CineSage_jr
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Posts posted by CineSage_jr
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Does anyone really care about The African Queen anymore? Canadian or otherwise?
Interesting juxtaposition of elements in the above, in that Charlie Allnut's nationality was, in C.S. Forrester's novel, British, but was changed to a Canadian to accomodate the all-too-American accent of Humphrey Bogart.
As for Rose Sayer, she remained British, on the theory that, to most Yanks, Hepburn's hoity-toity (and thoroughly atypical) Connecticut tones would seem sufficiently, well, hoity-toity for her to pass as a Brit.
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The raising of Lazarus is surely the best scene in the film, but it's deeply undercut both by the inclusion of unnecessary dialogue (Bar Amand: "Do you see? He's alive!"), and choppy music-editing where the cue Alfred Newman wrote specifically for this scene transitions awkwardly into his music from THE ROBE (before doing the same thing with the even more inappropriate Messiah by H?ndel).
There is a problem with any film about Jesus, however, that even a filmmaker as accomplished as George Stevens, and writer as skilled as Carl Sandburg, couldn't overcome. It's best expressed by paraphrasing the line that concludes Franz Werfel's prologue to his novel, The Song of Bernadette:
For those who believe, no movie about Jesus is necessary; for those who do not believe, no movie about Jesus is wanted.
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Well-written it may be, but you didn't include the writer's by-line, or in what publication it appeared.
Credit where credit's due.
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How does one transfer frame images from a DVD into one's computer, for posting or filing?
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Take a hike, son.
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These are excellent frame blow-ups; did you do them yourself off DVDs, or did you find them online?
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It's not just you. Is it the sound mixers??? You can hear everything but the dialogue. Car doors slamming, guns, boom boom boom, every extraneous noise. An attempt to make movies more "real?" Maybe they don't want us to hear the less than good dialogue....
The first consideration, it seems to me, is that the audience HEAR the actors! Certainly is a RULE for stage actors!
It's the producers, directors and studio executives who're afraid that that the prized teenage audience will dry up if the Foley isn't blowing out people's eardrums.
Still, if the above suspects weren't around to demand earsplitting sound effects, the Foley "artists" would do it anyway, because they think their craft is more important than it really is.
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...AND INVITE EVERYONE WHO'S EVER SEEN CITIZEN KANE
The auction house says the golden statuette could fetch between $800,000 and $1.2m when it goes under the hammer in December."
That's even more than my film memorabilia's worth.
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My assessment of the film, is that it is the most beautiful looking film ever made. I have little else to say about it, though.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that (I don't think it's in the league of Jack Cardiff's work on BLACK NARCISSUS or, during the widescreen era, his cinematography for THE VIKINGS, or Freddie Young's camerawork on LAWRENCE OF ARABIA) but, considering that George Stevens's longtime cinematographer, William Mellor, died during production and had to be replaced by Loyal Griggs (SHANE, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS), it's a wonder that GSET is as consistently beautiful as it is.
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Let me take a wild stab at your background: when you get up in the morning, go to the bathroom and look into the mirror, you see a nice, bright white face staring back at you.
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That was only true when the Canadian dollar wasn't worth the wear and tear that country's coins took on the lining of your pocket.
Now that, thanks to the idiotic monetary, tax and trade policies of the Bush administration, the $CAN is worth more than the $US, you should be groveling at the feet of the Canucks, begging them to buy and rent US movies and TV shows to help even out the balance of trade and forestall foreign domination of every last US financial institution.
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If Mr Robin has actually accused the MPAA of doing this, then it's merely an assertion, not a proven fact. When and if Mr Robin backs up those assertions in a court of law, then you can quote them, and him, without having to preface them with that pesky word "alleged."
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The first true all-talking film was Warner's LIGHTS OF NEW YORK (1928). It was, of course, a Vitaphone sound-on-disc film.
Ironically, sound-on-disc lives again, as many, if not most, theatres now use the Sony CD-projector interlock system in which the theaters are provided with a disc of the film's digital soundtrack that is played separately from the print, itself.
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Because the film fell farther and farther behind schedule, Lean actually directed part of GSET, uncredited, though George Stevens deserves most of the credit -- and blame.
