CineSage_jr

Bob Dorian was an idiot, plain and simple. The man never met a name he couldn't mispronounce, regardless of how illustrious the name's owner might be. As for his being "informative," he was fed the same studio-publicist fantasies clipped from old film pressbooks that are also the downfall of Osborne and Mankiewicz, who obviously don't vet the copy they're given to speak. No, unless TCM decides to give its hosting duties to someone who's truly knowledgeable, such as a Peter Bogdonovich, viewers will continue to be ill-served by these pointless introductions and closing comments.

Welles, by then a veteran director, had with director of photography Gregg Toland pioneered the use of deep focus on Welles' first film, 1941's "Citizen Kane." That meant more realism and fluidity for the camera, which could now present a foreground, middle ground and background. The apotheosis of this is reached in tracking shots that hold a film's realism for long periods. Welles never intended to open TOUCH OF EVIL with that shot; by the time it came 'round to film the opening scenes, Welles was already so far behind schedule that the studio was threatening to replace him as director, or shut the film down. Rather than allow that to happen, Welles conceived of a way to meld the entire opening sequence of shots into one continuous tracking shot; as complex as that shot is, and even taking into account the danger of blown takes that would necessitate going back and shooting the whole thing from the beginning, use of the tracking shot allowed Welles to eliminate a score of camera set-ups and the lighting rigging each would've required, the equivalent of tearing several pages from the script and tossing them into the trash can. By the end of that long, cold night in Venice, CA, Welles was back on schedule. Still, any shot that has viewers saying to themselves or others, "what a great shot," is a bad shot, as it does, indeed, take the viewer out of the movie and paints a picture of a director more intent on proving what a great artiste and genius he is, than he is in telling his story.

My wife says that I can watch "Born Yesterday" as many times as I want, just as long as I don't start talking like Broderick Crawford. Seems to me that Judy Holliday impressions are the ones specifically calculated to drive listeners to distraction.

How's this, bewitched, ol' pal: with the possible exception of Chevy Chase, Red Skelton was probably the un-funniest person who ever lived.

It was what it was... I accept that. Everything was what it was...and I defy you to prove otherwise.

He's liable to wake up to find himself on airplane flying over the Himalayas, with the jawbone of the only megatherium ever found in Asia in his lap.

Why not just take a look at it yourself? http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/index/?cid=189530

Frankie Laine.

Only two are truly indispensible: TCM and MSNBC.

It Happened One Night, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington American Madness Mr. Deeds goes to Town and You Can't take it with you. All of these films are amazing and these films are only available in this box set. Only AMERICAN MADNESS is available only as part of the set; the rest have been available for years as single discs.

Lugosi's most pretigious film role is as a commissar in NINOTCHKA, with Garbo. Karloff did more mainstream films than any of the other actors you mentioned, vast numbers during the silent era, and sound films including THE LOST PATROL, with Victor McLaglen, FIVE-STAR FINAL, with Edward G. Robinson, THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY, with Danny Kaye, and DeMille's UNCONQUERED, with Gary Cooper.

The film is also known as THE EASY WAY.

It sounds like one of the sub-plots in No?l Coward's IN WHICH WE SERVE (and, yes, there are submarines in the movie).

Does the Cinerama Dome ever play movies in true Cinerama??? I wish I had a Cinerama theater near me... Until the Dome was refurbished a few years ago (to very little effect), they never did, including the heyday of the three-panel process that began in 1952, and concluded with HOW THE WEST WAS WON in 1963. Since then a couple of films have taken advantage of that all-out-of-proportion screen, but it's a question of too little, too late.

Considering that Henie was under contract to 20th Century-Fox and, at the peak of her career, the highest-paid woman in America, I seriously doubt that Sam Goldwyn would've spent the money it would have cost for her to double Loretta Young in an uncredited long-shot.

