CineSage_jr
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Posts posted by CineSage_jr
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Fourteen (or, technically, 13 1/2):
Bette Davis, JEZEBEL
Ruth Chatterton, JEZEBEL
Walter Brennan, THE WESTERNER
Greer Garson, MRS MINIVER
Teresa Wright, MRS MINIVER
Frederic March, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES
Harold Russell, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES
Olivia deHavilland, THE HEIRESS
Audrey Hepburn, ROMAN HOLIDAY
Burl Ives, THE BIG COUNTRY
Charlton Heston, BEN-HUR
Hugh Griffith, BEN-HUR
Barbra Streisand, FUNNY GIRL
The 1/2 is:
Walter Brennan, COME AND GET IT
which was co-directed by Wyler and Howard Hawks, though I suspect that Wyler's direction, more than Hawks's, had more to do with Brennan's winning the first-ever Best Supporting Actor.
Wyler's fourteen is more than 50% greater than the next-highest total, Eliza Kazan's nine.
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Robert Stack plays the pilot in THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY; Wayne is former pilot Dan Roman, demoted to co-pilot because of a lack of confidence due to a tragic mishap in his past. He takes command of the aircraft when Stack proves indecisive during a crisis.
The tune Roman whistles at the end is the film score's main theme, written by Dimitri Tiomkin.
Had it been Mitchum, he would've just fallen asleep.
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I was just speaking with his brother, Robert, two weeks ago today at the Motion Picture Academy. I don't know how close all the actor-brothers are, buut it's got to be a hard on the family.
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That's Mickey Rooney (though he's really Joe Yule, jr).
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Yondah lies the facileness of my faddah.
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> {quote:title=coopsgirl wrote:}{quote}
> One part that always gives me a little giggle is when Clark has run off Roscoe Kearns character Shapeley into the woods and then spits. He gets a little on his coat and wipes it off before he heads back to the bus. That was something Capra came up with back in his silent days and Harry Langdon used it first in some of his shorts. Garys character in *Mr. Deeds* also does it when he and Jean Arthur are on top of the Empire State Building and he spits over the side and she has to wipe it off his coat. It was a cute little thing to try and show they were cool or tough but by spitting on themselves it showed they were really just nice, regular guys that people could relate to. Its a little thing but all those little things add up to realistic, believable characters and Capra was the master at that.
Capra also uses it during the "Archangel Gabriel's" telling of George Bailey's life story to Clarence in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE; in a short, wordess vignette, World War II air-raid warden George orders a Bedford Falls resident to turn out a light to conform to blackout regulations, then spits as if utterly full of himself to be vested with so much power over his fellow citizens. Capra turns George's momentary arrogance upside-down an instant later, bringing him back to earth as he notices the spittle he's launched onto his own collar -- reward for that uncharacteristic arrogance.
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It's Cecil b. DeMille's THE CRUSADES (1935), with Henry Wilcoxon as Richard the Lion Heart, Loretta Young as his queen, Berengaria, and Alan Hale as Blondel, the fella sent to stnadin for Richard at the wedding with the sword.
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Cute dog (is he/she called "See biscuit?" Makes more sense than giving thast name to a horse). Cute horse. Really cute rider.
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> {quote:title=RainingViolets101 wrote:}{quote}
> Yes, but I am right because color film is too much of a distraction from the story
> and cinemascope was originally used as an alternative to the square TV screen.
> And that is why all the classics were filmed in the thirties and forties in black and white.
> There was what I consider the last true classic filmed in 1952, it is "The Thief" with
> Ray Milland and Rita Gam, shot in black and white, consisting mostly of close - ups
> and the added benefit of being silent.
Joseph L. Mankeiwicz once said that he thought there was no great dramatic film ever made in color, with the possible exception of GONE WITH THE WIND.
I don't know if I'd go that far, but to say "all the classics...filmed in the thirties and forties [were] in black and white" is absurd. In addition to GWTW, what about
THE WIZARD OF OZ
THE FOUR FEATHERS
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
THE RED SHOES
HEAVEN CAN WAIT
just to name five more notable titles? Color didn't become common till the 1950s, and ubiquitous until the '70s, but that doesn't mean that so many productions were filmed in black and white for purely creative reasons. Cinematographer William Daniels, who had photographed most of Greta Garbo's films at MGM begged the studio's executives to let her make at least one feature in color. They refused, their argument being that her films made plenty of money in plain black-and-white, and that they couldn't justify the extra expense for, perhaps, a slight uptick in boxoffice revenues. B&W versus color: that's what it usually was, a business decision.
