I read one that wound up being a piece extolling the virtues of medicinal marijuana to treat Parkinson's. It's worse when it's desperate when it doesn't have to be.

I'm kind of disappointed he didn't play the Jamie Foxx role in Collateral, even though Foxx did very well with it. After Punch Drunk Love it would have been the right kind of role in a big film with a major director attached and someone like Tom Cruise to play off of.

Got away from him, or as I like to say, that the Reitman genes are kicking in.

Notice I didn't say the truth.

Indeed. Funnily enough I think the Blu-ray is finally arriving here from Amazon today so this timed out very nicely.

One of my favorite scenes is the scene in the bank with Andy in his suit, smug as fucking hell, just about to screw the Warden with his outgoing mail.

I read somewhere that he felt free by the experience of NBK because it was the first film he'd directed in a long time that wasn't bound to history like JFK or his Vietnam films were.

Would have been interesting to see what Reiner would have done with it, as his choices for Andy and Red were Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford respectively which would have been an interesting duel of movie acting. I think later on Ford was in consideration for the Kurt Russell role in Vanilla Sky.

He probably also knew about his father, who was a contract killer.

It is, especially when Redford knocks the cover off the ball.

Both rated R.

I saw it when I was 12. It disturbed me a little bit but didn't make any lasting impressions. I was starting to get that the world was something beyond what my family made my own little chunk of it was.

I saw so many R-rated movies as a kid I couldn't say I was really traumatized by one or the other. My brother had a particularly bad nightmare after T2, but I can't remember any such trauma for myself.

There's no way I can see that Alford plea as anything but a "fuck you" from the state to those guys. They just wanted to bury it as deep as they could, with them along for the ride.

She got prettier as she got older. Pretty sure she was legal then but she had a bit of a jailbait vibe which doesn't do much for me.

Escape From Alcatraz is another one. It's more of a thriller, but it paints the island as a kind of cold, foggy hell that obliterates any sense of joy or life in it.

The other film directed from a Tarantino script from around that time, True Romance, earns it's ending as well. Tony Scott was adamant in having it end that way because as an admirer of the characters he wanted to see the happy ending, as opposed to it being forced in.

That's not entirely true. The West Memphis Three are free because in part of the attention from people all over the world as to their plight. I wish I had some more examples but can't think of any except possibly Ruben Carter but I believe that pre-dated this movie.

Well the electric chair isn't mentioned at all in Shawshank though it is a main component in the plot of Darabont's next movie, which is almost as beloved so I can see your point a little bit there.

It had some nice scenery-chewing going on, I'll give it that.