CineSage_jr
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Posts posted by CineSage_jr
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TCM has shown Chan films in the past. For now, let's forget about FOX, and ask if TCM would bow to such pressure from Asians?Of
As one little cog in the Time-Warner media conglomerate that encompasses everything from novies to a TV network to magazines, and whose management is constantly fearful that a single controversy could cascade throughout the entire TW brand?
Of course they'd bow, buckle and, yes, kowtow, in a nanosecond.
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Well, he "cradled" them, and he didn't.
The tablets used in the close-ups, in which Heston was fairly static, were made of real Mount Sinai granite (as you can imagine, they were extremely heavy, and rather fragile; had he dropped them there would've been a moment on the set later lampooned by Mel Brooks in HISTORY OF THE WORLD, PART I: "I have brought you these fifteen...oops, these Ten Commandments...")
There were fibreglas sets, used for Heston's descent from Mt. Sinai (on a Paramount soundstage), and an extremely lightweight set that he hurled at Dathan and the inquitous Israelites cavorting at the base of the Golden Calf. I'm inclined to believe that the set of tablets being auctioned are fibreglas.
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Thank you.
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MAGIC TOWN: a good idea for a movie.
But a bad movie. Despite its being written by Robert Riskin, writer of some of Capra's greatest hits, it's Capra?sque without having the essential "Capra touch."
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Garfield's lobes do keep me away from having him star in my fantasies. I'll take Paul Newman, another nice Jewish boy.
Lobes? Ear, or brain?
And Newman is Jewish only on his father's side (which according to Jewish law, doesn't make him Jewish).
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I have. It's a treat seeing many of these paintings (and drawings, since MGM, through the 1930s into the 1950s used a technique of pastels on illustration board, done by art director Warren Newcombe, rather than the more common paint-on-glass matte) in person.
I'll be having some materials on display at the Academy's Dunn Theater for the June 1 screening of THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, hosted by Oscar-winning sound designer Ben Burtt.
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You can still send a letter to the editor:
As one who's had, perhaps, four- or five-dozen letters published by the L.A. Times over the years -- and none by the NY Times (though I've sent them far fewer) -- I know from experience they're a particularly tough nut to crack, and can tell you right now that a letter on such a trivial matter will never see the light of day in the NYT.
I'd much rather send a note to the author chiding him for the error of his ways that I know will stand a far better chance of being read.
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Not the least of which is the appearance of the wonderfully erotic Sophia Loren in her first English speaking role (it doesn?t surprise me in the least that Frank Sinatra fell in love with her).
BOY ON A DOLPHIN was released about three months before THE PRIDE AND THE PASSION (though I wouldn't be surprised if PRIDE went before the cameras first. This needs more research).
And Cary Grant's falling in love with Sophia during the making of the film (only to fall apart prior to their making HOUSEBOAT together) was of more consequence than Sinatra's.
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I got a little education from what you wrote. But, you condescending, pompous ***, if there's gonna be a pop quiz, I'll be skipping school that day.
You obviously have no argument to make (or you are, perhaps, just ill-equipped to make one), bOb, so you resort to name-calling.
Kind of like what the Third Reich used to do in demonizing Jews and others.
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Several months ago, TCM aired a movie that had an all-black cast and was made in the early 1930s. The director of this film was a well known white director, and it was the only all-black cast film he ever made.
THE GREEN PASTURES (Warner Bros., 1936), directed by William Dieterle, starring Rex Ingram, music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
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Once I thought of it, it keeps playing in my head. If I can think of the film, it will stop.Save me!
It's a good thing that it's not the tune accompanying "Mr Memory's" appearances in THE 39 STEPS.
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This passage really got me steamed:
The film wasn?t a hit in its initial release, and it wasn?t enthusiastically reviewed either. But its stature has increased exponentially in its five decades of screen life, especially in the 12 years since its brilliant restoration by Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz; it now routinely places in the Top 10 in critics? and viewers? polls of the greatest movies ever made.
It makes me think that Rafferty either has never seen an original print of the film, or doesn't understand what the movie's really about.
