Swithin
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Posts posted by Swithin
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Two John Ford films about Judge Priest. Stepin Fetchit plays Jeff in both films.
Judge Priest (1934)
The Sun Shines Bright (1953)
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Ann Doran was in The Man Who Turned to Stone with Charlotte Austin.
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The Long Day Closes (1992) -- features the song "Tammy"
The Jazz Singer (1927) -- features the song "My Mammy"
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Hedda Hopper was in Little Man, What Now? with Sarah Padden.
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4 minutes ago, txfilmfan said:
I like the Amadeus explanation for the aria's inspiration better: the Queen is his shrieking mother-in-law (played by Barbara Bryne in the film)
🙂
Same thing!😉
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14 minutes ago, EricJ said:
"Sarastro" is sort of a no-brainer if you spell it differently, and while the Z's believed in the "armies of the Night", it's no surprise that the enlightenedly misogynist Masonics turned it into a Queen, who in the opera tries to deceive our hero into darkness. A female one, of course.
Oh, and you DO know that the three first Masonic degree title initiations are silence, avoiding women, and calm in the face of lies/insults? (All of which Papageno promptly fails.) That's why police give criminals "the third degree", in case you've ever wondered.
Of course Zoroaster is the Greek version of his name. Nietzsche got it right -- almost -- as Zarathustra.
As everyone knows, Kubrick used R. Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra in 2001.
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1 hour ago, EricJ said:
Actually, No ™️: Mozart was a diehard Freemason, and the opera story was an allegory of the Masonic bible, right down to our heroes taking the first three Degree initiations to enter the "sacred temple". It's said that Mozart blasting their secrets all over Vienna's stage didn't go down well with the local rich-nobility Masons, which didn't help his financial problems any near the end.
The Masonic backstory liberally borrowed from ancient Zoroastrian mythology, which predicted that a ruler of Dark/Night forces was trying to destroy the temple of Light, and an ultimate showdown would eventually happen with Light winning. (Which leads to further details about who the Three Wise Men of Bethlehem may have been, but we'll save that discussion for the holidays. 🎄)
Yes, Mozart was a Freemason, in his later years, which accounts for the anti-Catholic nature of the opera (the Church was heavily anti-Masonic). Many musicologists believe that the Queen of the Night represents the Roman Catholic Church; and Sarastro represents the Enlightenment.
Regarding the Zoroastrian religion, almost every monotheistic religion borrowed from the Zoroastrians, especially Christianity. Judaism flirted with some of the Zoroastrian concepts briefly, after Cyrus freed the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, hence the hints of the Avestan concepts in the books of Daniel; but then the influence faded away.
Zoroastrianism is a good religion, currently practiced mostly by Parsees (i.e. Persians) in India. Shame that it was almost totally wiped out in Iran.
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Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Next: Hideous creature
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John McGiver was in Who's Minding the Store? with John Abbott.
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On 8/14/2022 at 8:08 PM, SansFin said:
We recently subscribed to BritBox through Amazon Prime. We both love many British programmes but BritBox's Roku app was so seriously flawed and their customer service so non-existent that we could not justify an independent subscription. They retain grotesque errors such as presenting the wrong Closed Captioning for some episodes and not maintaining the same season/episode listing as BBC but it is watchable.
I subscribed to BritBox early in the pandemic, particularly to watch an old series featuring a distant relative of mine. With a few exceptions, I've been kind of disappointed with the rest of the offerings. Either I've seen many of the shows, or there are too many detective series which go annoyingly into the tedious private lives and foibles of the detectives, rather than focusing on the cases. I like having access to the BBC Shakespeare series, and some of the old BBC masterpiece-type series, although much of that is available on YouTube. Also, the images on BritBox are not ideal -- they tend to be rather dark. I also find it annoying that, although they show "Good Morning Britain" every day, they only show less than an hour of what is a three-hour program.
Of course BritBox introduced me to the "Mrs. Brown's Boys" series, for which I am grateful. But I probably won't renew my subscription, now that I have Netflix as part of my mobile phone plan; and also have Amazon Prime; as well as Paramount Plus and Apple TV, the latter two only for a year, free.
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2 hours ago, EricJ said:
The Magic Flute (1975) says, hold my brånnvin:
Not so light, though. Remember the Queen of the Night represents the Roman Catholic Church!
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1 minute ago, Mr. Gorman said:
I just discovered some 20 minutes ago on YouTube that an uploader named 'Kevin Rafferty' added the final 15 minutes of the 1975 based-in-NYC movie APPLE PIE for all to see. It's all dancing. I've seen this movie probably 10 times courtesy of the old VHS release, but I've never seen the final 15 minutes of the movie uploaded to YouTube before.
Says it was uploaded in March and there's only 85 views.
