CineSage_jr

> {quote:title=sarah1493 wrote:}{quote} > > > I've been told Rosie O'Donnell, which I don't see at all. Everybody says I look like my mom, though. No, Sarah, you resemble Penelope Ann Miller somewhat, though the hairstyle is wrong to complete the effect.

> {quote:title=CelluloidKid wrote:}{quote} > Rigby Reardon tells Lana Turner he left her sitting at a counter at Schwab's. Lana Turner is rumored to have been discovered sitting in a Schwab's drugstore. This is an oft-quoted bit of Tinseltown apocrypha, and only gained currency because it was the only drug store in Los Angeles that people anywhere else had ever heard of (remember that in Billy Wilder's SUNSET BOULEVARD a scene takes place inside Schwabs). The fifteen-year-old Judy Turner was actually "discovered" in a drug store across the street from Hollywood High School, located at Sunset Boulevard and Highland Avenue, where she was a student. There was no reason for her to be in Schwabs, as it was at Sunset and Crescent Heights Boulevard, over two miles west of the school.

> {quote:title=CelluloidKid wrote:}{quote} > Also the last film of legendary composer Mikl?s R?zsa. This was ironic since he was also asked to rescore music for original images that he had worked on in the 1940s and 50's. R?zsa asked writer-director Carl Reiner whether Reiner wanted a "comedy" score, but was told that that was exactly the opposite of what was needed. Reiner said that he wanted it scored as a drama, exactly the same sort of Film Noir music -- at turns lush, or cold and unrelenting -- of which R?zsa was undisputed master in the 1940s. R?zsa was faced with an unusual problem, though: in acquiring rights to use and integrate clips from all the various classic 1940s films (produced by all of Hollywood's major studios), Universal got rights to use the image and the dialogue/sound effects, but not the music on those clips' composite soundtracks. If DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID were to use the music -- written by a wide variety of composers -- they would have to pay those composers and the musicians who originally played on the soundtracks (or their estates, since many of them were dead -- and, therefore, wearing plaid -- by 1981) re-use royalties which would have amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars, which would have broken DEAD MEN's budget. So R?zsa had to write music for those dialogue passages that would cover up the work of Max Steiner and Roy Webb and Adolph Deutsch, while staying consistent with his own style and what he was to write for the new footage with Steve Martin, Rachel Ward, etc. After nearly fifty years scoring films, this was an entirely new wrinkle for R?zsa, but one he pulled off seamlessly for his last work work for the screen. It should be noted that R?zsa began to experience sever back prblems prior to the recording sessions, so noted composer Lee Holdridge stepped in to conduct them. R?zsa was grateful and highly approving of Holdridge's work with baton during these sessions. If you'd be interested in hearing, and owning R?zsa's music to the film, it is available on CD: http://www.amazon.com/Miklos-Rozsa-Film-Music-Plaid/dp/B0000261GH/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1235857149&sr=1-1

When I was younger (we're talking about 25 years younger, though I don't look all that much different now), I got everything from "Christopher Reeve," to "Desi Arnaz, jr.," to "John Travolta." Since this trio don't really bear much resemblance to one another, it suggests that I didn't, or don't, look much like any of them. But it was flattering nevertheless.

I had the opportunity to meet Guy Gabaldon at a screening of a documentary a friend made about his World War II exploits. Sadly, Gabaldon died shortly afterward.

Please forgive me, but one would need to be legally blind not the notice the flicker. It was utterly maddening.

> {quote:title=Film_Fatale wrote:}{quote} > I watched the Criterion DVD not too long ago, myself. I didn't have any trouble with the DVD but some folks feel there's something wrong with the audio that for whatever reason couldn't be corrected for the video transfer. > > Let's hope the version of the movie that TCM got doesn't have any such problem. The biggest problem isn't with the audio, but with the film's picture elements. This is obviously the same print and transfer used for the Criterion DVD. When the DVD was released, a lot was made of the fact that they used director William Dieterle's personal print, which was longer than all the 35mm copies of the film released under the title ALL THAT MONEY CAN BUY. The unfortunate thing is that these elements contain a constant, and intolerable flicker that makes the film look as though it were being projected using firelight as a light source. This seems to be something that was imparted in the laboratory when this particular print was made all those decades ago. Frankly, I'd prefer an otherwise inferior 35mm source (with the missing sections spliced in), or even a transfer from 16mm if it would result in the elimination of that flicker. I can only hope that a better copy of the film surfaces eventually.

