CineSage_jr
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Posts posted by CineSage_jr
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I just heard that the original Decca Records recording masters for artist like Judy Garland, Bing Crosby and even The Carpenters were in the video vault that was destroyed.
I'm far more concerned about the survival of original music tracks to many of Universal's films: MARNIE, FAHRENHEIT 451, LONELY ARE THE BRAVE, the Paramount Hitchcock's now owned by Universal and, most importantly, SPARTACUS.
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This is a wake up call for Universal to start releasing more of their inventory to the home video market and cable stations like TCM.
I don't think they'll see the connection. Frankly, neither do I.
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If you were watching a tape of TCM's recent telecast, you haven't seen the film [u[at all[/u]. The pan-an-scan print and atrocious off-color, fuzzy transfer were absolutely ghastly.
Get the Criterion DVd if you want to see what's it's supposed to look like.
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I went to the link so see what you're talking about and, yes, my cover's been blown (I just added another posting there as proof).
I didn't "copy" "comment #3 from the L.A. Times, I wrote it.
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I was on the Universal Studios lot the Autumn night in 1990 when the last major backlot fire occurred.
Fortunately, the winds -- warm and dry, and conducive to fueling and propelling a fast-moving fire -- were blowing away from the main lot that night, so that only the backlot fa?ades were damaged or destroyed (anything you may read about the BACK TO TO THE FUTURE being destroyed in this latest fire is only partly true: many of them were consumed in the 1990 fire; these are replacements put up afterward).
In the late 1980's, after Paramount Studios had been without a backlot for nearly a decade (their own backlot had burned down in late August of 1983, a fire much more serious than Universal's because of the Paramount lot's relatively compact size), they decided to construct an entirely new New York Street backlot complex, and spent the money it would take to build it around steel frames (backlot frontage is traditionally all-wood and plaster), with built-in state-of-the-art fire-suppression equipment. Apparently Universal learned nothing from Paramount's experiences, with today's minor catastrophe the result.
Of course, there's an alternative theory, one that will probably get played up in the news and on blogs in the wake of today's fire: Universal has been preparing to develop much of its backlot acreage for commercial and residential purposes, which would entail the razing of many of its historic backlot sets. How convenient, then, for this fire to have destroyed so many of them, so that the studio will not have to battle historic-site preservationists for permission to rob Hollywood of so much its quickly-vanishing past (This is also a charge that was leveled against Paramount's management in after the 1983 fire. Nothing was ever proved, but the studio did decide that backlot sets were more useful and profitable than the office trailers that were moved onto the newly vacant acreage after the debris was cleared away).
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Forget that -- what happened to June Cleaver (or June Havoc, or June Haver)?
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Yeah, that General Yen was one tough Dane.
Though born in Copenhagen, Asther was raised in Malm?, Sweden, and considered himself Swedish (died in Stockholm).
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Fan of the film, no; of Basil Poledouris's score for it, yes (though it can't compare with Mikl?s R?zsa's masterful music for the 1942 Alexander Korda version of the film).
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Mary, I believe a good example of your question is this color lobby card of "All About Eve" which was actually filmed in black and white. No doubt the color cards were more outstanding in the theater lobby frames to draw attention. Also patrons were most likely led to believe that the movie was filmed in color.
No, studios were still issuing 11" x 14" tinted-color lobby cards at the same time they produced true four-color 8" x 10" color stills (from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s; in the case of few MGM titles in the early fifties, including QUO VADIS, IVANHOE and SCARAMOUCHE, there were also alternative sets of true four-color 11x14's), the tinted ones were simply cheaper to produce, since they usually required poorer-color dyes to print.
It's the main reason I seldom collect 11 x 14's, and concentrate on the 8 x 10's.
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As the character, himself, would insist:
"That's Hed-ley Lamarr."
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Well, the term is just as reflective (pun intended) of the silver nitrate in the emulsions of black-and-white films.
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Always loved Korman, from the first time I ever saw him on the old Danny Kaye Show forty-four years ago, but was just as always mystified that that anyone finds Tim Conway even remotely funny.
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Sorry, I just have a hard copy in the closet somewhere.
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I have not read the Alan Le May novel from which the film springs, but if the internal dynamic you ascribe to Ethan is clearly established in the novel, then it is what it is. Otherwise it is mere conjecture, albeit interesting conjecture.
I would be surprised to learn that Le May intended Ethan to be inordinately complex on more than one level, since Le May does not have a reputation for instilling in his novels' characters a degree of complexity on a par with such writers as James, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, or Conrad. But of course, unless and until I read the novel, this remains mere conjecture on my part.