While the film certainly did need a restoration of its visual elements, Harris and Katz's re-working of the soundtrack has damaged the film beyond reckoning. Their total re-Foleying of the film, which makes every gunshot (all right, there's only one in the film), footstep, door-closing, etc. so ear-splittingly loud and reverberant makes the movie as relentlessly literal as any modern film, robbing VERTIGO of its essential and irreplaceable dream-like quality. In the end, it's not a film about its preoposterous plot, but about the unique environment in which it places its characters.
Bob Harris has, in recentl years, admitted somewhat sheepishly that he and Katz may have overdone the sound effects on the film. Unfortunately, Universal has not seen fit to restore the original mixed soundtrack to the film (though it is, fortunately, now available on an alternative audio track of the latest DVD issue).
As for Rafferty, his pieces in the NY Times don't carry an e-mail address at which he can be contacted and set straight (such correspondents, correspondents and columnists are, in my view, cowards for isolating themselves from criticism in this way).
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Apart from the core issue that no one has an inalienable right not to be offended (especially since one's definition of what's offensive can change from moment to moment, determined in no small part by how how aggrieved and discriminated-against one wishes to present oneself for maximum benefit), the Asian-American organizations are missing several salient points:
A: Charlie Chan is an immigrant to the U.S. English is not his native language and, like so many immigrants, he is simply never fully conversant in its nuances.
More importantly, Charlie presents a screen image of a wise, brilliant man, utterly incorruptible, and unalterably dedicated to doing good for his fellow man.
Beyond this, his sons -- played by real Asian-American actors -- aren't depicted as some kind of opium-smoking mandarins fixated on burning incense down at the Confucian temple but, rather, as young men happily preoccupied with girls, music, dancing, cars and being "hep" (what we now call "cool"). In this, they are portrayed as being exactly like all young American men of their, or any, generation, which sends a strong message that they are exactly like everyone else, irrespective of their cultural and racial roots.
Moreover, there is a strong familial bond between Charlie and his sons. Beyond the obvious, and common, generational disconnexion between father and sons, there is a subtext of love and respect.
The argument the Asian community propounds -- making an analogy of the casting of European-American actors Warner Oland and Sidney Toler as Charlie (and, by extension, the European-American casts in films such as THE GOOD EARTH, DRAGON SEED and THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN with the appearance of entertainers in blackface -- is false and misleading. Europeans were cast as Asians because the make-up technology available at the time was deemed sufficient to create a convincing Asian from a European actor, whereas white people in blackface could never be anything other than an uncovincing caricature. Also, Charlie is the leading character in his films, and it was felt that the largely white audiences of the day would be more receptive to a known, while actor in the role (besides there being an Asian actor phyically right and of sufficient stature to "carry" the films). By contrast, during the period blacks were always in supporting roles, and there was a large pool of African-American actors in Hollywood with whom to cast those parts.
The old Chinese proverb that "one picture is worth a thousand words" tells less than half the story: a thousand pictures aren't worth one word, if they aren't presented with some kind of context. The above provides, I think, exactly the sort of context that the Asian community should be providing with the Chan films, rather than demanding their exile, making the whole affair doubly sad.
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As tragic as the attack on Pearl Harbor was in the short-term, the people of the U.S., and everywhere else, should thank their lucky stars that the Japanese so misread the strength of isolationist sentiment and political strength in the U.S., and attacked when they did.
Had the Japanese and Germans been allowed another year or so to consolidate and firm their lines of supply between their occupied territories and homeland industrial bases, there's probably little the U.S. could have done, after eventually entering the war, to dislodge the Axis from its territorial gains. While the U.S. may never have been conquered, the world might have settled into an uneasy stalemate with the U.S. caught between these hostile totalitarian states.
The world would have been a very different, and darker, place.
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I was brought up to feel that if you wanted something done, you had to do it yourself.... Environment ??? Clean up your own act before you ***** about someone else's need to change things. etc.... Spending policies ????? ditto...