Just when you think that the Oscar ceremony can't get any worse...the people who produce it find a way. Not only were those five-actor "testimonials" for each of the acting categories inteminable and cloying, but boy, did they waste time (and why no "testimonials" for the other twenty oscar categories? Just what the show needed to make everybody who wasn't an actor feel important). But my real ire was at the "In Memoriam" segment, usually the highlight (for me) of any Oscar ceremony. Whoever decided that the camera was merely going to "photograph" a big flat-screen TV, darting and swooping all over the place (it can't have been just the show's director; this kind of thing had to be cleared with the program's producer, and possibly the members of the Academy's Board of Governors who are responsible for overseeing the telecast) ought to be shot. I was watching on a 55-inch 1020p set, in 720-p hi-def, and much of the time I couldn't tell who was being saluted, either by recognizing the face, or reading the mostly illegible legend giving the person's name. Next year, just fill the damn screen with the honorees' names and let it run. PS: Where was Patrick McGoohan? Or character actor Don S. Davis? Somebody was really asleep at the switch.

Can an Oscar nod for Sammy Petrillo be far behind?

> {quote:title=konway87 wrote:}{quote} > I think Brackett/Wilder was much more successful. Their scripts had more of a distinct touch than Wilder's future films. Its true Some Like it Hot and The Apartment are great. But I felt that Wilder wasn't able to make a film as great as Sunset Blvd. That was the last film where Wilder and Brackett worked together. Brackett & Wilder were undoubtedly one of the greatest writing teams in film history, but the problem wasn't Wilder's other writing partners after he split with Brackett (it was Wilder's decision, and left Brackett a bit shell-shocked). Wilder went through several collaborators during the 1950s, including Walter Newman, Lesser Samuels, Wendell Mayes and Harry Kurnitz, before finding I.A.L. (Iz) Diamond toward the end of the decade and settling in with him until Diamond's death in 1986. The real problem was SOME LIKE IT HOT, probably the most disastrous event in Wilder's career. Not disastrous in a commercial sense, of course; it was just the opposite: the film was an immense hit, is perennially popular, and formed what's probably the high point in Marilyn Monroe's career. The specific problem is that, from then on, Wilder was perceived as a comedy director, which was both inaccurate and unfair. Now, he had made comedies in the past (THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR, THE SEVEN-YEAR ITCH), and his dramas were always wickedly funny, but the wit in those dramas was always there to serve, and sharpen, the drama, to show the ironic unerbellies of the characters who populated his films, and the predicaments -- most of their own making -- that they found themselves in. After SOME LIKE IT HOT, there was enormous pressure on Wilder to do more comedies, and just comedies, and he was more than willing to accomodate the studio and the Mirisch brothers, whose company produced his films, because there was also obviously enormous money to be made by doing so. It's somewhat revealing (if ironically) that the biggest commercial success of his career was IRMA LA DOUCE, a film embraced by the public not for any dubious merits it might've had, but because the collapsing Motion Picture Production Code finally allowed Wilder to pander to the that public's ever-more voracious appetite for salaciousness and vulgarity of the sort that would have left Lubitsch shaking his head. Unfortunately, Wilder's comedies were always somewhat beneath his talent. Wilder's idol had been the great Ernst Lubitsch, and he'd always tried to emulate the Master's elusive "Lubitsch touch," but, by his own admisson, had never quite mastered it, perhaps because Wilder's own instincts were to craft comedies that were lower, cruder and more vulgar than anything Lubitsch would, or could, have done. After SOME LIKE IT HOT, Wilder and Iz Diamond only returned to the precincts of drama twice; one was 1978's FEDORA, a dreadful film, disastrous on all levels, but the other was THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1970), arguably Wilder's masterpiece, even though it was cut by the studio from over three hours to about two, and inarguably the most personal and autobiographical film Wilder ever made. The film is every bit as great as it would have been had Wilder collaborated with Charles Brackett, and not Iz Diamond (and, had Wilder been successful at securing the services of Peter O'Toole -- a major star -- to play Holmes, instead of the unknown Robert Stephens, the Wilder might have been able to resist the studio's demand that the film be cut, and it might now been more widely seen as the career-capping work of genius that it is.

