CineSage_jr

> {quote:title=voranis wrote:}{quote} > My question is, is the preposition "with" in the title To Sir, With Love supposed to be capitalized? My instinct is to capitalize it, perhaps because it is coming after a comma. I often struggle with this when titling DVDs of movies I have recorded. Similarly, would a preposition after a colon be capitalized? I can't think of a real example right now, so I'll make up one: Hurricane: In the Eye of the Storm. Again, my instinct is to capitalize "in" even though it is a preposition, since it is following a colon. The preposition "To" doesn't come after a comma (whatever gave you that idea?). Prepositions aren't articles (a, an, the), which, like prepositions, are dropped to lower-case except when they're the first word in a title. A preposition beginning a title is a word, and cannot be dropped, whereas an article beginning a title goes to the end of the title (following a comma) when strict rules of alphabetization are observed.

> {quote:title=georgiegirl wrote:}{quote} > I don't know if you've ever seen The Postman before, but this movie is one of the best of the best! Hardly. It was made by the wrong people at the wrong studio, a studio that was always known for softening material and pull its dramatic punches. Comparing it to MILDRED PIERCE, let along DOUBLE INDEMNITY, is like the proverbial night and day. The unerring, remorseless and cynical sensibility one finds in the Billy Wilder-Raymond Chandler is completely missing in MGM's tepid, and utterly uncharacteristic, exercise. If there's one thing that keeps POSTMAN from being the waste it is, it's John Garfield's performance.

Don't try to find any logic in the climax of ICE STATION ZEBRA, because there is none. First things first: while the producers used models of Soviet MiG fighters en route to the weather station, they decided they'd rather have shots of actual fighter aircraft for other shots. In those Cold War days, footage of Soviet military hardware was hard to come by, and MGM couldn't procure any that met their needs, which meant good 35mm anamorphic footage that would cut in seamlessly with the film's 65mm Super Panavision negative, so they decided to shoot film of McDonnell Phantoms, which were then a mainstay of the U.S. Air Force, Marines and Navy. MGM hoped that no one would notice but, obviously, some of us did. Secondly, there's no reason in the world for Col. Ostrovsky to have kept his remote-destruct transmitter armed after the balloon carrying the capsule was sent aloft. since by this point he holds all the cards and certainly doesn't want the capsule to be blown up just before it's snagged by his own aircraft and taken back to Moscow. I don't know if any of this is in Alistair MacLean's novel, but it seems that the producers wanted an excuse to stage a firefight between the Americans and Russians (note that, with all the high-velocity bullets flying back and forth, not one shot seems to strike the big, upthrust ice blocks each side is using for cover. Maybe they were all using the blank ammunition carried by the renegade terrorist-soldiers in DIE HARD II).

Because the film makes quite clear that one of the girls has developed romantic feelings for Joyce during their trek to the bridge.

You mean Chris Carter?

> {quote:title=hamradio wrote:}{quote} > Today I just received the March 2009 Fingerhut catalog and on page 108 they are selling four, yes I mean 4 old fashion cathode ray standard def / SDTV televisions. I remember Fingerhut: they did for fingers what Pizza Hut did for pizza.

> {quote:title=lulu2u wrote:}{quote} > Even if you personally did not like the movie, you have to give the Brits credit for making it. After all, the movie is about a defeat not a victory. Attenborough and "the Brits" weren't being brave, just British. If you really understood the English character, you'd know that if the English love anyone or anything, it's their losers, the more noble, the better (I direct your attention to the film SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC). A debacle like Operation Market Garden was, therefore, irresistible subject matter for Attenborough & Co. Their incentive (besides the obvious financial profit, especially for producer Joseph E. Levine, who financed the film largely via selling international rights to the film before he even had a completed script or commitments from most of the stars who eventually signed on to appear in the film) for making the movie, and the circumstances of the Arnhem assault, are irrelevant, however; it's still a flabby, star-infested, badly directed, photographed, scored and intolerably self-important movie.

From his vantage point far up in the hills, Warden (Hawkins) doesn't know that "Shears" and Joyce are dead; he can't know. For his purposes, he can only assume they are, at worst, wounded, and therefore, must kill them to prevent their capture and slow torture at the hands of the Japanese.

Of course. Kazan and producer Sam Spiegel certainly had final say over what the score would be like (and I imagine that writer Budd Schulberg was also consulted), and I'm sure that they demanded certain changes be made as the film took shape, as is the case with all film-scoring. Could they all have been wrong about the type of music the film needed? Yes, and I think they were. Bernstein's music is ideal for something as stylized as WEST SIDE STORY, but the music's very size and coloration was simply unsuited to the film's notably relentless monochromatic bleakness.

