Word: tora
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...tastes, mere competence is not enough. The young president had his share of successes (Butch Cassidy, M*A*S*H, Patton). But he had his share of bombs too (Star!, Ché!, Dr. Dolittle). Most recently-some say at his father's insistence-he sank $23 million into Tora! Tora! Tora!, which has an uncertain financial future. He also raised a storm of public indignation by backing pop porn flicks, notably Myra Breckinridge, which has not yet made a profit, and probably never will. The board forced him to sell off another property, Portnoy's Complaint. Since 20th...
...moviemaking. Nineteen-seventy, you may recall, was the year Hollywood attempted to cash in on the so-called youth market ( Getting Straight and The Strawberry Statement, both vile), the year three major studios placed their fiscal futures on the line with expensive extravaganzas (Paramount, Catch-22; 20th-Century Fox, Tora! Tora! Tora!; and MGM, Ryan's Daughter ), and the year Europe's three best-known directors came up with relatively disappointing work (Fellini, Satyricon; Antonioni, Zabriskie Point; Bergman, The Passion of Anna...
...20th Century-Fox epic of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Tora! Tora! Tora! [Oct. 5]: T'll make you a little bet that the original cast pulled off the attack for a lot less than $25 million. Oh well, you can't win them...
...Strut. The first half of the film is devoted to apple-pie softness and bamboo resilience. In war movies of the '40s, the Japanese were a thin yellow line. Tora! Tora! Tora!* is a refreshing reversal. The Americans tend to blend into an indistinguishable potbellied mob. It is the Orientals who are individuals. Admiral Yamamoto (Soh Yamamura) is Eskimo-like in appearance, stoical in practice, goaded by an affliction no leader can afford: doubt. Lieut. Commander Fuchida (Takahiro Tamura) is an Oriental Smilin' Jack, all jaw and strut. Ambassador Nomura (Shogo Shimada), present in Washington when the bombs...
Hunt and Peck. In the second half of Tora! Tora! Tora!, the bromides stop fizzing and the cliches are hushed. In a brilliant restaging, Japanese planes cut through the cloud cover. There, gliding beneath them, is a civilian biplane, looking like a goldfish among sharks. It is the film's last laugh. Trapped in that jug-necked harbor, the men of the Arizona, the regulars on easy duty in Schofield Barracks, are pathetically vulnerable targets. An airplane desperately taxis down its runway, straining for liftoff. A bomb scores a direct hit. The pilot becomes a gout of smoke...