CineSage_jr
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Posts posted by CineSage_jr
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Even if what you say is true --
-- and it's not (bloated military budgets for armaments and programs the Penagon neither wanted nor needed; nearly bankrupting the country to bring the Navy up to a six-hundred-ship level, even though the Navy had no use for many of the ships, no crews to man them and mothballed many of the vessels the moment they came out of the shipyards; the unworkable and destabilizing "Star Wars" missile-defense program, sold to Ronnie R. on the say-so of crackpot scientist Edward Teller, with cooked test data; invasion of tiny Grenada on the pretext of "rescuing" U.S. medical students there from evil, rapacious Marxist regime; terrorist bombing of U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, 1988. I wonder how many of the 241 Marines killed there were "proud" to serve under Reagan --
Then there's the little matter of Reagan's state visit to the Bitburg military cemetary in then West Germany. I wonder how many WWII veterans were "honored" by his honoring of the Nazi SS troops buried there.
-- the fact is that Reagan was given an army uniform and "served" at the Hal Roach Studios in Culver City, California, making service-training films while many of his Hollywood colleagues, such as William Wyler, John Ford, Clark Gable, Tyrone Power, Robert Montgomery, etc. were placing themselves in harm's way, facing enemy fire in theaters of combat.
Reagan was a fraud, you are a sucker.
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C'mon, Jake...it's Chinatown.
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Uncontested as DeMille's best work.
"Uncontested?" That's one man's opinion -- yours.
A highly enjoyable film, no doubt, but inferior to the likes of CLEOPATRA and UNION PACIFIC, not to mention a number of DeMille's silent films.
And Jackson was played by Hugh Sothern in his first film role. A stage actor whose film career was brief, he died in 1947, three years after his final screen appearance.
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I find it extremely distasteful that TCM (ordinarily a very knowledgeable and sensitive venue) would choose to interrupt traditional Memorial Day "Military tributes" mid-stream to run a television "special" featuring the cowardly DRAFT DODGER Frank Sinatra. More fitting tributes on our country's most solemn day should have been movies featuring the wonderful actor and TRUE WAR HERO, Air Force Brigadier General James Stewart. What were your programmers thinking???
Oh, I see, but I suppose that war movies starring the well-known draft-dodgers John Wayne and Ronald Reagan are jake with you?
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Not to be confused with a 1970s hard-core porn film with a smilar title (that did not star Jean Arthur!).
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Louis B. Mayer probably regretted giving the film the go-ahead when it was first proposed, because MGM, alone among all of Hollywood's major studios, tried to keep their product in the European market, and Germany, up until the last minute, even when it was all-too apparent to everyone what the Nzis were, and what they were doing to the people in the occupied terriroties, and Britain, against whom they were waging relentless, cleasless war.
MGM has a shameful record in this regard, and Mayer, whose Jewishness was an aspect of his background that he generally discounted, bears a lot of the blame.
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Great shot of Mr. and Mrs. Thornwald divided by a brick wall just hours away from tragic outcome.
Thorwald, not "Thornwald."
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"Widescreen" is the generic term of the almost limitless varieties of aspect ratios that were introduced in the 1950s, ranging from the barely widescreen Warnerscope used on GIANT (1.66:1), through VistaVision (1.85:1), CinemaScope (originally 2.55:1, later 2.35:1), MGM Camera 65 (later known as Ultra Panavision, at 2.76:1), etc. "Widescreen" is, then, just about anything that has a greater ratio than the old Academy 1.33:1 format, and the height of the black bars at the top of a standard 4x3 TV screen will therefore vary accordingly (though the sides of widescreen films are typically sliced off a bit in letterboxed TV broadcasts).
It is possible to make your own "enhanced anamorphic" DVD-Rs, however, if you have a widescreen digital TV with a component output. Adjust the TV to show the telecast in a "squeezed" format, and record it onto DVD-R through that output. The DVD will then have a squeezed image which, when played back through the TV's normal input (with the TV set to unsqueeze it), will fill the screen to the same extent a commercial enhanced DVD does.
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One would think that Ben would know the difference by virtue of having spent all that time in West Hollywood's Formosa Cafe for that TCM short a couple of years ago.
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Hey, if G.W. doesn't know the difference between Slovenia and Slovakia, when he's actually in Slovakia, we can hold others to a higher standard?
Doubly ironic since Bush is the reigning monarch of the Kingdom of Slow-vackia.
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A Vamp needed LOTS of black Khol rimmed eyes.
That's kohl (like the current senator from Wisonsin, and former chancellor of Germany), if you want some (the eye make-up, not the politicians).
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THE COLDITZ STORY (1955).
