CompuServe Messages

Great idea. Aside from everything Ridley Scott has ever done, there's one shot in the 1980's remake of DOA that I'll always remember vividly. Here is how we learn that the doomed protagonist's wife has been having an affair: she's attending a formal function naming the winner of a prestigious writing award. The announcer says that Mr. X has won the award but, tragically and ironically, just yesterday threw himself from a high place (Dennis Quaid's office). The wife freezes, and the camera moves slowly around her, gradually picking up speed, around and around until the room too seems to whirl. Then she faints. It's the best impression of vertigo, of those moments of shock immediately following an accident, that I've ever seen. DOA was good for a couple interesting uses of montage too, like using the close-up of air bubbling through the canister of a water dispenser to illustrate the internal agony the fatally poisoned protagonist feels. Show, don't tell.