> {quote:title=Jenetico wrote:}{quote} > Does anyone remember the name of the man who narrated the Travel Logs that were part of the "shorts' shown in movie theaters in the 40's and 50's ??? The word is "travelogue," not "travel log."

> {quote:title=WhyaDuck wrote:}{quote} > The one thing that is sad about Glory is the across the field charge on the fortress. The PBS Civil War series is a good series. It shows that this type of attack never worked. The weapons by the time of the civil war were too advanced for this galent yet stupid charge. Gettysburg is a good example. You aren't going to cross that field going into a fortress of gunfire. All the soldiers died in these stupid open field attacks on fortresses. It was all a waste of lives. ......Now surrounding a city and cutting off food and supplys did work. ....By world war I they had learned how to dig trenches, of course they still had the open field charges into gunfire. ....It took awhile before generals learned that Gettysburg type charges are insanity. .....Now with D-Day. there was no choice and that was a blood bath also. Leisurely advances across open ground in the teeth of enemy fire was a tactic left over from ancient times, when infantry were facing arrows and cavalry charges, and it was just as stupid and pointlessly costly as you say. It wasn't until World War II that the concept of a fully mobile attack took hold. During the American Civil War, only Union General William T. Sherman fully understood that destroying what we now call infrastructure -- homes, factories, railways, and the like -- was the key to winning a war, because it destroyed the enemy's capacity to wage war far more effectively than merely slaughtering the opposition's troops. As a result, Sherman lost fewer men and exacted a greater toll on the Confederacy than his more conventional colleagues, who were, indeed, more concerned with projecting an image of gallantry than they were in winning the war.

> {quote:title=MGMMayer wrote:}{quote} > What's REALLY unique about this film is that the print that we'll be showing was Errol Flynn's personal 16mm print from his private collection! Then it's nitrate (since the film was never re-released during the safety-film era). Are you folks intent on burning down the hotel?

I've never noticed a posthumous nominee ever breaking a sweat over any of this.

I'm afraid that PENNY SERENADE is one of the most schizophrenic movies I can think of. It really never quite decides what it wants to be: romance? Comedy? Tragedy? In trying to be all three, it never really settles into being any one of them, or being as good as it can be on any one of these three levels. As a result, I've always found the film deeply unsatisfying, and more than a little bit cloying. Still, Cary Grant was nominated for an Oscar for his performance, and director George Stevens was yet to reach the point where he felt he was bigger than the films he made (it was said of Stevens that he was a minor director with major virtues before he made A PLACE IN THE SUN, and a major director with minor virtues thereafter. I tend to agree with that statement).

World War II films recut to make their endings more favorable to Teutonic sensibilities?

It's also interesting to note that Rainer, during her time in the company of the Vienna State Theatre, was merely the understudy to Rose Stradner, who came to America to marry writer-producer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and was also signed by MGM.

> {quote:title=Film_Fatale wrote:}{quote} > "I helped Brecht come over to Hollywood... I gave him an affidavit. I arranged for a producer to pay him while he wrote this play for me, but when I got back from the war, Brecht sent me all he had written... two double-spaced pages! He wanted me to read them for him. He said, 'Miss Elizabeth Berger would be on her knees in front of me for this role'. I said, 'Mr Brecht, goodbye. Have your play... I don't want to be in it.'" That's Elisabeth Bergner.

