CineSage_jr

Hollywood's all-time greatest villain? Hand's down it's Kirk Kerkorian, the financier whose wheelings and dealings single-handedly destroyed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios.

> {quote:title=moviefan1951 wrote:}{quote} > One of the greatest lines from an 80s movies. When I first watched "Field of Dreams", by the end of the movie I had been reduced to tears. Especially the part of Shoeless Joe Jackson, played so wonderfully by the great Burt Lancaster, in perhaps the last great performance of his career. Excuse me, but I wonder if you remember the movie very well. Lancaster played Archibald "Moonlight" Graham (a real person, by the way), who had exactly one major league at-bat before retiring and taking up the practice of medicine. Ray Liotta played "Shoeless" Joe Jackson.

> {quote:title=JackFavell wrote:}{quote} > That is a great story, Scsu. > > The primary difference for me, albeit a small one, is that I can see the faces of baseball players, and I can't see the faces of the players in football. > > And I believe Cinesage, Jr. is right. The best game you can have in baseball is a no hitter. As my dad says, "When I realized that the best game you can have in baseball is one in which NOTHING happens, I quit watching." > > But the fact is, EVERYTHING happens in a no hitter - it is one man against another in the end. Although a team sport, there is always that moment between pitcher and batter. TENSION. The same thing that makes a good movie. One man pitted against another, and may the best man win. Not just that, but no pitcher is any better than the seven fielders behind him and the catcher in front of him. And no pitcher is so dominating that his fielders can just rock back on their heels and casually wait for batted balls come to them. Each of the requisite twenty-seven outs in a nine-inning game is a piece of the struggle of trying to assemble the whole no-hitter or perfect game. The deeper a no-no goes into the game, the more pressure there is on each man in the field to do his job as well as he has ever done it, because no one wants to be the one who blew it for the guy who's throwing what's perhaps the game of his life. As a consequence, the defensive plays in such a game are often desperate and heart-stoppingly spectacular. Just imagine a dozen or more "Hail Mary" passes in one football game. If there isn't tension in that, then you won't find it in any sport.

> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote} >What the studios need to do is basically sell many of the props and costumes of all their movies, current and old. Even with new movies, people will pay a fortune for this stuff now. Very little of any value remains in the hands of the studios. Most of it was sold to independent prop and costume houses or just disappeared decades ago.

> {quote:title=hamradio wrote:}{quote} > CineSage jr wrote: > << The ending was also too abrupt >> > > That's what happened in the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". Did we win or not? I hate when Hollywood does that! > Compare this with the last act of, say, ROMAN HOLIDAY (it's not sci-fi, but that's irrelevant): the scene in the car in which the Princess (Audrey Hepburn) returns to her country's embassy, leaving Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck) to sit there alone, futilely hoping that she'll return and fly into his arms, is, for all intents and purposes, the climax and end of the movie. Only the movie goes on for another 20 minutes, tying up loose ends, but not really accomplishing all that much (it's a wonderful film, but too long, largely due to this excessive coda). There is a good, effective middle ground in closing out a story. THE LOST MISSILE needed, after the world was saved, at least a couple of minutes of the survivors reflecting on how close the human race had come to extinction, and how essential it is that there are always a few people like Dr Loring (Loggia), willing to put the welfare of others ahead of themselves. If done right, it would've helped flesh out the whole purpose of the film, edging it away from the plot-heavy story it predictably ended up being.

The very fact that, along with A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, ON THE WATERFRONT and THE GODFATHER, you'd post a photo of Brando as Jor-el in SUPERMAN (a role Brando implored the film's producers to let him play as a green suitcase -- honest!), guts your whole argument.

What's really quite odd is that the main title of the transfer of SANTA FE TRAIL TCM showed the other night looked fine; it was when the film, proper, began that the quality took a distinct nosedive.

A cutting continuity is exactly that. When a film's final edit is done, the finished film is transcribed into something resembling a shooting script (the format is somewhat different), noting all dialogue and screen directions, broken down reel-by-reel, with footage counts noting the length of every scene and shot, down to the individual frame (90 frames per minute, 24 per second). This reflects any changes made to the shooting script during the filming process, including any and all on-set re-writes or improvised dialogue and physical "business."

Taking into consideration the period in which the film was made, and that it was produced on a shoestring, it's not a bad film: the special effects are serviceable, even inventive at times, and most of the performances quite good (I've always been a fan of Robert Loggia's, from the days he starred in the short-lived NBC series T.H.E. Cat in the early 1960s), not the overwrought hamminess typically found in bargain-basement sci-fi movies of the 1950s. The only place the film falls down is in its too-simplistic story; a little more nuance, digression into subplot -- allowing for more character development -- and tension and sorrow arising from Loggia's character's willingness to sacrifice himself to save New York and his fianc?e, would've gone a long way toward fleshing out an otherwise well-made film. The ending was also too abrupt, but at least we were spared the sort of (usually anti-Communist) moralizing --as in THE 27th DAY -- these kind of films often specialized in. Still, it was nice to see the film for the first time since I was kid. It used to play on New York's WOR-9 all the time, but disappeared at least thirty years ago. Kind of the lost LOST MISSILE.

