Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2024 February 16

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February 16

Dinner with Mr. DeSantos

When I was about ten years old there was a movie on TV with Brian Dennehy where he was playing a lawyer in a court. He was going over some case with a witness and kept asking about "Dinner...with Mr. DeSantos". We later had a game where we would chase our dog while shouting "Dinner with Mr. DeSantos!" but that's another story. Anyway, what was the film? I would love to see it again. KTcup82 (talk) 03:53, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps Legal Eagles? If not, have a look through Brian Dennehy#Filmography, it must be in there somewhere. Your exact quote has no matches anywhere on Google. Alansplodge (talk) 11:44, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Nothing like that in a dialogue transcript (found at www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/l/legal-eagles-script-transcript-winger.html) of that specific flick.  --Lambiam 14:42, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

I would guess that DeSantos (or de Santos, etc.) was a character in the movie. I looked through a few Brian Dennehy movies and didn't find one with that name as a character, though. --142.112.220.50 (talk) 22:20, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Funnily enough, the first movie of his I clicked on was Indefensible: The Truth About Edward Brannigan which seems to feature Brannigan playing a lawyer (his son is also a lawyer), has a dinner party near the beginning and includes a character apparently called 'Allan "Al" Disanto' so I think we have the answer. (Although I'm not sure if the dinner referred to is the dinner party since it seems to have involved several people.) Nil Einne (talk) 23:26, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

To be fair, it wasn't a complete accident. A search doesn't find anything like that line and given the abundance of subtitle sites, some of which aren't banned by Google and do have full text searchable subtitles indexed on Google, the fact this is one only results for 'dinner "with mr desantos"' (along with 2 results for that Riverdale episode sort of proving my point about subtitles) made me guess that either the OP is remembering the line wrong or it's a somewhat obscure movie.

The name of the person is something easy to remember wrong. Since it could easily be 'desantis', well trying to search for variations of the name sounded like a fool's errand.

But also I sort of expected that people might have looked at most of his main movies by now and at least seen if he played a lawyer. Although now that I look more carefully there are a lot in that list too. But I still expect any particularly prominent ones where he plays a lawyer might have been mentioned.

So there was a fair chance it was a TV movie and some of these we don't even have an article on so it might be fairly difficult. OTOH, when I had a quick look through that list, indefensible sounded like the sort of title that might involve a lawyer. Definitely those ones where he's called sergeant, general etc probably weren't it. When I looked a second time, Shadow of a Doubt (1995 film) sounded like another one where he might be a lawyer and it seems he indeed is there too.

Oh and now that I wrote all this, I search for "dinner with Disanto" and find it doesn't produce anything useful. (My earlier search is nearly as useless with disanto as desantis.)

However it does seem quite obscure I can see a DVD on Amazon but I have no idea if it's on any streaming services. (These services like to only show you what's available based on geolocation and I'm not going to bother try a VPN so I don't know for sure. Apple TV says it's on Pluto TV, Pluto TV seems broken, and Google Play just says it's not available but in any case I think Google Play for movies is dead replaced by Youtube and other stuff.)

Nil Einne (talk) 23:56, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Okay yes I forgot the Mr in my later searches but adding it didn't seem to help except find Bob's Burger subtitles from a quick test. Nil Einne (talk) 00:36, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for the great information! Maybe it was Legal Eagles, but I think its possible it was also Presumed Innocent. I watched the other films mentioned here, none of them rang a bell. The one I remember had Dennehy strutting around a courtroom, but it was a long time ago. Thanks for the memories! -KTcup82 (talk) 18:48, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Question on the laws of rugby union

There's an aspect of the laws of rugby union that I don't understand. Rugby union gameplay#Tackle says that "[a]fter the ball has been released by a tackled player, players from either side may try to take possession of the ball." But it seems to me that following a tackle, the attacking side retains possession of the ball. For example, see the clip exactly here. The ball is on the ground but Wales make no attempt to regain possession - England just pick up the ball and start attacking again. So what exactly is the rule here? --Viennese Waltz 17:01, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

The key word in the quoted passage is "may try to gain possession . . .".

Wales could have engaged in a multi-player shoulder-to-shoulder struggle over the ball – a 'ruck' – or at least an attempt by the tackler to grab the ball – 'jackalling' – to try to gain possession, but when the tackled player had good support, as here, this was unlikely to be successful. Moreover, such attempts would have committed one or several Wales players to the ruck, leaving fewer to oppose England's when the ball was passed from the ruck to their attacking backs. Instead, Wales opted to retreat from the potential ruck to maximise their defensive numbers.

It's more common for some of the defenders to engage in a ruck or at least for the tackler to jackal, so this alternative tactic can sometimes confuse the attacking side who were planning on a ruck or jackal happening, and even lead to them accidentally committing an offense. Famously, Italy repeatedly deployed this refusal to ruck or jackal in a game against England a few years ago, eventually leading to the England captain asking the Referee "What are we supposed to do?" and the referee replying "I'm not your Coach." {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 176.24.45.226 (talk) 19:16, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, that makes sense. --Viennese Waltz 20:58, 16 February 2024 (UTC)