Richard Attenborough -- wonderful actor, bad director. A BRIDGE TOO FAR -- very bad movie.

> {quote:title=Brian9 wrote:}{quote} > My opinion is that it is one of the greatest in all cinematic history. Its > "suite" is regularly performed by orchestras around the world. How many other > film scores are honored in this manner? > > It was written by an artist who in some circles is recognized as one of the > pre-eminent composers of the Twentieth Century: Leonard Bernstein. Leonard Bernstein's score is great music, and deserves to be performed in concert; unfortunately, it's also a bad film score due to the inappriateness of its over-the-top bombasticism to the film's notably spare images and lean storytelling. When one element in a film is allowed to spin out of control, as Bernstein's score does, it throws the whole mechanism out of balance. It tends to say to the audience, "This isn't real life; it's a movie," which can be the kiss of death for a film, especially something like ON THE WATERFRONT.

There's been talk for several years now about the government forcing cable companies to offer an "a la carte" option, so that subscribers may buy only the channels they want, and not packages that are larded with channels they seldom, or never, watch. As you may imagine, the cable companies have been resisting, claiming that this will drive up the cost of cable service. It is true that in an "a la carte" pricing system individual channels may cost more than when bundled into packages, but for those subscribers who want only a small number of essential channels, they will likely end up paying far less. Stay tuned.

ICE STATION ZEBRA was filmed in 1967; Stallone's first professional job on a film was in 1970. Moreover, Sallone worked exclusively in New York-area film shoots his first several years in the business, whereas ZEBRA was filmed at MGM in Culver City, California. I'm afraid that the guy you zeroed in on merely looks like Stallone (to your eyes, anyway).

As he pushed farther into his career, Brando infused more and more of his characters with a pointless and inappropriate quirkiness until, during the last years, all that had been the Brando of STREETCAR and VIVA ZAPATA! had evaporated, leaving nothing but the quirky residue behind, which was, ultimately, a great shame. Better actor or not, Finch was better suited to the part. > {quote:title=redriver wrote:}{quote} > I've always felt Franchot Tone should be keelhauled in any movie. Even a modern day urban story. He's just annoying. I couldn't agree more. As he went along, Tone was like some perpetually adenoidal college student, who grew old, but never grew up.

> {quote:title=RichardKimble wrote:}{quote} > For all that, this version is quite watchable, if only for the extraordinarily lavish production, the gorgeous photography of Robert Surtees, and the music of Branislau Kaper. Add to that two brilliant actors in the central roles. As written in the script by Charles Lederer. Bligh is almost as one-dimensioanl here as in the '35 version. Yet somehow Trevor Howard gives him a depth that isn't in the screenplay. > > And then there's Brando. His performance as Fletcher Christian has been much criticized. His English accent comes and goes, and even when it's there it sounds rather odd. But once you get beyond that, there is a fascinating, mult-layered performance being given. Brando suggests a man who is quite conscious of his class, yet uncertain how to relate to his social "inferiors" -- a group that includes Captain Bligh. For myself, I'd have cast Peter Finch as Christian, opposite Howard. He'd have been splendid. And for the record, the composer was Bronislau Kaper, not "Branislau" (real name, Bronislaw, pronounced BRON-ees-wahv).

> {quote:title=BelleLeGrand1 wrote:}{quote} > Isn't it odd, though, that Errol Flynn should be in this photo of MGM stars? I guess he was on loan from Warner Bros. to make That Forsyte Woman with Greer Garson. He stood out like a sore thumb to me. > > Are there any other non-MGM stars in the photo, or just him? It wasn't a loan-out per se; by that point in his career, Flynn had negotiated a provision in his Warner Bros. contract that he could make one film a year -- his choice -- at another studio. For 1949 it was THAT FORSYTE WOMAN at MGM (a very good and little-known performance by Flynn); for 1950 it was KIM, also at MGM. Flynn was a pretty cultured fella, and had great respect for literature and the relative value of films' literary underpinnings, which is what led him to choose KIM, by the estimable author Rudyard Kipling, over another literary adaptation being developed by MGM, that Flynn judged to be little more than a 19th century pulp potboiler: KING SOLOMON'S MINES. KING SOLOMON'S MINES became an enormous hit and made Stewart Granger a major star and sex symbol in the U.S., whereas KIM came and went, attracting little notice. From this point on, his fine performance in TOO MUCH, TOO SOON (never shown on TBS) notwithstanding, Flynn's career took a downward trajectory from which it never really recovered.