That's a remarkably cynical, convenient and self-serving excuse for blocking anyone's attempt to do anything.
Al Quida terrorists in Iraq, apparently supported by Iran. And Al Quida in Afghanistan, apparently supported by the Taliban regime. Also with Al Quida terrorists around the world. They are a very real threat to anyone who is not muslim. That's my understanding.
Your "understanding" is highly, and dangerously, rudimentary, to put it politely.
A: It's al-Quaida (or, more correctly, al-Qua'ida).
B: "Al-Qua'ida" is not a trademarked name, Neither is it a franchise operation. When a segment (and only a segment) of the Sunni insurgency set themselves up in Iraq during the U.S. occupation, they decided they needed to call themselves something, and so settled on what they figured would strike fear in the hearts of the Infidels (us): "al-Qua'ida in Iraq." It was convenient for them, and probably has brought them some of the financial contributions they needed to wage war on the occupation and the Shi'ite-led Iraqi puppet government installed by the Americans. Nevertheless, they have absolutely no connection with Osama bin-Laden or the real al-Qua'ida (you know, those guys who were resonsible for flying planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon).
C: Al Qua'ida are wholly, and resolutely Sunni Muslims. Iraq is majority Shi'a Muslim, and Iran almost wholly so (the Sunni-Shi'a divide stretches back nearly 1300 years, to the initial dispute between the sons of the Prophet Muhammed and his son-in-law, each of whom claimed to be the Prophet's rightful heir after after his death. Each side considers the other to be a cult of irreligious, all-but-Satanic heretics; as a consequence Sunni and Shi'a hate each other far more than they hate the Americans. While all Iraqis hate the U.S-British occupation, a significant number of U.S. combat deaths are a result of Americans simply getting in the way in what's clearly an Iraqi civil war between Sunni and Shi'a). In writing what you have, you parrot the uninformed idiocy that keeps spouting from John McCain's mouth (only with him, it's really inexcusable and dangerous).
Iran does not, and would not, offer aid, mat?riel or training to any Sunni group. Period. The Iranians' hatred and mistrust of all things Sunni trumps any dislike that country's leadership may have for non-Muslims, and America, in particular. That the Iranian leadership would like to see a consolidation of power by the Shi'a government of Iraq is certain, though there's little evidence that they have provided any aid or comfort to Iraq's Shi'ites (Saddam Hussein's regime left behind so much ordnance -- which the U.S. Provisional Coalition Authority, in its infinite stupidity and dereliction failed to secure -- that there's really no reason for either side in the civil war to seek additional backing from Iran).
The bottom line is that Saddam Hussein provided a necessary check against Iran's growing influence in the region. Removing Saddam created a power vacuum that has allowed Iran (a far greater threat) to expand its weapons program and have realistic dreams of a Shi'ite-controlled middle east (threatening Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the other Sunni-majority states from which the world gets much of its oil (and you really wonder why oil is headed toward $200 a barrel?).
Face it, Saddam, for all his horrific crimes, served U.S. and Europe's interests; when history records who "lost Iraq" and the rest of the Middle East, the blame will fall squarely on Dick Cheney (who will, clearly, be listed first), George W. Bush and the neocon hyenas who enabled their falsifications and outright lies that precipitated the war.
The only part of your statement of which seem to have some grasp is the relationship between al-Qua'ida and the Taliban. Osama bin-Laden (remember him? The guy Bush said he was gonna get "dead or alive?"), Number Two Ayman al-Zawahiri and the al-Qua'ida leadership were allowed to escape Afghanistan and hide across the border in Pakistan (a country nominally the U.S.'s ally, but which refuses to send the manpower into its outer provinces to find and apprpehend, or kill, the al-Qua'ida members, and whose chief nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, sold nuclear secrets to Iran -- and Syria and North Korea -- which is why Iran is such a threat nowadays. See how all this knits together in a sinister tapestry that leads right to Bush & Cheney's doorstep?).
