CineSage_jr

Boy, you've got a good memory. And the answer is, no, though it does remain bilge, however innocently it is perpetrated.

Not surprising, though it is, in any any case, a transliteration of a native language that doesn't employ the Roman alphabet (and those are usually a bit flexible); therefore, any transliteration will serve, as long as it results in the correct pronunciation.

Friday's presentation was of a super hi-def record of the 6K-line scan of the film elements that went into the making of the DVD, not the commercial DVD, itself. By contrast, last night's Academy screening of FUNNY GIRL (a film I don't like much, despite my reverence for the work of William Wyler) used a print made a few years ago during the short-lived revival of dye-transfer IB Technicolor. It was (to echo la Streisand) simply gorgeous -- there's no other way to describe it (if only THE SEARCHERS had been done up this way). The sad thing is, the process had been advanced to the point at which Technicolor could make prints for about $.05/foot of film; for a typical 10000-foot film (111.11 minutes), that means a cost of only $500 per print (versus $35,000 per print by standard photochemical Eastman process -- an immense saving). So, why aren't we all being treated to new IB Technicolor prints at all our local Bijous and multiplexes? That's the sad part. Unlike the old days, where a studio might need a couple-hundfed prints, which would then ben sent to other theaters after the first run ended (with replacement prints run off as needed), studios today release films in 2000, 3000, 4000 theaters simultaneously, and Technicolor simply cannot produce that many prints in the time a studio gives them, from "answer print" (when the final version of the film is "locked in") to release date (yes, Technicolor could build more equipment, and hire more workers, but there's no guarantee that, in the capricious world of Hollywood, all that capital investment might not go for naught if the economics of film processing, or the improvement of digital technology suddenly superseded it). Technicolor simply couldn't guarantee the studios that they'd have all the prints the studios needed, when then they needed them, and the studios, understandably, couldn't gamble on anything less than that. A great pity.

Sanders in ALL ABOUT EVE. No other actor, or character, is even remotely close (thanks to Joe Mankiwicz's magnificent script), though Sanders did make a career out of playing them. Of course, Sanders did win an Oscar for playing Addison deWitt, which was richly deserved.

Remember, you're not permitted to punch a horse in the jaw unless you're called "Mongo."

That's an interesting question. Playing characters multiple times isn't terribly common, and I can't think of anyone who did it over a 28-year period, as Hale did. Some other examples (though the second time is usually little more than a cameo): Raymond Massey as Abraham Lincoln (ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS, 1940; and HOW THE WEST WAS WON, 1963). James Cagney as George M. Cohan (YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, 1942; and THE SEVEN LITTLE FOYS, 1955). Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff as, respectively, McGinty and "The Boss," in THE GREAT McGINTY, 1940; and THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK, 1944). Peter O'Toole as King Henry II in BECKET, 1964; and THE LION IN WINTER, 1968.

HORSEFEATHERS.

Enrico Caruso.

I had the pleasure of meeting the lovely Anne Francis at last night's Motion Picture Academy screening of FUNNY GIRL. I regret that I forgot to tell her that my hometown of Peekskill, NY, is only about fifteen minutes from where she grew up in Ossining (oh, well, that essentila information didn't cause Peter Falk -- another Ossining native -- and me to bond, either). A lot people who've been in the entertainment business a long time get rather jaded and/or blas?, but not her. Besides being genuinely friendly, warm, funny ande intelligent, Miss Francis retains her enthusiasm for her work, admiration for the countless craftspeople who're 95% of the iceberg the public never sees and seldom think about, and the fans who either embrace an actor -- or don't. PS: In the panel discussion that preceded the film, she made a point to mention that biographies of her that claim her real name is "Anne Marvik" are wrong, as is the assertion that she sued Columbia Pictures over the way her FUNNY GIRL part was severely truncated (as though actors have in their contracts to demand that their parts not be cut, and the right to seek redress if they are). Obviously, she was very unhappy about the version of her performance that reached the screen, but that's just part of ther actor's life. You take the bitter with the sweet.