I mentioned this to my friend, Glenn Erickson, the "DVD Savant," who's just reviewd the film over on DVD Talk, and he replied that Warners is eliminating all chapter menus from all regular-priced discs, with the exception of Special Editions, all for the sake of saving money. It is indeed despicable (as the immortal Daffy Duck likes to say. Have you noticed that the last can of tuna fish you bought was a slender five ounces? Until a few months ago the stuff came in six-ounce cans, and before that 6 1/2 oz. The price remains the same, only you're given less and less...). At least I can take a fifteen-minute drive up the Hollywood Freeway to Warner Bros. and buy DVDs in the company store on the studio lot for 52% off list price, but most people don't have that option.

Yes, but you'll want a 1080i upconverting all-region player that increases the resolution of standard DVDs to near-high-definition quality (with an HDMI output). Those players can be a bit more expensive, but they're really worth it.

> {quote:title=hamradio wrote:}{quote} > CelluloidKid wrote: > << This version of the film is something of a re-edit of the original 1977 release with some elements of the 1980 special edition, but omits the mothership interior scenes as Spielberg felt that it should have remained a mystery >> > > Ha ha, that is probually the stupidest thing that ANY director has ever done! He can't undo the "mystery resolve" part of "Close Encounters, Special Edition" after millions of people have already seen inside the mother ship. LOL, what is he thinking. > > Thats like NASA saying well why don't we pretend that we don't know what the surface of the moon look like and redo the Apollo mission. > > This means that the *smartest* director is George Pal of his "War of the Worlds". If you notice that he never showed inside the Martian hovercraft nor has there ever been any attempt to. This mystery of whats inside is still a mystery and has actually extended the life of this great classic. You're absolutely right. Once, upon meeting Spielberg, I remarked that the first half of JAWS is much more frightening than the latter half, because you never really see the shark: it seems as though it's everywhere and everywhere at once. It seems otherwordly and omnipotent and seemingly able to strike everywhere simulataneously. During the latter half of the movie, the shark is pinned down as to time and place, and just isn't as effective. Spielberg agreed with me, and the same holds true of the Mother Ship in CE3K. The wonders of its interior, as well as the nature of the aliens, themselves, are best left to the imagination, lest they fail to live up to the audience's expectations. At most, the audience should experience it vicariously through close-ups of Roy Neary's reactions upon viewing them, and nothing more.

And I'd be willing to bet an old Nash Rambler on my interpretation.

This really annoys me every time I see the title of the last thread, and now you've done it again. They're not "rambles" (verb), they're ramblings (noun). Please adjust the thread title accordingly.

The little boy says, "I'm leaving. I thought I was going to be working in a Melina Mercouri movie."

> {quote:title=vnp wrote:}{quote} > I was watching The Front Page this afternoon and I was apalled at the blatant overt disrespect to African American viewers. A telephone conversation ensued whereby a reporter phoning in a story referred to an African American woman as "Colored" and her newborn child as a "pickinini". It would seem like in 2009, these obnoxious commentaries would be buried with the people that made them. pparently Ted Turner still finds them to be entertaining. I don't. Jews don't guard against the possibility of there being another Holocaust by sweeping memories of the last one under the rug, because they know quite well that you can't know where you're going unless you know where you've been. The very offensiveness of racial stereotyping from the past serves as a necessary object lesson of what not to do and be. As for Ted Turner, irrespective of his no longer being able to call shots at Time Warner, few people have done more, through his hiring practices while running Turner Broadcasting, and legendary philanthropy, to further relations between races and nations. I think you owe him an apology.

SUNSET BOULEVARD is one of Hollywood's great takes on the timeless tale of Faust. As long as people continue to sell their souls to figurative devils for a little illusory profit, the the story will never grow old, that's for certain.

It's every bit as dreadful a movie as Newman claimed, but fascinating like most train-wrecks. Speaking of train-wrecks, Warner Home Video neglected to include a list of scenes in the disc's menu. There are chapter stops, all right, but no way to know what they are without toggling through them, one by one, on the film itself. Since the disc isn't part of some new Warner's budget line, and sells for the same price as any other of the studio's "catalog" titles, this is either an inexcusable oversight on WHV's part, or an egregious act of parsimony for the sake of saving Warner's the cost of mastering a proper menu.