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July 14

Film credits and intermissions

Credits

I have had discussions with various film friends over the years about the following so I thought I would see what others who watchlist this page know. It seems that from the 1930's until the 1970's (with a couple exceptions to be mentioned later) that the bulk of the credits, cast and crew, came at the beginning of a film. At the end of the film you would usually, though not always, get another cast list with the role that each actor played included. One notable exception is Citizen Kane with Welles breaking yet another rule of film making as he was wont to do. The first film in my lifetime that I can remember all of the credits being moved to the end is Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. The rest of his films did the same and, at a guess, Star Wars really began the push to move all of the credits to the end of the film. My question is does anyone remember any other films not having the credits at the start pre 2001. I am mostly looking for US and UK films as other countries may have had their own rules about where to place the credits during this time. MarnetteD | Talk 18:05, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Opening credits article cites Star Wars as the populariser of this trend, but cites Welles' films and West Side Story (film) (1961) as earlier examples. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 19:57, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Intermissions

I know that intermissions were a regular part of big films until the 1970's (and now that my kidneys are older I wish :-) they were again.) I am wondering what the last film(s) that you can remember that had an intermission were. Gandhi and Branagh's Hamlet are the last two that I can think of. Also, do you have a particularly memorable one - I still get chills when I see HAL reading Dave and Frank's lips - or an odd one - the theater that I first saw The Eiger Sanction put one in just after Hemlock abandoned Miles in the desert. I think that has to have been a "lets sell more popcorn and candy" intermission rather than one a planned by the Clint and/or the studio because it has never shown up on any VHS or DVD release. Thanks ahead of time for any input you can add. MarnetteD | Talk 18:05, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

By the rules of this ref desk, we can't answer your questions about which films we remember, or discuss their memorableness. However, the question of which the most recent major release with an intermission in it might be possible to answer, and is interesting. The people over at http://www.screened.com/forums/general-discussion/8/what-movies-have-intermissions/4457/?page=2 seem to have concluded that Che (film) from 2008 had an intermission. There may be more recent ones, and it doesn't seem that they did any kind of exhaustive search. /Coffeeshivers (talk) 18:30, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies for forgetting what can and can't be asked. Thanks for the link. I think that an intermission for Che occurred if a theater was showing both parts back to back and not within the parts themselves. The same kind of thing happened when I saw The Best of Youth. MarnetteD | Talk 18:39, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Intermissions were typically a feature of films that ran 3 hours or more. The Sound of Music had one for sure. 2001 had one, as noted above, although the final cut of that movie was not really all that long. Gone with the Wind (film) says there was an intermission, which was a good thing, as it ran nearly 4 hours. Of course, intermissions help promote additional food-and-drink sales. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:47, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Which was why I was surprised that Titanic didn't have one. I didn't see it for a couple of months after it first came out, but many people I know did, and the most common complaint was "It was so long, and my butt got sore from sitting". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:39, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. It was like the on-screen time it took the bloody thing to sink was in real time. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:01, 19 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What poison did Fring use on Breaking Bad

In episode 10, season 4 of Breaking Bad, Gustavo poisons a bottle of Tequila, drinking it himself (apparently prepared with some activated charcoal) and killing his rival and host and the latter's henchmen. The scene is here at youtube. Can anyone indicate or link to a discussion of what the poison was supposed to be? Other poisonings on the show have been carefully explained, and the writers are known for their meticulous scientific accuracy, see Breaking_Bad#Scientific_accuracy. My web searches have been luckless, and I did not get any answers when I asked this before, but am still hoping for a clue. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 19:08, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We don't see him taking charcoal in the clip - how sure are you? According to our article a standard dose is 1 g per kg body weight; did he gulp down something akin to 50-100g? That's a normal serving of yogurt, not a pill you can dry-swallow. Our article also lists a whole mess of poisons that charcoal won't help with and it's a pretty long list. If you can confirm he did indeed munch down on a briquette, you can cross off alcohols, acids, metals, alkalis and glycols from the list (see here), leaving me to wonder exactly what the heck good carbon is supposed to do? To my mind - and if I was in his shoes this makes more sense - he would have taken an antidote. From the list there, you could probably cross off anything readily absorbed by the skin, such as thallium, but then again, maybe he figured it was worth the risk? Matt Deres (talk) 20:34, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a point I wanted to focus on, nor did I want to link to the full episode at tubeplus.me. When I posted this before and said Gustavo seemed to take an emetic someone suggested it was charcoal instead. I have no evidence for either, although the pill or pills he took were quite small, and I too would have expected him to eat a brick of charcoal, not take a small pill or two, which is what we see. The problem with searching this is you get video links and comments about the episode. Maybe there's a Q&A for the show somewhere? (It's also interesting that the victims pretty much keel over simultaneously. That indicates a very large overdose of a poison with a set action period. μηδείς (talk) 20:54, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If it was an emetic, then I'd be curious as to why he shoved a finger down his throat. Since this is a work of fiction, this is all just speculation anyway, regardless of how well informed the series is in general. Normally I'd be afraid this thread would get deleted or hatted because of it, but our resident hardass about that is a bit of a hypocrite. Matt Deres (talk) 00:38, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Your point of complaint is unclear. He took some sort of small pill or pills. No one is insistently arguing a claim as to what they were, this wouldn't be the place for that if that's what you are worried about. The question is, has the writer or producer or some relevant source expressed or been quoted as suggesting what the poison was modeled on? μηδείς (talk) 00:56, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What you know from the clip is... 1) the poison worked fast, within about 10 minutes or so; 2) the poison was able to be mitigated by vomiting it up and taking some sort of pill before hand (but of course not cured, because Gustavo ends up sick; 3) the poison seems to work through some motor action, as the don loses his motor control in his fingers, and can't walk, ends up falling. Shadowjams (talk) 06:25, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In a later scene where he's getting emergency treatment, Fring gets an injection in the tongue by a doctor and then a blood transfusion. I can't speculate from that to an answer, but again it does seem to imply they had some specific poison in mind. μηδείς (talk) 19:10, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]