So as not to "ham it up," Jack turns away from the camera several times to have a conversation with another actor. Just from watching the few moments of the film, you can see the traits and distinct idiosyncrasies that made him who he was.
We have a local station that replays many old TV shows ("Terry and the Pirates," " Dragnet," "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," "Love That Bob") from the 1950s and "The Jack Benny Show" is on twice a week. There is no doubt in my mind that it is indeed Jack Benny of Waukegan sitting at the table behind Sam. My DVD player has the capability to zoom in on the picture as well as slow the film down. After reading your Answer Man column in the Sun-Times yesterday, in which you addressed the rumor that Jack Benny appears in " Casablanca," I pulled out my DVD to see what I could see. You make me suspect my review was written from an insufficient perspective. I look forward to seeing "Invictus" this weekend with my wife - after I take my son to the Dallas 'Quins game of course. It's maybe not a big "grabber" in the U.S., but rugby is an international sport, and God knows racism is an international problem. If not for the sight of a rugby scrum on the TV, I doubt he would have glanced up.
I suspect that conversations happening between fathers and sons just like that may be the reason this movie was made, rather than a more traditional biopic. My son is 6 years old and is a white child at a majority-minority public school.
He found it very difficult to believe that people could treat each other that way because of a difference in skin color. We spent time looking at photos of District Six.
This lead to a long and detailed conversation about apartheid, Mandela, de Klerk, the ANC and the history of South Africa. I explained this was not simply a movie about rugby. He is a big rugby fan, and there is a local team here in Dallas, the Dallas Harlequins, that we watch regularly. He has seen the previews and is desperate to see the movie. I had to disappoint my son by explaining that I did not think it was an appropriate film for me to take him to. You also point out one very likely reason Mr. You point out that Clint Eastwood's " Invictus" is certainly not the Nelson Mandela biopic you, or indeed anyone, would have expected.
The famous Sidney Paget illustrations appearing with the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories showed him with a much more conventional pipe (see above). We may think of Holmes as smoking a meerschaum calabash, but that was associated with him largely because of the many Basil Rathbone films. But to not smoke his pipe? Surely a pipe smoker is deeply attached to his favorite pipe! Ron Barzell, Los AngelesĪ. Heavens! I understand that Sherlock Holmes, in the new " Sherlock Holmes," doesn't smoke his Sherlock Holmes pipe! The fact that he doesn't wear his deerstalker hat is one thing: I always thought it would make him too visible.