> {quote:title=scsu1975 wrote:}{quote} > Chip, just look below. You probably missed my post about a book you might find worth reading. > > As for Alfred Newman, I've always been a huge fan. He wrote the 20th Century Fox fanfare, and he can be seen conducting the orchestra before the start of How To Marry a Millionaire. The orchestra performs his piece "Street Scene," which was used many times in Fox films. Some of Newman's more famous scores include The Mark of Zorro, Song of Bernadette, Wuthering Heights, How The West Was Won, and the list goes on and on. I think he still holds the record for winning the most oscars, although I believe some were for musical direction rather than scoring. He was also nominated over 50 times. His brothers Emil and Lionel were also musical directors, and his nephew Randy Newman is still a well-known songwriter and film composer ( The Natural, Ragtime ).> > > Other composers who arrived around that time period, or soon after, included Dimitri Tiomkin, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Mikl?s R?zsa. It's thought now that the score to THE MARK OF ZORRO was actually ghost-written by Hugo Friedhofer, with some material contributed by Newman, Newman won nine Oscars; seven of them were for adapting scores from Broadway musicals that were made into films; only THE SONG OF BERNADETTE and LOVE IS A MANY-SPLENDORED THING brought him Oscars for original dramatic composition. You mention his nephew Randy but ignore his composer-sons David (one Oscar nomination), and Thomas (8 nominations). Then there's daughter Maria, a highly accomplished concert cellist. Yes, a very talented family.

Quite cute, but "Tippi's canoe, and Taylor's, too" has a better ring to it, and is more accurate.

This actually sounds like the 1978 CBS mini-series, The Word, based on the Irving Wallace novel, starring David Janssen and James Whitmore, about the "discovery" of a supposedly lost Gospel written by Jesus's brother, James.

That's three-time Oscar winner Walter Brennan.

Living in Los Angeles does have its compensations. Among those I've met over the years, at industry and social functions or just on the street or in the supermarket, are (in no particular order): Kirk Douglas Sidney Poitier Burt Lancaster Margaret O'Brien Ryan ONeal James Whitmore Charmian Carr Robert Wise Dan Petrie, Sr. John Frankenheimer Franklin Schaffner Ron Perlman Jimmy ("Scotty") Doohan Jeff Goldblum David Lean Charlton Heston Jimmy Stewart Patrick McGoohan Peter Falk Scott Bakula June Havoc Keir Dullea Gary Lockwood Mark Hamill Robert Carradine Gene Evans Quentin Tarrantino Penelope Ann Miller Elizabeth Perkins Robert Loggia Vilmos Zsigmond Sven Nykvist Robert Stack William Schallert Richard Anderson Dustin Hoffman Jack Cardiff Sam Goldwyn, jr Olivia Hussey Lorne Greene Allison Janney Brent Spiner Alex Rocco And, I suppose, a lot more I can't recall at the moment. In any event, most of these encounters were pleasant, a few weren't, and none of them were life-altering.

That, taken out of context, means exactly nothing.

> {quote:title=markfp2 wrote:}{quote} > This has always been a hard concept for people to understand. It would be the same thing if, say, HBO or CINEMAX (also owned by Time-Warner) wanted to run a film that was from the Turner library, they'd have to lease it from Warner Bros. too. Further, if TCM wants certain films and another channel also wants them, Warners can't give TCM a "sweetheart deal" just because they are both part of the same company. TCM would have to bid against the other channel. I can't explain the legalities of why, just that it has to be done that way. The other concept that doesn't seem to be mentioned here is that the contracts governing the rental of the studio's film library to cable channels are seldom, if ever, exclusive. When dealing with old catalog titles like these, cable channels aren't apt to demand exclusivity (and the higher fees such a request would command). As a consequence, a film that turns up on TCM may very well also be running on Encore or Cinemax. Conversely, just because a film is showing on some other channel doesn't mean it won't also play on TCM.