Best Picture: 1953: The Greatest Show on Earth (easily the worst Best Picture winner ever!) won out over two classics--High Noon and The Quiet Man. And IVANHOE and ABOVE AND BEYOND.

Yup, that's definitely TO EACH HIS OWN, which played last week ast the L.A. County Museum of Art as part of its Olivia deHavilland retrospective.

Vandamm (James Mason) slugging his henchman, Leonard (Martin Landau) in NORTH BY NORTHWEST, after the latter's demonstrated Eve's blank-filled pistol on the former. Of course, since the shot's done from Leonard's point of view, it's as though Vandamm's punching the whole audience in the mouth.

OK, here's another quiz question. Looking at the 1920s films of Douglas Fairbanks and the 1930s films of Errol Flynn, it's easy to see that the Flynn movies were heavily influenced by Fairbanks. One performer even played the same part in both a Fairbanks and Flynn movie. It?s a significant role in both films. Who was the actor or actress? And what was the part he or she played? Alan Hale (Sr) played Little John in both the 1922 Fairbanks version, and the 1938 Flynn film (and, yet again, in the 1950 ROGUES OF SHERWOOD FOREST, which starred John Derek).

I'm making a pilgrimage to the famous Hollywood Forever, if you've been there, where can i find where Marion Davies and "Dagwood" are buried? Dagwood? Do you mean Arthur Lake?

Holliman said that he and Dean had gotten to be pretty good friends during the filming of GIANT in 1955. One off-day, Dean was out driving near Marfa, Texas, where the film was being shot, and came upon a traffic accident. I believe it must've been a one-car crash, and the driver, an African-American man, was lying at the side of the road, badly injured. This being (extremely) rural Texas, and 1955, there was no general sense of urgency on the part of the authorities to dispatch an ambulance to pick up a black man and take him to hospital. Dean (who apparently could do nothing for the man medically) stood over him for over ninety minutes, keeping himself between the victim and the Texas sun, so that he would not suffer from the heat in addition to his injuries. Quite something, really. It transcends all the mystique that's grown up around Dean and makes him more human than anything else I've ever heard about him. PS: Holliman looks great; he turns 68 in September, but appears about ten years younger.

Most of the shouting about Kane has more to do with the cinematic and technical firsts that it brought to movies. Like visible ceilings (which allowed for the placement of lights and microphones) and deep focus photgraphy. None of these things were devised for CITIZEN KANE, or are unique to the film; Welles simply utilized them to a greater extent than did most films of the period and was, in collaboration with cinematograher Gregg Toland and art director Van Nest Polglase, able to employ them as a unified whole that set the film apart, visually, from its contemporaries. I like the flashback device used to move the story along, with the reporter interviewing the people who knew Kane to find the meaning of Rosebud. Ebert makes a good point in his DVD commentary: the way the narrative is structured, you never quite know where you are in the movie when you come into it late. Ebert keeps referring to Joseph Cotten's character as "Jebediah" Leland, instead of "Jedediah"; a little thing, perhaps, but it seems all too consistent with a man who inexplicably likes to brag that he wrote the screenplay to BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS.

The use of the term was just one more subtle means of illustrating the cultural divide between the nuns' and their hosts.

I think that Ingrid Bergman was the most beautiful. She was also very tall, and i loved her dark hair. Ingrid Bergman -- dark hair? Which Ingrid Bergman are you talking about? Surely not the one in CASABLANCA.

