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Radio

Seen: 2003.10.30   ¶   Reviewed: 2003.12.28

Theatre experience

A cute, peppy, ultra-nice lad with a chinstrap beard signs our gear out. One of those intrinsically nice fellas, but with fashion sense. He’ll turn out all right, I suspect.

The ticket-taker at the gateway tells me the auditorium is the second door on the right. “I know,” I tell him nicely (with a smile, even). He looks at me blankly. “Tey don’t test you for telepathy when they give you the job, though, do they?”

Later on, I head out for a drink of water. On the way back, I say “Quick. What am I thinking?”

“Fucked if I know,” the boys says.

“Hey, you got it!” I tell him.

A bit recherché for the poor guy, but I liked it.

Caption quality

RADIO: Jimmy Carter declared

Hmm. ANNOUNCER ON RADIO or NEWS ANNOUNCER, perhaps? This movie has a character called Radio.

Lots of interspersing of dialogue with music:

- dialogue
-♪ music ♪

but they missed an utterance in one case. Later, soul music on the radio is captioned only at the beginning of the phrase, not throughout. Arguably there was too much dialogue otherwise.

Hideous caption break:

I got a school to run, I have a thousand

children to take care of.

Description quality

Miles Neff is narrator.

“The young dark-skinned lad” (my notes definitely hae them saying “lad,” but in retrospect I doubt that): This is WGBH’s perennial euphemism for “black.” Later: “A middle-aged African-American woman steps onto the porch.”

Dialogue: “I’m not going to hug you or anything.” Later description: “They hug.”

A “hatchback” is an AMC Gremlin! An “El Camino” is later revealed to be the close lookalike, the Ford Ranchero. (FORD indirectly visible on tailgate.)

“A trim weather-worn coach”: I would just have said “man.” One doesn’t have a preset mental image of coaches available in different categories, one of which is “trim weather-worn.” And this is, I suppose, an indirect way of saying Ed Harris is going to seed, which he is. Later: “The muted light accents the many wrinkles on his troubled face.”

“The handsome player bangs on the shed door.” Well, I suppose he was.

Pen drying up during these notes (I now carry backups): “Harold’s smile fades as he watches [Radio cradle] the football in his arms.”

Product placement: “Grinning, Honeycutt takes a Burger King Whopper from a bag.”

Consistency

No worries.

Exit interview

No worries.


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