I'd recommend anyone with even a passing interest in dancing on the streets of NYC in '75 to head for YouTube and type this in the 'Subject Line':
APPLE PIE (1975) - Street Dance!
It'll make you feel good. I promise. The credits start rolling at the 10:30 mark. 👍
I'd do a 'Link' if I knew how, but I guarantee you'll find it on YT if you go looking. Cheers.
Dancing in the Streets in 1975? That was the "Ford to City: Drop Dead" year! I was there -- many colleagues laid off. No cause for dancing! (But I did just look at the finale, very nice -- thanks!)
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Two with Cicely Courtneidge
Under Your Hat (1940)
The L-Shaped Room (1962)
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10 minutes ago, JamesJazGuitar said:
If there is one genre where subtitles shouldn't be much of an issue I would think it is horror; I.e. the visuals tend to drive horror films more so than the dialog.
One of the great losses to cinema history is the disappearance of the dubbed-in-English version of The Black Pit of Dr. M. The original in Spanish is available, with subtitles, but there was something special about the dubbed version of this great Mexican horror film.
The dubbed version includes one of the great lines in movie history, spoken by the voice of Dr. M., who has come back from the grave, playing his signature tune ("Csardas" by Monti), which tips off his shocked family, to whom he says:
"Yes it's me, I came back in Elmer's body."
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1 minute ago, Bronxgirl48 said:
Now I've heard everything!
I first heard the song (Chad Mitchell version) on the radio and went up to Woolworth's on Fordham Road to buy the 45. Later, when I became familiar with the New Faces score, where it originated, I heard that version.
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I don't think Halloween and Christmas are analogous at all. Christmas is a holiday; Halloween is more a state of mind. Although once a pagan festival, perhaps a period of heightened "supernatural intensity heralding the onset of winter,” it has evolved into a celebration/exploration of mystery, with darker and lighter sides, which should be commemorated more often. My favorite course in college (where I read Theology) was my Demonology course, where I learned a bit about the lovely chaps depicted below. I'm glad TCM is celebrating their like throughout the month of October (though I might have programmed the films somewhat differently). Horror films are the folk tales and myths of the 20th and 21st centuries.
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41 minutes ago, Shank Asu said:
I never realized that Bergman directed F&A, now i really will give it another shot. It took me a while to get into Wild Strawberries but i ultimately enjoyed it. The Seventh Seal i need to re-watch. Found the Criterion DVD on Amazon on sale for $6 a few years back and couldn't say no, but it's just been sitting on a shelf since then.
Try Smiles of a Summer Night (1955). It's about as light and fluffy as Bergman gets. It was the basis of the Sondheim musical, A Little Night Music. Woody Allen's A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy is also loosely based on it.
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Helen Westley was in House of Rothschild with Florence Arliss.
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6 minutes ago, Eucalpytus P. Millstone said:
Actually the BFI restoration is circa 2007.
The 2012 restoration was done by Hammer Films, which used film reels from Japan.
The "Holy Grail" for lovers of Horror of Dracula in particular and Hammer Film fans in general.
A still of a moment that does not appear in any of the releases of Dracula or Horror of Dracula.
Domo arigato, National Film Center in Japan!
Actually, what I don't understand is, what is the sense of Dracula scratching his face off, especially if it's disintegrating anyway? Maybe whoever did the edit was making a logical choice, i.e. why would anyone scratch off their face?
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Leslie Howard (He played -- and directed -- Hamlet on Broadway in 1936. At the same time he was playing at the Imperial Theatre, John Gielgud was playing Hamlet on Broadway at the Empire Theatre.)
Next: Funny eyes
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Robert Greig (Played a butler or valet around 20 times)
Next: Played a Shakespearean queen
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26 minutes ago, NipkowDisc said:
plus the 2012 BFI restoration has the film's original british title Dracula with a very nice embellished D in the title. there is no Horror Of in the original british title.
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37 minutes ago, Eucalpytus P. Millstone said:
Ahhh, but was it the entire "climactic sunlight disintegration" -- showing Count Dracula (Christopher Lee) tearing the flesh from his face?
It seemed so to me, but let someone else weigh in with an opinion.
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16 hours ago, jaragon said:
MIchael Pataki plays a really vicious vampire in "Grave of the Vampire" (1972) in the opening scene he kills a man and rapes his girlfriend who late gives birth to a blood drinking baby ?! The child grows up to be cool William Smith who hunts down his "father" for revenge. A very 1970s low budget horror film - I recognize the music from "Equinox"
I haven't seen this film for a long time, but I remember it fondly. I particularly remember one line: The students are at some sort of reception out on the lawn, and one of them says something like: "This cake is so good, I'm surprised dead people haven't figured out a way to eat it."
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The Men Have It
in Games and Trivia
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Herbert Anderson was in Navy Blues (1941) with Jack Oakie.