be accepted as a human being, but is regarded as a sex object by all the men she meets, and Neely O'Hara, a talented young actress who's accused of using devious means by a great older star (Helen Lawson) to reach the top, pulling an "All About Eve"-type deception in order to steal a good role away from her.

Okay movie, excellent book.

Vampire's Kiss (1988)  A publishing executive is visited and bitten by a woman and starts exhibiting erratic behavior. He pushes his secretary to extremes as he tries to come to terms with his delusions. The woman continues to visit and as his madness deepens, it begins to look as if some of the events he's experiencing may be hallucinations.

Nicolas Cage ate a real cockroach for this film - it reportedly took three takes. He once said about the experience, "Every muscle in my body didn't want to do it, but I did it anyway."

Peter's strange accent is supposed to be a fake accent used by the character because he thinks he sounds more "elegant" and "smarter" (hence the literary agent job). The accent comes and goes throughout the movie and is more prominent when trying to impress people, and less in scenes with people like the psychiatrist.   

The Verdict (1989)  Frank Galvin is a down-on-his luck lawyer, reduced to drinking and ambulance chasing. Former associate Mickey Morrissey reminds him of his obligations in a medical malpractice suit that he himself served to Galvin on a silver platter: all parties willing to settle out of court. Blundering his way through the preliminaries, he suddenly realizes that perhaps after all the case should go to court: to punish the guilty, to get a decent settlement for his clients, and to restore his standing as a lawyer.

Among the people in the courtroom during the dramatic closing speech is a young Bruce Willis.

Vertigo (1958)  Police detective John 'Scottie' Ferguson is asked by an old college friend, Gavin Elster, if he would have a look into his wife Madeleine's odd behavior. Lately, she's taken to believing that she is the reincarnation of a woman who died many years ago and Elster is concerned about her sanity. Scottie follows her and rescues her from an apparent suicide attempt when she jumps into San Francisco bay. He gets to know her and falls in love with her. They go to an old mission church and he is unable to stop her from climbing to the top of the steeple, owing to his vertigo, where she jumps to her death. A subsequent inquiry finds that she committed suicide but faults Scottie for not stopping her in the first place. Several months later, he meets Judy Barton, a woman who is the spitting image of Madeleine. He can't explain it, but she is identical to the woman who died. He tries to re-make her into Madeleine's image by getting her to dye her hair and wear the same type of clothes. He soon begins to realize however that he has been duped and was a pawn in a complex piece of theater that was meant to end in tragedy.

This is a best movie.  Poorly received by U.S. critics on its release, this film is now hailed as Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece.  The opening scene shows the 1958 San Francisco skyline with the narrator lamenting how much it had changed.

Uncredited second-unit cameraman Irmin Roberts invented the famous "zoom out and track in" shot (now sometimes called "contra-zoom" or "trombone shot") to convey the sense of vertigo to the audience. The view down the mission stairwell cost $19,000 for just a couple of seconds of screen time.

Victor Victoria (1982)  Set in 1930s Paris, starving opera singer Victoria (Julie Andrews) is aided by gay cabaret performer Toddy (Robert Preston). When Victoria dons Toddy's ex's clothes and then sends the abusive ex flying with a booming shout and an equally booming right hook, Toddy is hit with inspiration: he'll pass her off as a female impersonator. A woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman? It all goes well until Chicago "businessman" King Marchand (James Garner), starts to investigate, sure that a man like himself could never fall for another man! The revelation of Kings infatuation brings his body guard 'Squash' Bernstein (Alex Karras) roaring out of the closet and his spurned moll Norma Cassady (brilliantly acted by Leslie Ann Warren) off to Chicago to plan revenge with King's other "business associates".

Outrageously funny.  Lots of talent  Even Alex Karras more known for football than acting is quite believable in his small role.

The Vikings (1958)  In the Middle Ages, Viking warriors continue to raid the English coast. In one such raid the Viking leader Ragnar kills the English king and forces himself on the Queen. With the King dead, his brother takes the thrown but unknown to anyone but a trusted servant, the Queen is now with child. In order to protect the boy, he is sent away to be raised in safety away from the new King. Twenty years later, the Vikings under are still raiding England and they now have an Englishman, Egbert, making maps of the English coast for them. Ragnar has a son, Einar, a lusty warrior who takes what he wants when he wants it. They also have a slave, Eric, taken prisoner as an infant. Egbert realizes from a necklace Eric wears that he is the son of the Queen and is Einar's half-brother. When they kidnap Morgana, a Welsh beauty and the English King's betrothed, the stage is set for an inevitable clash between the half-brothers and with the reigning English King.

One of my favorite movies as a boy--still is.

At the end of the film, a Viking ship is set afire by flaming arrows in a rendering of a traditional Viking funeral. Director Richard Fleischer took great care to have the archers practice the moment, training them to release the arrows on the count of "three," and hoping at least some of the arrows would arc properly to hit the sail of the ship and set it on fire. When the time came for the live shot, the director only reached the count of "two", when one over-eager archer loosed his arrow. As luck would have it, the arrow arced perfectly and hit the sail. Then, Fleischer called, "Three!" and the other archers loosed their arrows. Fleischer decided that he liked the one, single arrow being launched first, and kept the shot in the film because it looked like part of the ceremony.

There was actually a kingdom called Northumbria, whose history undoubtedly formed part of the basis for the novel from which the movie was made: It was formed about AD 616 by the union of two smaller kingdoms, Bernicia and Deira, with Edwin, son of the Deirian ruler Aella as its first king. In AD 867, it came under Viking control when conquered by two brothers, Ivar and Halfdan Ragnarrson, and integrated into Danelaw - a Viking kingdom already established in Britain. The now-earldom of Northumbria was later divided between two rising kingdoms, Scotland and England. The English portion becoming known as "Northumberland."