I have Frank Nugent's script, which is considerably more nuanced than the finished film. Even without it, though, the texture of Ethan's character and motivations is fairly clear for anyone inclined to dig into it.
I did misspeak a bit, however. Rather than "principles" (in place of Ethan's lack of loyalties), I should've said Ethan has convictions, which is substantially closer to the mark.
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Well, at first blush it would seem you have a valid point. But then one must recall the remainder of this scene's dialogue:
WARD BOND: "Well, the prodigal brother. When did you get back? Ain't seen you since the surrender. Come to think of it, I didn't see you at the surrender."
THE DUKE: "I don't believe in surrenders. Nope, I've still got my saber, Reverend. Didn't beat it into no plowshare, neither."
So regardless of what General Lee and the rest of the South did, Ethan still considered his oath to be in full force. Reminds me of a fellow JAG from northwest Alabama who was always quoting her great aunt: "Surrender? Hell no, we're just waitin' for supplies."
But you're right about one thing -- 'confrontive' ain't a real word, even in the Southern lexicon!
I'm afraid that you miss the point completely (don't feel too bad, though: I've yet to read anything written about the film, even by respected film historians, that grasps the full measure of Ethan Edwards's character).
Ethan is merely toying with Capt.-Rev. Clayton (Bond), an old antagonist (though one for whom he has both respect and grudging affection); it's not that he is devoted to the Confederacy, or that his oath to it supersedes any subsequent oath (especially since one taken to the Texas Rangers would hardly conflict with one to the CSA, anyway). The point is that Ethan is a man without loyalties, only principles, and the film takes great pains to paint him as neither Confederate nor Yankee, honest man nor criminal, white man nor Indian. He's not self-centered, at least through the first part of his quest to find Debbie and bring her back to "civilization"; it's the second part of that quest, when he finally decides that that his mission is now to find his niece and kill her, that he succumbs to the warped sense of propriety that's been shaped by his rootless existence.
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CASABLANCA opens with the pseudo documentary (a form all filmgoers were familiar with, since they got a fair amount of their "news" from newsreels that preceded dramatic films) because it was seen by producer Hal Wallis as a way to inject a large dose of necessary exposition into the beginning of the film, and also make the audience swallow a set-up that was patently untrue: there was no "refugee trail from Paris to Casablanca." Europeans did not sit around the Casbah and souks of Casablanca, or other Moroccan cities, waiting for exit visas, though there certainly was a steady stream of them into Lisbon. The choice of Casablanca was simply a conceit ginned up by playwrights Joan Alison and Murray Burnett for their (unproduced) stage play "Everybody Comes to Ricks."
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CineSage jr (I'll call you jr for short)... Calm down, you will give yourself a stroke. You have many good points, but you are loosing your case by coming across as vitriolic and confrontive. You aren't going win much by offending or attacking everyone. As an attorney, you should realize that. You don't win cases by getting the jury mad at you...
No, I'd win by getting them angry at my opponent's client who, in this instance, happens to be Ronald Reagan (in absentia).
PS: There's no such word as "confrontive"; I think you mean confrontational.
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Do you mean Orson Welles?
And ANDROMEDA STRAIN?
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I should've added that Huston's film was almost certainly filmed in the standard Academy Ratio of 1.37:1, and then "hard-matted" down to 1.66:1, so the version on the DVD is almost certainly the full image as photographed, containing more visual information than the cropped theatrical prints.
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I was speaking with Gene Barry's son at a recent Hollywood Collectors' Show (the elder Barry was selling autographed memorabilia there), and told him that I've always enjoyed the understated wryness that his father always seemed to bring to his roles, even as early as WAR OF THE WORLDS (a wryness absolutely essential in order to sell a concept as outrageous as Burke's Law -- as though some Rolls Royce-riding millionaire would spend his working hours as a police detective, solving crimes).
Barry was never a great actor, but he was always a pleasure to watch for that reason
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"Twelve O'Clock High" is so outstanding. It shows the extreme stress the guys were under. I don't think I would have been able to make the 25 flights without a mental crackup first.
Darryl Zanuck and Fox took quite a chance (as did the film's star, Gregory Peck) in constructing a film about the self-doubt and mental breakdown of squadron commanding General Frank Savage. Co-screenwriter Beirne Lay, jr., was an authority on military aviation and pushed for the story to be as realistic as possible (as compared with the rather strait-laced, talky dramaturgy of the film's contemporaneous "cometition," MGM's COMMAND DECISION, with was olfd-fashioned and dated before the stage play was even translated to the screen).
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One poster said that he wasted needless dollars on missiles and such, but that is one of the reasons the U.S.S.R. collapsed. They tried to keep up with us and it proved too much. Reagan knew that.