That's why Afganistan should have been, and should still be, the U.S.'s number-one priority. Instead, almost all our resources, and the lives of our young men and women, are going down a bottomless drain in Iraq, trying to fix the huge mess created by the neocons' insane and insupportable fixation on removing Saddam Hussein from power, even though -- thanks to George H.W. Bush (you, know, the old one) -- Saddam was rendered no threat to anyone outside his own borders, kept bottled up by an internationally-sanctioned embargo-blockade that cost relatively little money and no American lives.
It's been speculated that much of what George W. Bush has done in office was a result of his lifelong desire to repudiate everything his father ever did, believed in, or stood for. I think that the above (and many other things, besides) are proof of that.
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May 15th, 6 AM est MAN HUNT 1941
A sportsman (Pidgeon) is hunted by the Gestapo after he accidentally stumbles across Hitler's secret residence.
Joan Bennett, George Sanders, John Carradine, Roddy Mcdowall, Fritz Lang, Walter Pidgeon
This is an utter mischaracterization of the film's story (and its basis, Geoffrey Household's "Rogue Male"). Capt. Alan Thondyke (Pidgeon) journeys from England to southern Germany to the vicinity of Hitler's Berghof at Berchtesgaden (its existence and location hardly a secret) to engage in a "sporting stalk" of der F?hrer: line up Hitler, standing on the Berghof's balcony, in the telescopic sight of his high-powered hunting rifle, and pull the trigger.
What makes it the so-called "sporting stalk" is that Thorndyke has deliberately left the chamber of the rifle empty; the whole point is to know that he could have killed Hitler if he wanted to but, as a civilized man, has refrained. But he then chambers a round and lines up the German leader in his sights again. Thorndyke does hate Hitler, everything he's done and stands for, and knows that he'd be doing his country, and the world, a great service by just pulling the trigger once more.
Just then, Thorndyke's presence is detected by a routine security patrol, and he's apprehended. He tries to explain about the "sporting stalk," but the idea of mere theoretical killing is beyond the Nazis comprehension, and so he must be guilty of attempting to assassinate their beloved F?hrer...
This is a terrific film, one that I recorded on DVD-R the last time FXM showed it, and I recommend it highly.
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"The War On Terror" enlisted and is fought solely by the military.
Oh, yeah? Add to the military the State Department, and Blackwater, and the FBI and the Iraqi Police Force (sch as it is).
This "war" is being fought by the politicians and bureaucrats; it's only the military personnel who're getting killed.
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I really enjoy Guys and Dolls, but I'm fascinated by a suggestion I've heard that Brando and Sinatra should have been cast in the opposite roles.
Gene Kelly was Sam Goldwyn's first choice to play Sky Masterson; despite the fact that the film was being distributed by MGM-Loew's (the only film of Goldwyn's ever handled by the company that bore his name in conjunction with Metro and Louis B. Mayer's), MGM refused to lend Kelly.
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So then would publicity photos taken and stamped say by ALEXANDER KAHLE, VANDAMM, SCOTTY WELBOURNE, SCHULYER GRAIL and other such notable photographer be qualified to be called " "PORTRAITS"? Also, the same photos then are "KEY"???
I've got a number of original borderless scene stills from THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD that are stamped "Please cedit Homer van Pelt, Warner Bros." on the back. They're not portraits, because the content of the still determines whether or not it's a portrait. A photo of your kid at bat in Poly League is a different thing from a portrait taken by a photographer in a studio under controlled conditions, whose purpose is to show him at his angelic best.
Also, I have been told that these specialized photos, because of clarity, detail and quality
are sent to special Media Clients....as you suggest...and for better transmission????
As I said, those still that were intended for reproduction were typically printed off the original negative for maximum clarity and -- importantly -- optimum contrast (dupes are typically just a bit washed-out).
Still not clear, why so many of these photos are 7 1/2 x 9 1/4 and BORDERLESS?
(space ?).
By physically cutting a standard 8" x 10" still to a smaller size, the studio (and photographer) could control the shot's composition, making it difficult for the newspaper or wire service to tinker with it.