It is a visually exquisite film, and contrary to what you write, Alfred Newman's score is largely intact (the film was re-cut many, many times, often confusing the narrative -- in one version, Judas is in two places at once, and actually commits suicide twice; as the film became shorter, more of Newman's music was inserted, if you can believe it. The really egregious example of Stevens's musical sensibility running roughshod over Newman's was in the director's insistence that H?ndel's Messiah be used during the Act I and Act II finales, in place of the wonderful, appropriate choral pieces Newman wrote -- all the music Newman wrote, including the choruses, are on the 3-CD set from Var?se Sarabande http://www.deepdiscount.com/viewproduct.htm?productId=5902409 -- plus sections of Newman's music from THE ROBE after the Raising of Lazarus).
Toni Vellani, who was Stevens's longtime associate producer, under whom I studied, told me that the director had "always intended to use H?ndel's Messiah" in the film, but that's rubbish; the very fact that Newman wrote and recorded his own choral material demonstrate that that was the original scoring, with the H?ndel an ill-considered, dreadful secong-guessing of himself on the part of Stevens.
If you want to read more about the torturous, and ultimately poisonous, relationship between Newman and Stevens, I heartily recommend Hollywood Holyland, by Newman's longtime assistant and collaborator, Ken Darby, which details the day-to-day madness that was the scoring of THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD
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Does that look like a Kettle to you (sex undetermined, anyway)?
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Yep, that's what it's from.
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I seem to recall that, fifty years ago, people used to make the same complaints about Marlon Brando.
But you're right: despite the fact that film dialogue, music and effects are recorded on noiseless digital soundtracks, acting as gotten so ludicrously minimalistic, and actors so un-stentorian, while Foley (sound effects) have become so bombastically overdone (and is mixed in at such an unholy loud level) that the balance between the various elements that make up a finished soundtrack has been thrown totally askew.
Not that most modern films are worth time, trouble and expense of watching, anyway.
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Major right wingers were Louis B. Mayer, Mary Pickford, John Wayne, Irene Dunne, Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart. They were conservative in their politics (although not in the sense of modern conservatism), which primarily meant avid anti-Communism.
Mayer was a rabid right-winger (even breaking off all contact with his friend and patron, William Randolph Hearst, when the latter declared his intention to support Franklin Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election. The break resulted in Hearst's moving his Cosmopolitan Productions from MGM to Warner Bros., including physically transporting Marion Davies's luxurious studio bungalow from the Metro lot in Culver City, to Warner's in Burbank).
Dunne, Cooper and, to a lesser extent, Stewart, were far less rabid than Mayer, Wayne, Adolphe Menjou or Ward Bond. Cooper, in particular, never seemed to begrudge anyone his or her politics, and made only bland, non-committal statatments when he was asked to testify before HUAC as a "friendly witness."
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...AND, THANKS TO WARNER BROS.' LAWYERS, YOU NEVER WILL
Outrageously and inexplicably, Warner's legal department (who ultimately call all the shots as to the studio's DVD content) nixed an informational prologue on the DVD and its bonus materials putting Jolson's apperance in blackface into historical and cultural context.
It seems inconceivable that the lawyers would resist inclusion of an explanation that the form of live theatrical entertainment known as minstrelsy was a 19th century convention that predated the evolution of modern concepts of racially-insensitive caricatures. All it needed to say is that, as of 1927, when THE JAZZ SINGER was translated from Samson Raphaelson's play into a motion picture, the notion that smearing a white man's face and hands in bootblack could give offense (or that the sensibilities of those caricatured were even worth considering) was as alien as the concept of conflict-of-interest was during the U.S. Civil War, when members of Congress, who had the Constitutional power to declare war, commonly held stock in, or owned outright, munitions companies.
Warner's corporate timidity and short-sightedness have unconscionably set back the understanding of the place the film has in the larger American culture; they have also probably managed to hobble the film's sales prospects. What are they afraid of, anyway, being sued by the Klu Klux Klan?
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Rex Thompson (who played Louis Leonowens in THE KING AND I) was King Edward VI, and Kathleen Byron (from BLACK NARCISSUS and A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH) was Lady Anne Seymour.
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A lecher: an old man with too keen an eye for young ladies.
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It is Gina Lollobrigida (or the Queen of Sheba; I can never tell them apart).
The restaurant in which you saw the photo, by the way, was where Saturday Night Live's Phil Hartman and his wife, Brynn, had their last dinner, on May 28, 1998, after which she murdered him and killed herself in their bedroom.
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This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,--
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
-- William Shakespeare, "King Richard II," Act 2 scene 1
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And there are both a Fred and Wilma in The Flintstones.
hoping it posts
in Games and Trivia
Posted
Definitely not Stroheim.