> {quote:title=route66 wrote:}{quote} > > You are gonna LOVE Ace in the Hole! It's about a scheming, conniving reporter willing to do anything to stir up trouble! > > I don't think the character of Chuck Tatum was trying to stir up trouble, as much as he was exploiting the morbid interest of the masses for anything that gives them a chance to hear about something strange, unusual, or out of the ordinary. The masses are still eating up the same kind of news stories, even now in the 21st century. Where there is a need or desire, there is usually also someone willing to fill it. Chuck Tatum is just the darker side of Joe Bradley, the character played by Gregory Peck in ROMAN HOLIDAY (reporter willing to exploit his subject for a career-making story; interesting that both films were made by the same studio within a two-year period). Of course, they both owe their characters' general situation to the Riskin-Capra IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT from nearly twenty years earlier.

> {quote:title=RayFaiola wrote:}{quote} > I think the last telecast of LI'L ABNER was correct, however. For the record, it's "L'IL," the apostrophe following the first "L" (the placing of it elsewhere by various rappers notwithstanding but, hey, they're rappers, and if they'd gotten the educations they should have, they'd be doing more constructive things with their time).

> {quote:title=Kid_Dabb wrote:}{quote} >The Sean Connery movies' intro had the iris with 007's silhouette wearing a hat. It's not an "iris"; title designer Maurice Binder's iconic image of James Bond is a bullet's-eye-view of his seemingly vulnerable figure as seen through a nemesis's gun barrel, with the spiral lines the barrel's rifling that imparts spin on the bullet obviously meant to kill 007. Remember that after Bond spins and fires, a red wave washes down over the image: obviously the would-be assassin's blood as he doesn't live to Die Another Day.

> {quote:title=G5 wrote:}{quote} > With all the wide screen televisions, I've noticed an effort to make old movies fit the new wide screen format by clipping the top and bottom of the picture. That really disturbs me in that it ruins the cinematography, and removes the tops of heads, and the legs of the actors. This ruins the movie for me. I'm trying to watch "The Parallax View" and it's like trying to watch the movie through Venetian Blinds, or a slot. > > Movies made to the current wide screen in the first place do not have this distortion, and all of the picture is there. This clipping of old movies seems to remove about a third of the picture. Not good. > > There seems to be people intent on ruining movies; first by coloring monochrome gray scale movies, and now by clipping them top and bottom to fit a format they were never designed to fit. I would hate to tell you what I really think. Steaming. Don't blame TCM, blame the distributor, who failed to do a transfer preserving the film's full, original 2.35: 1 aspect ratio. I do have bad news for you: modern hi-def TVs with their 14 x 9 dimensions (1.55: 1) still can't accomodate the 1.85: 1 aspect ratio most commonly employed to photograph most (but not all) feature films nowadays. A minor degree of letterboxing is still required. If a recent film is filling the frame of a new TV top to bottom, then the sides of the negative are being cut off. The biggest complaint should be directed toward the short-sighted nitwits who saddled us with this 14 x 9 aspect ratio and inferior 1080-line hi-def system. The could have given us wider screens and greater resolution, but they compromised, and now we're all paying the price.

> {quote:title=YellowBrickRoad wrote:}{quote} > Above all, it is a movie that allows us to dream alongside Dorothy, but also to always keep in mind that, well, there's just no place like home. Only as long as you're a kid like Dorothy; once you grow up, and have to pay the mortgage and tax on the farm, the cost of all that chicken feed and pig slop, the salaries of that goldbricking (hah!) trio of Zeke, Hunk and Hickory, and other assorted bills, there are a lot better places to be. Maybe Dorothy really did know something when she ran away.

> {quote:title=Singleton wrote:}{quote} > I think I see the direction here. My vote goes for *The Longest Day*, or *Ride the Pale Horse*.. But I like them just the same... I think you mean BEHOLD A PALE HORSE. It seems that the movie really didn't make much of an impression on you.

It's more than that (I think you meant "leisurely" pacing, not "luxuorious"). Those who complain that baseball's slow, that there are too many moments when "nothing is happening," don't bother to look closely enough to understand that baseball is a game of tension: even when there's no physical action, there is the psychological tension of pitcher staring down batter, fielders steeling themselves for every possible permutation as to where the ball may be hit, and how they must react, and the managers plotting their grand and minute strategies. Nobody ever complains about how much dead time there is in the typical NFL or college football game (a game that runs sixty minutes on the clock typically takes nearly three and a half hours to play), but there is. The difference is that when play stops in football, there really is nothing happening. As for basketball, all the courts are exactly the same size, all the baskets the same height (just as all football fields are identical; by contrast, evey baseball stadium is, of course, unique in one or more ways) and, most critically, the game is repetitive. If it's repetitive, it's predictable, and if it's predictable, it's boring. The best teams win 70+% of their games, year after year. If that's not predictability, then nothing is.