This evening, John Ford's THE SEARCHERS was screened at the Motion Picture Academy in conjunction with the film's fiftieth anniversary, and the restoration undertaken by Warner Bros. for the new DVD. I'm afraid I can't comment authoritatively on the results of that restoration, because Warner's apparently chose not to strike an actual film print for the occasion; as a consequence, the film was, in effect, sabotaged by the limitation of high-definition digital projection technology. Cinematgrapher Winton C. Hoch's extraordinary VistaVision photography was, therefore, robbed of its full imact, due to the digital process's inferior brightness, resolution and contrast and, in this case, misadjusted color. The film is still a masterpiece; nothing will ever change that. George Lucas likes to claim that digital projection is the equal of film. Don't you believe him. it may be one day, but not now. The highlight of the evening was, in any case, the panel discussion that preceded the screening: Harry ("Dobe") Carey, Jr. ("Brad Jorgenson"); Pippa Scott ("Lucy Edwards"); Lana Wood ("Debbie Edwards" as a child); Peter Bogdanovich; and John Ford's grandson, Dan Ford. Most of their stories I'd heard before, but the real treat was meeting Golden Boot Award-winner Carey (a longtime friend of one of my oldeest and closest friends, though I'd never met him before), an utterly charming and sweet man who loves to talk about his work, that of his father, Harry, Sr., and his mother, who plays "Mrs Jorgenson" in THE SEARCHERS. Oh, and I ran into actor Earl Holliman in the garage under the Academy building. We had a very nice conversation. I thanked him for telling a very touching story about James Dean at the Academy's screening of GIANT lst summer. He agreed with me that it's something not widely known about Dean, and I told him that it probably humanizes him more than all the legends that have grown around Dean since his death.

During the period from World War I through the mid-1920s, a "Flapper" was a young woman characterized by independence and a lack of inhibition, though it was largely a question of individual rejection of convention (not dissimilar to what "Beatniks" were to the late 1950s, or "Hippies" the late 1960s), rather than part of an organized social or political movement (such as women's suffrage, which brought about women's right to vote in the U.S. in 1920). Nowadays "Flappers" are associated with certain 1920s styles, such as fringed sack dresses, de-emphasized bustlines, marcelled and bobbed hairstyles, and devotion to what were then considered immodest dance crazes, such as the Charleston.

Let's not forget Darth Vader, who quite rightly wanted his son to join the family business.

My top choice: THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD ('38) was the ultimate in breathtaking technicolor photography. Has never been surpassed, IMO. Even though ROBIN HOOD's my all-time favorite film, I wouldn't go that far. Color photography was still evolving in 1938 (it still is now, though not necessarily for the better), and ROBIN HOOD's was certainly surpassed as early as the next year with GWTW (though, to be fair, Technicolor had improved its process in that year, which gave the cinemtographers of later films an advantage). That's not to say that RH isn't breathtaking; the color certainly adds to its fairy-tale-like quality, but it's the quality of the overall filmmaking, from script, to casting, to performances, to direction, that make it a great film -- I first saw the film when I was in college. It was on an old b&w TV, and I still fell in love with it instantly. That's great.

No that's fine with me. I'm much happier posing a question when the mood's upon me, anyway and, with the bad cold I've had for most of the week, that mood's been largely absent.

Well, Gregory Peck drives out the MGM gate and goes back to 20th Century-Fox. Seriously, Paul (Peck's) mother, Mrs Scott (Gladys Cooper), falls ill and eventually dies. Just as she predicted, three of the five family heirs to the mine vote to sell -- until they learn that Mrs Scott had left a 1/5 interest of the mine to Mary (Greer Garson), who wishes to honor her benefactor, and the whole family, by standing up against the rest in refusing to sell her share. Mary persuades Paul's sister, Connie (Marsha Hunt) that keeping the mine would be the first really selfless thing she's ever done in her life. The three, (Mary, Paul and Connie) now have the majority, and prevent the mine from being sold. As Mary leaves after the vote, Paul's wife, Louise (Jessica Tandy) warns him that if he follows Mary out the door, their marriage is over. Paul says that's fine, but that he'll be taking their son, Paulie (Dean Stockwell) with him. Paul, Mary and Paulie are reunited and, we presume, become a happy family once Paul's divorce from Louise becomes final.

Both films are adaptations of novels by James M. Cain, though DOUBLE INDEMNITY is the infinitely superior one.