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Well, are you going to share the brainwave that answered your own question?
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> {quote:title=PrinceSaliano wrote:}{quote}
> What other species wages war and glorifies it?
Ants and bees wage war constantly (not ants versus bees, of course). Not being privy to their dinnertime conversations, and being unable to read their teeny-weeny propaganda posters, I can't tell you to what extent they glorify those conflicts.
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If you do get the BEN-HUR, please do me a favor: under no circumstances listen to the audio commentary on the discs of th 1959 film by one T. Gene Hatcher. He knows nothing about the movie or ancient history. How this guy bamboozled Warner's into letting him do it is a complete mystery.
The BEN-HUR is also a bad transfer: insufficient bitrate, music dialed down too low, the edges of the MGM Camera 65 frame clipped off. The film is one of the real crown jewels in the film library owned by Warner's, and it's a sad day when such a landmark picture isn't given the full treatment it desrves. Let's just hope they do it right when the film finally comes to Blu-ray.
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Dreyfuss probably has a point; I doubt that Universal has asked Steven Spielberg to give them a freebee on the same terms offered Dreyfuss.
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Poor Charles Boyer, caught on the set of GASLIGHT between twin blonde towers: Bergman (6' 0") and Angela Lansbury (5' 10"). What's a short male actor to do?
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> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote}
> I agree with you. One problem today is that it's nearly impossible to do a close-up of a face with a wide-screen camera. If they try to do a close-up today, they often wind up cutting the tops of the heads off. If they back off a little with the camera, then they've got a bunch of nothing dangling on both sides of the face on the screen, and their "close-up" is no longer a "close-up".
There's no law that says a close-up can't cut off the top and bottom of a subject's head. The expression's all in the eyes, anyway, and that's what close-ups are designed to exploit.
French filmmakers and critics never understood the penchant of Hollywood directors for cutting off the top of heads and feet even in long shots. The French dubbed such compositions "American shots."
Try watching an early CinemaScope film sometime, in which there are no true close-ups because the primitive 'Scope lenses distorted the image when they photographed a close subject, and also because directors and executives figured that the expanded frame obviated the need for them. Of course, such an apporach was as un-cinematic as a diet of nothing but close-ups.
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> {quote:title=Letrightbedone wrote:}{quote}
> I just finished watching The Winslow Boy on Turner Classic Movies. At the end of the film in which the Barrister Morton, played by Robert Donat, won the exoneration of his client in the title role, he told the client's older sister he was always pleased when the "People" prevailed over the sycophants.
> One of the film's themes was a declaration by a beloved King of England of the past to "[L]et right be done" and allow himself to be sued despite a prior-restraint law on the books against such suits. This ending made me think of how the State of California has usurped the word "People" to stand for "Sycophant" in prosecuting criminal defendants. The United States is a bit more blunt in their prosecutions, using "The United States of America" as the prosecuting party. The United States, due to their jurisprudential history, uses parties other that "The United States of America" when they are sued, such as "Laird" during the Watergate era of the Richard Nixon presidency.
> Warren Buffett once said: "[W]e're winning." In classic Warren form, it is still unclear to me whether Mr. Buffett was referring to the "people" or the sycophants.
> Similarly, The State Bar of California has usurped Federal and State Constitutional protections against liberty and the unlawful taking of property with their sycophantic activities under the wing and auspices of the California Supreme Court.
> Then, with Robert Donat panache, Barrister Morton implied to his new love interest, his clients sister, that "the People" will tend to overcome the Sycophant(s) hands down.
>
> Very truly yours,
>
> JOHN RUBENS
> jrlg323@earthlink.net
> (323) 244-3060
What a potful of paranoid bilge. Why don't you just crawl back into your survivalist bunker and polish the assault rifle I just know you keep under your bed?
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> {quote:title=filmlover wrote:}{quote}
> Actually, I had written to the TCM Programmer about this a little while ago, and they are aware of Flynn's 100th birthday and would like to do something. Unfortunatey, the whole month of June was scheduled for Directors' Month. And there is also a logistics problem in that they needed the Curtiz Day (which has a couple of Flynns in it) for the Essentials Jr. event, which takes place on Sundays. The TCM Programmer did think of moving the Curtiz day to the 21st (also a Sunday) but that would be after Flynn's birthday on the 20th.