> {quote:title=markfp2 wrote:}{quote} > After Technicolor phased out the 3-strip process, it continued with a single strip process which continued in use until the 1970's The last film shot in it was *THE GODFATHER II* in 1974. So *POLLYANNA* was indeed shot in Technicolor although not the 3-strip process. Today, if it says Technicolor on a film, it just means it was processed or printed in a lab owned by that company and not that it's in a true Technicolor process. All of you misunderstand what the "Technicolor" and "three-strip" processes were. They are not synonymous. "Three-strip" referred to the original, patented Technicolor cameras that photographed onto three separate black-and-white records, from which four matrices was made, one for each color, plus a black and white matrix made from all three. The matrices were then used to print the colors, one at a time, onto clear film using the company's patented "IB" imbibition dye-transfer process that employed metallic dyes that do not fade. When Technicolor abandoned the three-strip photographic process in 1953, it was replaced by a single, monopack Eastman negative that could be loaded into any regular motion picture camera. That processed negative was then used to prepare color separations, exactly like those that had been produced inside the three-strip camera, which were then used to create matrices for printing in the same IB dye-transfer process employed in the three-strip days (though the company was always refining it). IB prints continued to be made in the U.S. until 1974, and in Englad until a few years after that. There was a (too) brief resurrection of the process in the mid-late 1990s.

It's not "bravo, TCM," but "Bravo, MGM," which now owns the Alexander Korda library, including THINGS TO COME, whose rights have lapsed into the public domain, so there was really little incentive for the studio to do any restoration on the title, or even do a new transfer to video. It should also be noted that they recently also did a fine new transfer on Korda's THE JUNGLE BOOK, which is also in the public domain. Now, if only someone could find the full 110-minute version...

> {quote:title=musicalnovelty wrote:}{quote} > Yes, "Santa Fe Trail" has been Public Domain for years, but TCM is usually very good about finding nice prints of P. D. movies, so I would have expected them to have a better print than this. The film's original elements are in the Warner's vaults but, because the film is in the public domain the studio has has no financial incentive to strike a new print or do a new transfer, wither for TCM's use or DVD, because fly-by-night video companies can always undersell them with their cheap, crummy copies. Still, MGM/Fox did take the trouble to restore Korda's THE JUNGLE BOOK, and Paramount did the same for THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS, two other PD titles, so I imagine that Warner's will get around to making a quality transfer of SANTA FE TRAIL one of these days.

> {quote:title=calvinnme wrote:}{quote} >...if everyone just recorded everything they wanted off of TCM, then Warner Bros. would probably stop putting out classic DVDs at all. Revenues would fall off and TCM could likely go off the air. You've actually got it backward. Early on, Warner's saw that TCM and its Home Video division would compliment each other: each would help sell the other's products and, in fact, the entire Warner Bros. brand, not the least of which is the studio's current theatrical releases. This is something that Fox has never understood; The Fox Movie Channel, with its limited, repetitious offerings, poor technical standards and crazy-quilt schedule has never been a force in pushing that studio's films, DVDs or brand.

> {quote:title=filmlover wrote:}{quote} > Cinny, the article is not on the website for WB. If you notice, I have posted several links in my post: one for the magazine, one for the first part of the WB archive site, and one for the major list. > > For the article, click on the link where I indicate. That will then download the magazine. You will see a small part of the article on the magazine's page. Click on it and it will enlarge. Then after you have finished reading that first part, click on where it says "See WARNER, Page 23" and it will take you there (it is on the bottom half of page 23). > > As for the WB site, give them a few days; they are probably still working on it getting it ready. As I mentioned in my post, and the article says the same, it starts March 23rd...so that is not until Tuesday. The site doesn't seem to work well with Internet Explorer, but is fine with Firefox. The problem is that Warner's hasn't made anything available that merits the expense of $20; I'd rather record the few moderately interesting titles off TCM and settle for the slightly lower quality of DVD-R.

I went to the website; besides it's being formatter improperly, so that the left side of the frame is permanently, and irretrievably, off the screen, I saw no way to, or mention of, gaining access to the feature written about below. Warner's needs to get some IT guy in there to fix the bloody thing.

While I think that the film, while rather pedestrian as drama, beautiful to look at, with the sort of sumptuous, hand-crafted quality that simply doesn't exist in film any more, I do question the jingoistic, insupportable paean to imperialism Wayne & Co. wrought. Sure it ought to be restored; a lot of talented folks worked on it, and it does serve as an exemplar of the kind of huge roadshow attractions that once dotted the cinematic landscape, but it should also be viewed as a polemic n favor of exactly the sort of adventurism that has embarassed and damged this country many times.

> {quote:title=lzcutter wrote:}{quote} > One of the most important ways people know of the extraordinary gift of freedom given to Texas and our nation by those who defended The Alamo is by virtue of this film. Although an imperfect representation historically, John Wayne's work brilliantly portrays that larger than life tale, capturing the hearts and creating lasting memories for all who experience this great film. We are attempting to pull this important film back from the very brink of extinction and preserve it for generations to come. > > We are hopeful that once we are officially in step with the appropriate charitable organization and are able to accept contributions, that support can be found to save Mr. Wayne's epic. Perhaps you might apply for a grant from the Government of Mexico.

The 1970s is when film music really started to get awful. Yeah, it's just you.