Bear in mind, though, that not all studio photos were taken on 8" x 10" neagtives (the format of choice for the likes of Hurrell and Bull), but with 4" x 5" or 2" x 2" cameras like Leicas and Rolleiflexes. These negatives would sometimes be blown up to a smaller image in the middle of a sheet of 8" x 10" photographic paper (in order to reduce grain and maximize sharpness) and trimmed along the edges of the image to make it borderless.
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THE SEARCHERS is probably John Wayne's best film as an actor; he's actually quite good in it, and I've never been much of a fan of his.
That said, it's very easy to imagine the film directed by, William Wyler; Wyler was never the favorite of the cin?astes the way Ford was, mainly because he wasn't the visual stylist Ford was (granted, the film's every frame would not look like a Frederic Remington painting, as it does), but, if anything, Wyler would have added texture and subtext to the story that's still a bit lacking in the film. Just as importantly, Wyler never would have peppered the film with all that low comedy (and sentimentality) of which Ford was so fond, but which hurts the movie terribly.
Of course, Wyler wouldn't have worked with Wayne if he could avoid it, in that he resented deeply the actor's "heroic" onscreen exploits during World War II while so many others in the Hollywood community (Wyler and Ford included) served, often in harm's way.
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I'm sure even the most fervent true American conservatives will concede that both unions and Laizze Faire capitalists serve a good purpose.
Laissez-faire.
I agree. I never said, "Questioning the government is to give comfort to out enemies". I think you are referring to a statement I made about the Liberal Left criticizing every move this current administration makes in our war on terror. Criticism dripping with hatred for President Bush. That's what it's all about. It plays right into the hands of Al Quida.
Questioning whether we should have invaded Iraq is certainly legitimate. But now that we're in it, we must win it. We should all support any means to do so. If the country appears divided it just emboldens the enemy.
Incidentally, count me among those who think invading Iraq was a mistake.
Also, I'm no fan of President Bush, either.
There's no such thing as a "war on terror"; its as self-serving an oxymoron as the previous "war on cancer" and "war on poverty" were, each of which was nothing more than government's attempt to provide cover for its not being able to do much of anything to alleviate those conditions (how's that for a Libertarian position?).
The word "war" implies something that actually can be won, but when one or a handful of individuals, like the nineteen 9/11 hijackers, can inflict mass casualties virtually without weapons (remember the "old Klingon proverb" that four-thousand throats can be cut in a single night by a running man?), then it's a war that can never be won. Like the prologue narration the film KHARTOUM about the Mahdi's leading the British "on, and on, and on..." so this is the proverbial wild-goose chase, concocted to provide political cover for an adminstration that has no clue as to how to really fight terrorism, but sees it as the gift that keeps on giving in its relentless striving to pour billions of dollars into the coffers of defense contractors, and strip ordinary citizens of their (ostensibly) inalienable civil rights.
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There are borderless scene stills, just as there are borderless head-shots of actors as they appear in the films for which the photos were taken.
Collectively they are all "stills." The province of a studio's publicity department, that generic designation is the only way they were referred to. Only those shots specifically taken of actors, and others, for that purpose, generally by a studio's specialists in such work -- like George Hurrell and Clarence Sinclair Bull -- can be advertised legitimately as "portraits."
The standard National Screen Service bordered stills were made from dupe negatives supplied to NSS for that purpose, and were for distribution to theaters that would display them in glass cases fronting the sidewalk, where great quality was not required; the higher quality stills (sometimes with borders, sometimes without) were printed at the studio off the original negative (often by the photographer, himself) for distribution to newspapers and other press outlets which required the added quality for reproduction in print or wire-service transmission. Such stills would also, of course, go into the studio's own files as what's known as a "key" set.
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If you're referring to Welles the director, he didn't direct THE THIRD MAN (that was Carol Reed).
Try again.
Left Right Left.....
in General Discussions
Posted
"Socialists cry "Power to the people", and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean?power over people, power to the State."
Margaret Thatcher
What Thatcher really meant is that power to her kind of state, and not anybody else's.