CineSage_jr

ABANDON SHIP?

Well, I think that's a bit of idle and, I must say, backwards speculation. Like any technology, it's invented not because some genius in a workshop has a brainwave and cobbles together some marvel out of spare wristwatch parts, or because a dedicated scientist or engineer devotes years of his life to methodically reasoning out why something works (though that's a lot closer to the truth). The very idea that, say, Thomas Edison or Alexander Graham Bell were the sole creators of the light bulb and telephone is absurd (Bell beat another inventor to the patent office by only a couple of hours; had he been run over by a horse, we'd still have the phone, only it'd have somebody else's name attached to it, as there were dozens of others working on the same idea at that time). Things are 'invented' because society is ready for them, because the progress of technology is a fairly steady one and that, at any given moment, all the basic parts of something 'new' are figuratively arrayed on a table in front of someone who recognizes that they can be put together in a certain way that'll fill a need that civilization has collectively created for itself. Consequently, the question is not what might've been if sound had been delayed by ten years, but what if Edison (or smeone else) had figured out how to synchonize sound from Edison's phonograph with the first film cameras and projectors. As fashionable as it became about 35 years ago to say what a great artform silent cinema was, and how it was destroyed by the coming of sound, if there had been synchronized sound from the beginnings of motion pictures, there would have been no silent films, and no one would have missed them, because to rob human beings of speech is to render them something less than human. Dialogue has been a part of drama at least since the days of Sophocles, Euripedes and Aristophanes, and it would've been unthinkable to begin filming dramas without it unless it had been imposed on filmmakers by technological limitations.

Even if one doesn't really like the songs or his admittedly dated singing style (ever notice how Judy Garland built a career largely singing songs that Jolson sang first and better?), one must admit that Jolson was an absolutely electrifying presence onstage and on film.

I posted a news story here awhile ago that said she was at Death's Door. She was just on Larry King and looks great. She debunked the rumors of her poor health by saying, "Oh, come on, do I look like I'm dying? Do I look like or sound like I have Alzheimer's?" Of course, she could be like the dead El Cid, strapped to a wheelchair instead of a horse. I seem to remember debunking the "Liz-is-about-to-meet-her-Maker" scuttlebutt that was rattling around these pages. At the recent screening of the restored CLEOPATRA at the Motion Picture Academy, a mutual friend told me he tried to persuade Taylor to appear to introduce the film, but she declined partly because of her back problems, and partly because she generally goes out only for charitable causes. Anyway, he said that her health was actually pretty good.

The real dummies used during the invasion were less detailed -- and, therefore, less photogenic -- than the ones made for the film. The real invasion had real darkness, not carefully-lit Hollywood darkness, and the dummies generally only had to be recognized by the Germans as "troops" in silhouette and at a distance before the pyrotechnics embedded in the figurines detonated.

The U.S. Rangers, who scaled Pointe du Hoc while taking 70% casualties -- only to find that the Germans had already removed their artillery from the bunkers and shipped them to Calais, where Field Marshal von Runstedt expected the Allied invasion to land.

I don't know why you can't find any mention of it, but I do know that TCM's going to be airing it on August 23 at 6:00 AM (and not for the first time, either).

It kind of sounds like THRILL OF A ROMANCE (1945), with Esther Williams and Van Johnson.

GWTWbooklover, the movie "Task Force" (1949) was a lot more realistic than most 1940s war films. Director Delmar Daves made good use of actual combat footage both black and white and in the last 15 minutes color. That's the way the clueless Bob Dorian used pronounce it at AMC, all those years ago (remember AMC?). For the record, the name is Delmer Daves, and a fine director he was.

How absolutely marvelous that Miss DeHavilland is being feted! Cinesage, Jr., please, please, please report back. Did I say PLEASE? thanks! -Susan I'll be happy to.

The old brain is hard-wired to take the whole Universe to task one silly, ironic comment at a time.

It's based on the novel by James A. Michener, whose massive books were always meticulously researched. I imagine that the story is fictional, but actual individual incidents may have inspired Michener's writing. As to what the men were doing at the canal, I haven't the faintest idea, though I suppose its possible that there was supposed to be a textile mill in the neighborhood.

Oh, it's just one in a long line of black-and-white/color hybrids that the studios made from time to time (THE WIZARD OF OZ, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, the silent KING OF KINGS, BEN-HUR). As with OZ, the switch to color was implemented both for dramatic reasons, and as an added inducement to get audiences into theaters. The film is told in b&w flashback, as Cooper's character Jonathan Scott recalls his Navy career up to the climactic battles of World War II, and goes to color as the mature Scott, about to retire, concludes his reminiscences with his friend and superior, Pete Richard (Walter Brennan, in the last of six films made with Cooper). I find mixing-and-matching color and b&w an uncomfortable match, but I admit that I can't look at it through the eyes of audiences from generations past.

It's a kind of country club for the elite, AFI's been going after TV ratings for years, so there's little likelihood of that (full disclosure; I'm a graduate of AFI's Los Angeles conservatory). It doesn't really matter anyway; in the interests of accuracy, the "Life Achievement Award" should be renamed "The Life Achievement Award for Directors and Actors" (no other disciplines need apply).

Lukas was indeed Hungarian, born P?l Luk?cs (though Hungarians often write the surname first). I wrote the talent bios that appear on the DVD of 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, and Lukas's was one of the more interesting ones, due in no small part to the fact that his film career began way back in 1918 (his first stage appearance was two years earlier). Remember that four years before Lukas played a good German refugee in WATCH ON THE RHINE, he was a Nazi German-American bund leader in Warner's CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY (1939). In Hollywood of that era, an accent was an accent, and Lukas's was as good an all-purpose one as Frenchman Charles Boyer's was to play a Romanian in HOLD BACK THE DAWN, Russian Maria Ouspenskaya an Austrian in THE MORTAL STORM, Greek Katina Paxinou a Spaniard in FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, or German Conrad Veidt the evil Arab Jaffar in THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD (1940).

All I can think of are Draw ya J! and **** I b u!

Storm Clouds Cantata, by Sir Arthur Benjamin (re-worked by Herrmann).

Hi Mr. Dobbs, The "old Spanish town" that you mention is the mission of San Juan Batista. It's actually the Mission of San Juan Bautista, not "Batista."

Glad to know that my memory hasn't deserted me.

Why? It doesn't mean he wasn't that cultured product of the Old World, but the dynamics within a family are often too subtle for outsiders to perceive easily, especially when one's hearing of it from only one side of the dispute.

Now, if I were Buckley, would I be criticizing Bush?

Is "Island of Lost Souls" included in this library? No, it's a Universal film. It may be part of the package from Universal that TCM's licensed from that studio, but it doesn't belong to them.

Jack Torrance's (Jack Nicholson) typewriter in THE SHINING (1980).

Unlike Warner's, Universal's packaging precludes sales of the individual titles (when're we going to get a Charles Brackett-Billy Wilder collection, Universal?), as their earlier horror film, Mae West, Carole Lombard and Marlene Dietrich box sets demonstrate. Still, I'm thrilled at the opportunity to have the films in the DeMille set. Now we need a second set of the Technicolor DeMille film of the 1940s to round out the titles controlled by Universal.

Actually, I seem to recall that it was B-25 Mitchell (similar to the B-24, but with two engines instead of four), but that's neither here nore there. The film was the first of CBS's "Cinema Center 100" TV-movie unit, a subsidiary of the network that didn't last too long.