No, it didn't; as the old saying goes, repeating a lie a thousand times won't make it the truth.
"Neither did James Buchanan's. He was, nevertheless, one of this country's truly wretched presidents."
Yes, he was so wretched he won two LANDSLIDE elections. The people loved him.
What was one of these "landslides" for, an election for dog-catcher? Buchanan served exactly one term in the presidency (1857-1861). More significantly, president-elect Buchanan, in what would now be considered illegal ex parte communication, pressured U.S. Supreme court Justice Grier to side with the Southern majority in the Dred Scott case, ensuring that the court would declare blacks to be property and not human beings. This, along with most of his other policies, bequeathed the Civil War, with its 600,000 dead on both sides, on the American people and his successor, Abraham Lincoln.
Rich? If Obama the Dim wins this November, families who have combined incomes of 75000 or more will pay more in taxes. Conservatives believe all people should be allowed to keep their money. It's theirs. Not the government's. Regulation, a controlled economy and redistribution of wealth does not work. Communist Russia is a prime example. By the way, why do you seem to love the Communist agenda so much?
Try $200,000 and up (not that you actually make that much, right?). But I suppose you'd rather just keep running up the national debt on little endeavors like Iraq and tax breaks for oil companies (despite the record profits they're raking in), and then pass the bill onto the next generation...and the one after that, and the one after that...
You do believe in the wisdom of the people don't you?
Typical of folks like you: you don't have your facts on your side, so you immedeately unleash some cry of the "inalienable will of the people" as a synonym for what's right (as though the Founding Father and Framers of the Constitution never bothered to build safeguards into that Constitution to prevent exactly that kind of tyranny of the majority at the expense of the minority).
As British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once observed (as related by Mark Twain), better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and leave no doubt.
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"I figure a man's only good for one oath at a time. I took mine to the Confederate States of America."
While I was an Air Force JAG assigned to an RAF base in England, I had to take the oath to join the Florida Bar, and there were times during that and subsequent tours of duty when I faced situations in which it seemed my oath to the Bar was, arguably, in partial conflict with the oath I previously took as an officer (only the "officer" part, not the "gentleman" part). Every time that occurred, the Duke's quote above jumped out of my subconcious to rattle around in my head and leave me with a terrible migraine.
The difference being that, three years before Ethan even makes that statement, the Confederacy had ceased to exist (if it ever really did exist, at all).
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MOBY-DICK was shot at a ratio of 1.66:1, which is, technically not "widescreen," so the DVD (which can be found here)
http://www.deepdiscount.com/viewproduct.htm?productId=5753784
at 1.33:1, is fairly close to the way it was originally framed, and is the only version you're likely to get for the forseeable future.
Communism, anybody?
in General Discussions
Posted
I'm new to classic movies, but have been watching TCM alot, lately. What amazes me is the communistic themes in some of the movies...even the oldest ones!
What a load of dung. Any movie that depicts two or more characters working toward any common goal is labeled "Communistic" by people like you.
The communist movement gained a lot of ground following the onset of the great depression in 29-30. Roosevelts "New Deal" was clearly socialist, by definition.
By whose definition, the above poster's?
In the walke of the Great Depression, Roosevelt's New Deal was merely a corrective, meant to ensure that government's purpose is to apply the principles set down by that bunch of notorious Communists back in 1787 -- the Framers of the Constitution -- when they wrote that the purpose of the United States was to (among other things), "establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility" and "promote the general Welfare," instead of letting aristocrats, plutocrats and businessmen run roughshod over the interests and basic economic security of the many.
You're sooo typical of the people in this country who have no idea of what they want, only a little idea of what they don't want, but very clear ideas of what they fear -- even if it makes no sense whasoever, and is injurious to that "general Welfare."
The anti-Christian messages are more subtle...a western movie (where they painted the town red) showed the town preacher as a "yellow belly" and a hypocrite.
And I can think of a few other examples...though they are subtle. It may also be that Ted Turner personally picks out these movies...so we're not going to see many pro- Christian ones.
Oh, the poor, poor, poor Christians! Let's take up a collection for them. It's an institution that's been around for two-thousand years but, every time someone utters so much as a syllable of criticism about it, you run around screaming that you're being thrown to the lions in the Colosseum. Christians control the vast majority of the wealth in this and every other Western society, control the institutions of government and culture -- in short, they get to choose who gets to join the country clubs and live in which neighborhoods -- but, you always manage to point to some perceived lack of extra-special privilege as "proof" that you're the poor, poor victims of an insidious campaign of discrimination.
Grow up, for chrissakes.