Movie Answer Man
Perception and reality in 'Shutter Island'
Q. You're a lonely single film buff and it's Saturday night. Hitchcock or Kurosawa? (Matrcus Burciaga)
Q. You're a lonely single film buff and it's Saturday night. Hitchcock or Kurosawa? (Matrcus Burciaga)
Q. In your review of "The Cell" you described the outfits worn by Jennifer Lopez and others while voyaging into the minds of patients as "virtual reality gear." I think the opposite was the case. The outfits were probably worn by the characters to completely desensitize them from the external world so that the therapy could not be interrupted. That's probably also why they were suspended in mid-air. During the therapy sessions the characters did not move their bodies at all. If they were wearing virtual reality gear their bodies, conceivably, would have been mimicking their movements. (Jordan Potasky, Toronto)
Q. When you were talking to Charlton Heston on TV as he arrived at the Oscars, you asked about the possibility that "Titanic" could beat "Ben Hur's" record for number of awards. He made a decent point: Any comparison between the two epics would be unfair because there are now more Oscar categories than when "Ben Hur" was released in 1959. If that's the case, then those declaring "a tie" between the films are wrong. (L. D. Paulson, Sacramento, CA)
Q. In your review of "A Time to Kill," you wrote that it was "a skillfully-constructed morality play that pushes all the right buttons and arrives at all the right conclusions." Okay, close your eyes. Now imagine the two rapists were killed by three hundred white men with a rope. Now imagine the two rapists were black. Does it still arrive at all the right conclusions? (John Lampkins, Los Angeles)
Q. A message from the Rev. Donald Wildmon, head of the American Family Assn., is making the rounds of the Internet. In it, he attacks Disney, writing: "In 'Toy Story,' rated G by the ultraliberal MPAA, the main characters, 'Woody'--note sexual reference--and 'Buzz'--note drug reference--are owned by a child in a single-parent household in which the father is noticeably absent. 'Woody' and 'Buzz' have equally disturbing toy friends, including a sex-obsessed talking potato, a sex-obsessed Bo Peep doll who cannot keep her hands (or lips) off 'Woody,' and an Etch-a-Sketch whose 'knobs' must be 'adjusted' to produce results."