There's also an excellent PBS Nova documentary about the actual attempt at escape by glider:
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Mitchum at his most somnolent still exudes more charm and charisma than most other actors who could have played the part. Besides, the character was only supposed to be around fifty.
A Navy officer typically reaches the rank of commander (equivalent to Lt. Colonel in the other branches of the military) by about age 35. If he's not promoted past that by his early forties, the handwriting's usually on the wall that he's hit the advancement ceiling, and retirement usually follows.
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I?m saying that what the sailors should have done in real life was throw Bligh overboard. They could have either returned to England with the load of breadfruit, or returned to Tahiti and picked up a load of dames and then gone out in search of a deserted island.
What caused them all the trouble was in allowing Bligh to get away and get back to England.
Anyway, the Brando version didn't stick to the truth. The captain didn't die in a fire aboard the ship.
But if the mutineers had done what you suggest, then they'd have been as bad ad Bligh. Worse, even, and no longer victims, but victimizers. It's much like the scene in SPARTACUS, after the gladiators-in-training have rebelled and taken over Batiatus's training school: all they want to do is sally out into the countryside and wreak havoc, killing looting and ****, until Spartacus asks, "What are we becoming? Romans?" and points out that they have another choice -- to become "An army. An army of gladiators" whose mission it is to free "every slave in Italy."
Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall would never have written their Bounty trilogy of books if the mutineers had forsaken the heroic and the common good for the self-interest of revenge, and we would probably never have heard of them.
THE BIG SLEEP, '46 version, doesn't really have any flaws unless you count the rather labyrinthine nature of the plot. But that doesn't stop me from enjoying it several times a year.
Heck, I even enjoy DARK PASSAGE, and that is one farfetched movie!
The only thing wrong with THE BIG SLEEP is that it's neither as good, nor as entertaining as THE MALTESE FALCON
THE DESPERATE HOURS, '55 version, holds up pretty well, too, but the fact that the crooks actually let Fredric March leave the house & go to work strains credulity.
I see you've yet to have your family held hostage.
I also enjoy repeat viewings of THE WINDS OF WAR and WAR AND REMEMBRANCE, the historical portions of which are actually quite (but not 100%) accurate.
Protagonist Victor "Pug" Henry, the oldest and most somnolent man ever to be stuck at the rank of Commander in the history of the U.S. Navy.
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There are lots of films that hold up well to repeated viewings, such as Citizen Kane, Gone with the Wind, The Letter, Mutiny on the Bounty. There are almost no flaws in these films (except I think Captain Bligh should have been thrown overboard late at night and reported the next day as simply being "missing").
Except that, unlike the other titles you cited, the various versions of MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY is a true story, and Bligh didn't get thrown overboard in the middle of the night (besides, if, in a fictional story, he had been disposed of in such a matter, there would have been a less compelling reason for the mutineers to find an out-of-the-way refuge like Pitcairn Island to hide out from the inevitable retribution by the British Admiralty, which takes up roughly the last quarter of the movies).
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Any other healthy, heterosexual old geeser would have been jumping out the window and climbing up her "balcony"
Some "heterosexual old geezers" (your goose is cooked, fella) simply have a greater sense of decorum than apparently young geezers like you.
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Will you settle for a copy of MAN ON FIRE with Denzel Washington?
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The Soviet Union and Communist Bloc nations endured quite nicely for another thirty-seven years after SINGIN' IN THE RAIN came out. The idea that that film, or any American movies, "turned people away from Communism" is ludicrous, especially since most American films were never released in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe.
Those Western European countries with strong Communist parties, like France and Italy, were distinctly un-aligned with Moscow, anyway, so the influence of U.S. culture in keeping them from drifting eastward was limited, to say the least.
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You're right, of course, but I think this is really the "other side of the same coin" in that Scottie wouldn't have been able to take Judy to these places, thereby risking the discovery and unraveling of Elster's entire plan, if Elster had eliminated her in the first place, as you say.
Well, that's like saying that Ray's father should've simply walked out of the cornfield at the beginning of FIELD OF DREAMS (if he had, there would have been no movie, of course). The problem of VERTIGO's illogic vis-a-vis Elster's leaving Judy alive is irreconcilable, so the film just has to rely on an audience's finding the who package so compelling that they overlook it.
We have to remember that films simply weren't made to be viewed over and over, and analyzed for minutiae the way we do now. In its way it's like old special effects that look fine in original 35mm print density, but look painfully obvious when viewed on home video, a medium on which they were never designed to be viewed.
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No, the biggest flaw by far is that, having killed Madeleine, Elster already has a potential death-sentence hanging over his head if caught, yet he leaves Judy, the only person who can finger him for the crime, alive and living in the same city with Scottie (and lets her keep Carlotta's necklace, to boot).
