CineSage_jr

That's a difficult question to answer. The problem with films in the public domain that it's usually not in the copyright holder's interest to restore and issue PD titles on DVD, because the market's already been flooded with cheap, albeit inferior, copies (there are notable, and noble, exceptions, such as Columbia's DVD of HIS GIRL FRIDAY). Because of the landmark stature of THE THIRY-NINE STEPS and Hitchcock's reputation, an excellent transfer of the film was made for Criterion DVD. This is probably what gets shown on television, as well. The most problematic title you mention is probably MEET JOHN DOE, which Frank Capra made at Warner Bros. I assume that the original film and sound elements still reside in the Warner's vaults, and that WBHV will, at some point, undertake a badly needed restoration. There is also scuttlebutt that Warner's is planning a collector's edition of George Cukor's A STAR IS BORN (1954), which will include a third disc of William Wellman's 1937 version (now in the public domain; Warner's bought the rights to the '37 film in order to remake it), which has never been restored.

Well, Elmer Bernstein studied with Aaron Copland (who used to live a couple of miles from me when I was growing up in Westchester County, NY), which ought to tell you where Bernstein's sense of what constitutes indigenous American music came from. And, while THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN may be the epitome of Bernstein's Western idiom (something he developed and defined for film as surely as he did symphonic jazz for films such as THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM and A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE), he wrote a string of Western scores, becoming, essentially, John Wayne's composer of choice for films such as THE COMANCHEROS, THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER, BIG JAKE and TRUE GRIT. Copland was, of course, a tremendous influence on Moross, too, whose THE BIG COUNTRY, THE JAYHAWKERS and THE PROUD REBEL really set the standard as to how to score a Western. It's interesting, isn't it, that the greatest composers of Western music were all Jews from New York City.

I'm afraid that explanation doesn't make any sense. If Ted gave the programmers a clear mandate to indulge their wildest flights of fancy, that'd be one thing but, if anything, as a part of Time Warner TCM has greater budgetary resources and a larger staff now, especially since the folks at TW know that the channel's greatest value to the parent company is as a tool to promote and sell DVD's (a factor that didn't exist in '94). I think the truth is that, as with many companies, the daring souls who worked at TCM in the early days left for other jobs, and were replaced by more conservative types favored by a too-conservative management.

I can't believe you got that one so fast! I just called my friends at MI6.

Who said it in what review?

To be a person of Italian---German---or Japanese heritage living in America was a nightmare in those WWII years and one would have to deny their heritage to just hold a job let alone not be attacked on the street. Hollywood didn't care. To be anything other than a state-approved Aryan Nazi, committed Fascist, or Japanese with any shred of individualism living in Germany, Italy, Japan, or the helpless countries they occupied during those years was a far greater nightmare, I can assure you.

He could defend himself in the war-crimes trial, then.

Try Sidney Poitier (to Roy Glenn) in GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER (I doubt that Spencer Tracy would ever have passed for black, even in his black-and-white movies).

You're right, it is "Ants in Your Plants," but "Hey, Hey, in the Hayloft" is Sullivan's masterpiece. And Monty Norman adapted his never-performed score to a musical production of VS (no periods) Naipaul's book, A House for Mr. Biswas, into his vastly more famous James Bond theme.

A couple of possibilities: THE ENEMY BELOW FORBIDDEN PLANET.

As I wrote before, the story takes place in the 1840s, not the '50s or '60s. And the idea that Catherine Sloper is **** is, well, ****. It's not even as though Catherine is unattractive (no amount of make-up could ever make Olivia de Havilland look anything less than beautiful, after all). If you're looking for a simple characterization of Catherine, you're missing the point, which is that she had always been made to believe she was inferior by her father, who compared Catherine to her mother in all things, comparisons seen through the prism of Dr Sloper's resentment that Catherine's birth had cost him the life of the wife he adored. If someone is treated as an inferior long enough, she or he begins to see himself or herself as inferior, and it manifests itself in the the individual's actions and carriage. Catherine is like the circus elephant that's been chained to s post early in life; when the chains are removed and replaced by rope -- which the beast can easily break -- the elephant doesn't break it because it thinks it's still bound by the steel shackles. So it is with Catherine. Remember, too, that Henry James's depiction of Catherine's relationship with her father, and her imposed feelings of inferiorty, can also be seen as a metaphor for slavery, which relied on the same kind of planned, enforced degradation to keep blacks in line, and which was still a going concern in James's day.

As a point of interest----Did any other group take more of a beating than the Asians--Germans---and Italians during the comparatively short run of 1939-1945 when the Hollywood WWII propaganda machine cranked out it's hatefulness and turned those three groups into something just short of sub-humans? Oh, puh-leeeze! The whole point is that the Allies were at war, it was a desperate fight against the inhumanity of the systems maintained by the Germans, Italians and Japanese, and demonizing them in the interests of maintaining the U.S. public's will to fight and pay for such a long, draining war in which hundreds of thousands of mothers' sons (many of them of German, Italian and Japanese descent) never came home was indispensible and inevitable.

At the age of 83, janis Paige is still remarkably beautiful.

THE TIME MACHINE was made in color, but it wasn't made in Technicolor.

You must've been at the Motion Picture Academy three weeks ago and heard that story, just as I did.

In all the years since the film's original release, somebody must've pointed out by now that you can't spell "Ishtar" without s***t.

Cronyn. Author A.J. Cronin wrote the novel The Citadel, among others.

Probably right, although his roles in THE MASK OF DEMETRIOS and ARSENIC AND OLD LACE can also be interpreted as being gay.

And you got it without having to sneak a look at Rommel's map. Boy, how I love this long-neglected gem of a movie!

Universal really missed the boat when it put on DVD the version re-edited per Welles's memo, and no other, since there is no definitive version, and never has been. The earlier cuts are now impossible to see (unless one has an old VHS tape or laserdisc). Universal needs to put out a collectors' edition with all three cuts of the film (as Criterion did with Welles's MR ARKADIN), so that viewers may decide for themselves which is best.

What a mixed up story that was but Katina was great, shooting up the place. I think she won an Oscar once but surely not for this film!!!!!!!! Paxinou won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, with Cooper and Ingrid Bergman.

Thomas More.

Bodacious Babe.

CONTRABAND.

Still cold. Clue #4: The British Tommy's identity disc hangs from the neck of the whiskey decanter.