>
> There are so many complications in trying to make schedules work. I know this from having participated in all the Programming Challenges and it is a major headache just trying to get things to fit in one week, the TCM programmer has to try to make whole months work exactly right.
Maybe it'd all be simplified if they just fired everybody.
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Well, the silent version is certainly worth having, but it was still quite a disappointment to find it missing the two-strip Technicolor for the parting of the Red Sea. The color footage does exist; I even have it on DVD-R, and there's no reason for Paramount not to have taken the time and trouble to make the disc as faithful as possible to the original theatrical release, as Warner's did with the silent BEN-HUR.
The packaging is very nice, I admit, though one really needs to take pains to keep the transparent mylar sections from getting scratched.
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It's just the opposite; films today are practically all close-ups (something directors learned from watching too much television, or working in it too long). Modern directors, producers and executives don't understand the need for long master shots to set up the spatial and emotional geography of a scene, and that the close-up is their dramatic trump card: use it too soon or too often, and it loses its power.
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> {quote:title=brandoalways4ever wrote:}{quote}
> I bet it makes you feel more connected to not only the movie but you're and my idol. Gosh..how I envy you!!!
>
> Is there any other movie memorabilia you want?
>
> I'm thinking of buying *The Ten Commandments* (3-disc) this week.
Sure, there's lots of stuff I want, but even if I had all the money in the world, I'm smart enough to know I can't own everything (and what would be the poiint, anyway? Everybody dies, and someday all the things i own will pass into thers' hands).
I'd hold off on the TEN COMMANDMENTS DVD, unless you can get it very cheaply, as Paramount has yet to do a first-rate transfer of the film. I've heard they're currently restoring it (again), probably meaning new DVD and Blu-ray releases at some point down the road. Maybe with decent bonus materials this time, as the current ones are really pretty dreadful.
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Ingrid Bergman was nearly six feet tall. She had few leading men who weren't shorter than she was.
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> {quote:title=brandoalways4ever wrote:}{quote}
> You're lucky!!!!
>
> I don't own any props from any classic films.
>
> I take it you're a DeMille fan? So am I.
It's not one of my very best pieces, but I was very happy when I found it.
The thing I like about owning props and costumes is that, for most people, the only thing they take home after seeing a movie is the memory of what they saw and heard on screen (decades ago, one of the great Hollywood moguls, I think it was Jack Warner, said the thing he liked best about being in the movie business is that he really wasn't selling anything to anybody: at the end of the day, the studio gets to keep its product -- the physical film -- and the audience just gets it dreams, which have no monetary value, anyway). So, being able to hold in my hands a physical, tangible artifact that for everyone else is just a flickering, fleeting image -- one that may have also been held in the hands of a favorite actor -- is a rare privilege, and one of which I never tire.
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I've had it for the better part of twenty years now (it was originally fabricated by the 20th Century-Fox prop department as the "iron sword of the Hittites" that Sinuhe demands as payment for performing brain surgery on the Hittite king in THE EGYPTIAN. At Cecil B. DeMille's request, Paramount purchased a large number of props from the earlier film for use in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS).
The sword is sand-cast aircraft-grade aluminum and weighs a bit less than four pounds. I own a lot of swords from DeMille films, and it's the only one with an aluminum blade (the rest are steel). As I acquired them it became obvious that DeMille insisted on real swords, so this one particular instance of an aluminum blade puzzled me until I learned of the item's purchase from Fox.
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> {quote:title=debro52 wrote:}{quote}
> hateful
Heaven forbid anyone should ever correct anyone about anything, huh?
Saving Private Ryan and Other Modern Films
in General Discussions
Posted
The faded color was less a product of the film stock than it was manipulating in the post-production timing. In any case, it, and the herky-jerky motion, were deliberate creative choices on Spielberg's part to make the film look as though it had been shot in hand-held 16mm by a combat photographer. Anyone familiar with World War II combat footage, such as John Ford's BATTLE OF MIDWAY, would recognize the "style," though those films have, if anything, oversaturated color thanks to the Kodachrome reversal stock shot, and Technicolor prints.
The real problems with SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is that it makes little sense, either dramatically or militarily. It's pretentious rubbish whose drama was subordinated to the typically sentimental conclusions its maker had already reached before he started making it. That sort of cart-before-the-horse approach usually results in bad movies.