CineSage_jr
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Posts posted by CineSage_jr
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Sorry. I was out getting my Macguffin waxed.
Here's one:
In what film (not by Hitchcock), via voice-over, is the meaning and history of the expression Que Sera Sera (from THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH's song) explained, though in its original Italian form (Che Sara Sara)?
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Well, I was only confirming that, last I heard, he was in Nyack.
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Actually, Catherine's mother left her in trust $10,000 a year: the equivalent of over a million dollars a year in today's money. Her father's legacy will be three times as much. So, you -- and Dr Sloper -- can see why Morris Townsend wanted to marry the old girl so badly (with badly being the operative word).
By coincidence, I just bought a ticket for the Los Angeles County Museum's screening next month of THE HEIRESS. Olivia deHavilland will be there in person to discuss making the film, in connection with her 90th birthday.
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Is what THE BIRTH OF A NATION glorifies any worse than what Leni Riefenstahl's TRIUMPH OF THE WILL glorifies?
But the latter film is no less a great work of art. The fact is, there is absolutely no relationship between an artwork's subject matter and the quality of its presentation. Hollywood history is full of films (have you ever seen GANDHI?) that're of noble intent but not very good.
At the same time, there are many great films that defend morally questionable positions.
Additionally, morality is like technology: we can't condemn our forebears because they didn't have electricity, penicillin and jet aircraft. Science advances slowly and steadily, as does society as a whole. D.W. Griffit was a product of centuries'-worth of bigotry and sense of entitlement that were bequeathed to him by his ancestors and the forebears of those around whom he grew up. It's therefore absurd to expect him to see the world the same way as as, say, a Jewish lawyer from Bronxville.
One cannot judge the quality of a horse, and advocate its shooting, based on the morals of the rider.
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The young prefer color for the same reason that they prefer graphic violence, sex and thundering Foley (sound effects) on the films' soundtrack: they're all completely literal, leaving little or no room for -- or, most importantly, need to -- interpret, to think, to become an active participant in the storytelling process.
It's all about laziness, really. Lack of imagination, lack of ambition. One can lament its ascendancy, but there are a few compensations for the certain knowledge that I'm going to be dead in fifty years, and won't have to put up with it forever.
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SEPARATE TABLES (which won David Niven his Best Actor Oscar).
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There's only one film of hers that I'd really like to have on DVD: IF I WERE KING (Paramount, 1938). Of course, it's primarily Ronald Colman's and Basil Rathbone's presence in the film that makes it a favorite of mine (along with its fine Preston Sturges script).
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If true, it's too bad that Johnson's found it necessary to move to the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, CA, since he moved to Nyack (near where I'm from) only about four years ago.
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They put numbers on them so that Fox News can provide the White House with a blacklist of those who bought "the wrong movies."
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Charles Boyer had cultivated the screen image of the continental lothario but, in reality, he was intensely devoted to his first, and only, wife, "Pat" Paterson, whom he married in 1934.
When she became ill and died in 1978, the thought of going on without her was so unendurable that Boyer committed suicide only two days after her death.
Quite sad, of course, but also touching. Mrs Boyer must've been a very lucky woman.
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The Samuel Goldwyn films are now owned by Sony, by virtue of their having bought MGM (and all that studio's post-1986 films), which had earlier bought the Goldwyn Company from Samuel Goldwyn, jr.
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Gene Kelly's suit smelled pretty bad, reportedly, after several takes!
Probably because the milk was recycled from Claudette Colbert's bath scene in SIGN OF THE CROSS.
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I repeat:
THE ARTWORK GETS A NEFF.
You can read postings on this, and any other forum, from now till Doomsday, and you will never find a better play on words than this one (okay, so I'm immodest; sue me).
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First, you must write a letter -- notarized -- to the Secretary of the Air Force...
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Why not me?
The fact is, what TCM's adopted is a celebrity programmer, which has no relation to the validity of the celebrity's choices, or even the celebrity's qualifications to be a celebrity (or even a voting citizen; Paris Hilton's favorite flicks, anyone?).
Frankly, there are a lot of folks right here, the rank-and-file of TCM's viewership, who would make splendid "guest programmers," and tend to cement the channel's connection with its audience.
An idea for the powers-that-be to consider.
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My old classmate, Kirk Douglas (never mind that he's about 40 years older than I am; we did go to school together) has said that an actor's job isn't to lose himself in his role (kind of like General Patton's "No man ever won a war by dying for his country" line), but to make the audience lose themselves in his role.
Kirk's always been so powerfully convincing in his roles, especially those in which his characters are committed to the point of obsession, that it's been a common misconception that he was trained in the Method. His background and training are, in fact, far more conventional (I refer you to his excellent autobiography, The Rag Man's Son), much of it coming at Amesterdam University and on the job in his early years on the stage. He said there was only one instance -- his performance as Vincent van Gogh in LUST FOR LIFE -- when he was bringing the tortured artist home with him from the set at night, something he didn't like and didn't care to repeat, though the splendid results director Vincente Minnelli got on film do speak for themselves.
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That's probably because Wellman made LITTLE CAESAR's (1930) contemporary, THE PUBLIC ENEMY (1931), with James Cagney.
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Falling rain or snow (real or fake) also needs to be backlit for it to photograph well, though fast modern film stocks and lenses make this less imperative than it was in the old days.
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Perkins's widow, Berry Berenson, was a passenger on one of the airliners that was flown into the World Trade Center on 9/11.
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Charters and Caldicott, the Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne characters from Hitchcock's THE LADY VANISHES, turn up in Reed's NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH.
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Club-footed med student, unwitting pawn of love-starved princess, is "cured" thanks to deals made by gypsy in heavy make-up.
Well, that describes dozens of films...
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I love RANDOM HARVEST as well. But it's Mervyn LeRoy, and he directed only one gangster film of note (LITTLE CAESAR, albeit a seminal one), so it's hardly fair to typecast him as the maker of such movies.
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In a poll taken of professional cinematographers several years ago, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's BLACK NARCISSUS was voted the most beautifully photographed color film of all time.
It's hard to dispute this, and its cameraman, Jack Cardiff (whom I had the pleasure of meeting last November) is surely the greatest cinematographer of all time.
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Only Warner's, with its commitment to using original publicity art from a film's original release, does it right. This DOUBLE INDEMNITY is, therefore, no real improvement over the original DVD.
It will be an improvement, though, if the transfer is new, resulting in a less-grainy image and better sound than the previous disc (and, maybe, some bonus materials).
PS: When is this due to hit the street, and are there any other Billy Wilder titles forthcoming from Universal (particularly FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO)?
From Black & White to Color
in General Discussions
Posted
A: It's Kim [/u]Novak[/u], not "Novack."
B: As regards
It was designed for black and white
all films are designed specifically for either black-and-white or color. One chooses the color and design of sets and costumes, of make-up and camera angles based on whether it's to be shot in color or black-and-white. One would think Sidney'd know something so basic.
Beyond this, merely turning down the color on a TV showing a colorized movie is practically useless; the digital colorization process reduces the sharpness and contrast valuea of the image to the point that the films' original cinematographers would scarcely recognize their own work.