I posted Frank Capra, jr's, obituaries on the 22nd: http://forums.tcm.com/jive/tcm/thread.jspa?threadID=119871&tstart=30

The Cinerama Dome, which is just down the street from my home, as got to be the worst film venue I have ever had the misfortune to visit. Because of the radical curvature of the screen (quite useless for showing anything other than true three-panel Cinerama), there are only a handful of seats in the house (in the front of the balcony) where the picture is not appallingly distorted at one, or both ends of the frame. Add to it that the dome's design and construction lend atrocious acoustics to even the best and most polished soundtrack, and it's clear that one has to be a well-moneyed masochist to inflict Dome on him'herself.

Color or black-and-white, Allied soldier, or German? It sounds as though it could be A TIME TO LOVE AND A TIME TO DIE.

Yes we are LONG OVERDUE for a new President! Damn right; we haven't had one since January 20, 2001.

20th Century-Fox did insure Grable's legs for $1M, but it was for the publicity value of emphasizing her most famous asset, rather than any money the studio would've recouped in the unlikely event that their star was run over by a train, or met some other bisecting calamity.

The underrated SAHARA's one of my favorite war movies, and second-favorite Bogart film. The picture features a great score by Mikl?s R?zsa who, that same year, 1943, wrote a better score for Billy Wilder & Charles Brackett''s FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO, a similarly-themed film that's even better than Zolt?n Korda's SAHARA. PS: Unusual as it may be, the transfer of SAHARA that TCM shows actually looks better than the pre-recorded DVD issued by Columbia (they're obviously different transfers, and I've compared them side-by-side). You can save yourself $20 by recording the film the next time TCM airs it.

Oddly enough, one film that now suffers for that clich? is LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. During the extreme high-angle long shot that David Lean employs of Lawrence and Doud on their camels emerging from the Nefud Desert after the rescue of Gassim from "God's anvil," the sight of them being met by Faraj on camelback strikes audiences as funny precisely because it evokes those god-awful slow-motion love-on-the-beach moments.

This is the real face that launched a thousand ships.

I have no problem with dissent in and of itself. If anything I applaud it. Hell, this post is dissentious and dissonant. Dissent is one thing, but the lockstep of Hollywood is something entirely different. The very nature of the present cultural conflict simply begs for even one decent treatment of the nature of the enemy. Yes, enemy. The material is so rich and inviting, but we get next to nothing from the creative types. It would make mega-bucks at the box office but they won?t touch it. Instead we get a parade of lackluster films (mostly flops, to the credit of the American moviegoer) that attempt to paint America?s warts as America herself. As I allude: the silence is deafening and speaks in a language that nobody can misunderstand. The "enemy," in so far as there is one, isn't Arabs, or Iranians or Muslims, but the religious extremists among them -- a tiny minority. In that, they are no more an enemy than the home-grown religious extremists in American and European society, and by "extremists," I'm not referring to Muslims.

Don't forget the two horror films made by Warner Brothers in the early thirties: DR. X and MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM. They've both been restored to their original beauty and look great on DVD. The muted hues of greens, blues and reds really enhance the ambiance of eeriness and fear. Look especially at the first scene in WAX MUSEUM and see how beautiful the colors were in the wax museum and all those costumed figures and then the fire destroys them all. There are no blues in Two-strip Technicolor (which is why it's called "Two-strip": everything is a shade of red or green. The two strip-cameras contained only two black-and-white records, red and green, from which the dye-transfer matrices were made). An improperly adjusted television or video transfer can make some of the greens appear blue, but it's an illusion. An original dye-transfer print of a two-strip film, or a correctly-timed chemical print from a good negative source is conspicuously absent blues, which is what the development of Three-strip Technicolor addressed. If you watch a Two-strip showing on television, you must make sure that your set's "hue" or "tint" is set so there are no blues; it's the only way you'll get an accurate representation of what the film is supposed to look like. It's also a misconception that the Three-strip photography, with its three black-and-white negatives was directly analogous to the number of layers used in the patented Technicolor dye-transfer printing process. There was a fourth layer used in the printing -- black -- that was essential in giving the images in Techniclor prints their unmatched sense of texture and contrast. It's something that modern chemical prints simply cannot match.