Two potential death sentences are no more onerous than one, since the state can only make you suck cyanide once.
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The biggest problem with the plot is that Elster did NOT need Scottie or Judy at all, since he was able to slip into the bell tower, while dragging his wife, without being seen by anyone. He was able to push her out of the tower without being seen by anyone. And he was able to escape without being seen by anyone. So he DID NOT need Scottie or Judy at all.
Elster needed Scottie's "taking" Judy/"Madeleine" to the mission (though she urged Scottie that they visit it) to establish a logical reason for her being there. Elster needed no help in actually carrying out the murder of the real Madeleine, but he needed Scotty and Judy to make the murder appear to be a convincing suicide.
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You're entitled to your opinion and, had you decided to criticize the illogic of Jefferies' (Stewart's) spying on his neighbors with his living room window's blinds up, particularly when things heat up around Thorwald's possible murder of his wife (hell, around a courtyard like that, practically everyone would have their blinds down, especially in the hot, sunny weather the film establishes), I'd agree with you (though having all the blinds up is obviously essential to the unfolding of the story).
Beyond that, Lisa Fremont (Kelly) can bring her brand of "coldness" and "shallowness" over to my place any time.
That said, you're wrong, wrong, wrong. It's a great movie.
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It's not on DVD either. So its showing would be a rare and well worth viewing for many.
Universal issued it on DVD, via Goodtimes Video, about five or six years ago (in a flat letterbox transfer), but is now out of print. If you want a copy, be prepared to spend a lot of money.
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Warren Penn was a genius...
Robert Penn Warren.
SHAME ON YOU, TCM!
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Posted
cinesagejr writes: "Reagan was a fraud, you are a sucker"
Go tell that to the millions of peoples he freed by bringing down the Communist Russian Empire.
Do you think that was a good thing?
I love how you and your ilk always poitendly ignore the policy of "containment" of the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Bloc countries enacted during the Truman administration that, over a period of forty-five years starved the nations of the Warsaw Pact of economic resources and international and diplomatic credibility. You also like to point out how awful Communism was, but won't admit that it eventually collapsed of its very inefficiency and injustices, and not what Reagan did (very little), and said (largely empty platitudes).
The country never had a major war during his administration.
Neither did James Buchanan's. He was, nevertheless, one of this country's truly wretched presidents.
His visit to Germany was done to try and heal the old Germany and recognize the New Germany as entirely different from the old.
Was the trip well advised?
Apparently not. Since the Berlin Wall hadn't yet fallen, there was no "new Germany," unless you're comparing that country's existence in the mid-1980s with that of the Third Reich that fell fifty years earlier.
I would have told him not to go there?
He was told and was warned about the Nazis interred at Bitburg, but went there, anyway, even though there were plenty of cemetaries where no Nazis were buried.
But, I absolutely under no circumstances believe Ronald Reagan supported Nazism. He loved freedom and hated an over bearing government.
The point isn't that he "supported Nazism," but showed a callous disregard for the feelings of the Nazis' millions of victims.
Ronald Reagan was not allowed to serve overseas because of his eyesight. I have been in the military and it does have strict rules about who can serve and who cannot.
A peacetime military's standards, and those of the armed services during a national emegency, which is what World War II was, are quite different. Reagan's only blindness was of the figurative kind, as seen in the policies enacted during his administration (and spying for the FBI on the Screen Actors Guild membership while president of that organization).
Ronald Reagan was not a rich man with many connections to get a free pass nor was the kind of man who would ask for one. The military loved and respected Ronald Reagan. He was not seen as a coward or shirker.
Reagan made a very good living as an actor by the standards of his day, and the economic and environmental policies of his administration, and judicial appointments reflect his extreme bias toward the welfare of the rich, at the expense of their poor and middle class.
Ronald Reagan was no fraud.
No, he was a genuine fraud.
He just happened to be a very good conservative President which you loathe.
"Good conservative" is a contradiction in terms (unless you're rich, of course).
I don't allow myself to be suckered in by the left like you.
Well, I think I was quite clear in saying that you were suckered by the Right Wing.
As for ECUPirate's
Donald Pleasence also claimed conscientious objector status at the beginning of WW II, but he later changed his mind & joined the RAF. Bad choice for him since he ended up being shot down and having to spend the last year of the war in a German POW camp. Ironically, his character's role in "The Great Escape" was as an RAF officer shot down during a bombing raid.
There was no bombing mission for Blythe. As Pleasance's character relates to Hendley (James Garner} in THE GREAT ESCAPE, he was a deskbound photo-analyst who one day, as a lark, simply decided to go along on a photo-reconnaissance flight, which then got itself shot down.