marsnkc
Supporting Actor
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2006
- Messages
- 516
- Real Name
- Andrew
Originally Posted by Hollywoodaholic
$20 flat at Wal Mart. Good deal. Call first. Some only have one copy, some have several.
Finally got mine yesterday, 'though I pre-ordered it when first announced at Amazon (cheaper for me to buy from them since there's no tax - and no shipping when you buy $25 worth). This masterpiece in this beautiful set has to be the best value in the history of commerce!
I've seen the movie so often that I can anticipate the dialog verbatim, but what follows from the time the demolition group arrive at the bridge took my breath away as though I'd watched it for the first time. Until then, although the canvas is comparatively huge, one doesn't expect anything less from the maker of 'Great Expectations'; yet none of his 'smaller' masterpieces prepares one for
the suspenseful, epic scale of the final action scenes nor the masterful intercutting of these scenes with the light-hearted counterpoint of the show celebrating the completion of the bridge. Also one of the best editors in the world, Lean was operating at genius level at that time, happily carried through to the next little job he took on.
It was wonderful to see Adrian Turner (his post is #12 here) again being interviewed in Laurent Bouzerau's magnificent 'making of ' documentary on the included DVD. A few months ago I finished reading his biographical masterpiece of Robert Bolt. It's out of print but I was lucky enough to be able to get a new copy from England. I was so impressed with the exquisite writing and astonishing research that took him to practically every known piece of ground that Bolt ever stood on that I felt compelled to purchase a used copy of his beautiful, large-format 'Making of Lawrence of Arabia' - again from England but this time - since it was published only in Britain (I think that's right...?) and therefore extremely rare - accompanied by massive sticker shock. And I mean 'massive'! The book is lavishly illustrated with actual 70mm frames from the movie and nicely acknowledges the help of Robert Harris. It's a wonderful complement to the must-have '30th Anniversary Pictorial History of Lawrence of Arabia' by L. Robert Morris and Lawrence Raskin. The last chapter of this is a priceless mini-history of Robert Harris's heroic almost-never-realized restoration of 'Lawrence'.
Thanks to Richard Gallagher for this terrific review.