Swithin
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Posts posted by Swithin
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Well, we disagree. My favorite Streep role is actually her performance as Karen Blixen in Out of Africa.
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Totally agree with you. Btw, I had a friend in London who was the son of Greer Garson's first husband (Edward Snelson).
Every bit part in the movie is perfectly played. I tried to look up the church organist who plays hymns for Colman and Peters. Although so many uncredited cast members have been added to IMDB, that actor doesn't seem to be listed. Like the rest, he was wonderful.
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It's one of my favorites, too. Watching the end of it today, I had two thoughts: home come the key to the cottege worked, after all those years? And wasn't anyone living there? Also that blossom-laden branch was as it had been years earlier! But these are points I bring up out of familiarity and affection for one of the greatest of films.
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Well, I must be having fun 'cause I didn''t realize that it's been three years! She was up for the 2010 Oscar, so I guess I saw the film in late 2009/early 2010.
I love Dame Wendy. I saw her on stage in The Importance of Being Earnest and Driving Miss Daisy. Great actress, on stage and screen.
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Well, I think it may have been a combination of things, but guilt was written about alot at the time. Bergman was nominated again a few years later, for Autumn Sonata, in which she was brilliant, but she didn't win. Regarding Streep and this year, I think Streep won for pure best performance this year. It had been expected that Viola Davis would win. I certainly think Streep should have won for her portrayal of Julia Child last year, over that boring performance by the interminably tedious Sandra Bullock, who did win.
Of course, there have always been make up Oscars -- for Bette, Kate, et. al. -- for having been overlooked for better performances, but Streep's this year was indeed for best performance.
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She was very good in the film. But there was still "guilt" around Hollywood, despite the earlier Oscar. In fact, the story of the affair and her snub had been discussed more openly since the Anastasia Oscar. It was definitely the talk in the press at the time, as to part of the reason she won the Murder Oscar.
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The name Pyewackett comes from the UK witch hunts of the 17th century. It was the name of a "familiar," or witch's assistant: an imp, or evil spirit, frequently taking the form of a cat,
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Guilt, plain and simple; Hollywood still felt guilty for treating Bergman the way they did, as a result of having an affair and a child with Rossellini, while she was still married to Dr. Lindstrom. I remember the Oscar ceremony that year. In her acceptance speech, I recall Bergman saying that Valentina Cortese should have won for Day for Night.
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Three horror-movie cats of note:
Karloff's cat in The Black Cat, that Bela Lugosi is terrified of;
The cat representing Bast, the Egyptian cat-goddess, in The Mummy;
And, most creepy of all, the cat in one of the stories in Torture Garden, that will lead you to valuable coins if you provide corpses for it to feast on.
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Two additional favorites:
*The Last Hurrah*, though between the lines, it's as much about the film industry as about politics;
*Every Day's a Holiday*, a great, lesser-known Mae West movie, which features Louis Armstrong leading a political parade.
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Very amusing, Miss W., although I didn't know about the beer. I have a Canadian cousin -- my father's first cousin -- who is a film director/producer in England. He's from Toronto, so I know a bit about Canada. But ... Is it acceptable to called HM The Queen "titular?"
I'm not a big fan of the TV show "House," but I do recall one episode whereby a man is admitted to the hospital for an injury. They are struck by the fact that he's always smiling and happy. Dr. House says, "maybe he's just Canadian." But it turns out he has a disease that has an unusual effect on his brain!
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Dr. Couillie -- Laurence Criner in *King of the Zombies* (1941)
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Favorite political movie: *Wilson*, one of the great movies of all time, with a real old-fashioned many-balloted convention.
As a New Yorker, I have a soft spot for *Sunrise at Campobello*, particularly the final scene, when FDR stands at the podium to nominate Al Smith, while the best NYC song ever --"The Sidewalks of New York" -- is playing.
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So many to sift through, but these certainly stand out:
Isabel Adjani in The Story of Adele H
Donald Sutherland in The Day of the Locust
Geraldine Page in Interiors
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He's a very sweet man, was a great friend of Kate Hepburn's, worked with her on several projects in addition to Lion in Winter. To think he was also little Ptolemy in Caesar in Cleopatra !
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I love books and have (I think) a great personal library, but I think e-books are a brilliant enhancement. I can carry around hundreds of books and magazines when I travel, and many of them are free, because my arcane tastes include aged public domain titles, many of which are free on iBooks and Kindle.
My degree is in History of Religions, and I studied the cultures of Sumer and Ancient Mesopotamia, among other subjects. Do you think, when Cunieform tablets were superseded, the people said wistfully, "oh, I really miss carrying around those two-ton tablets!"
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A good guest host (has he ever been on?) would be *Anthony Harvey*, who directed The Lion in Winter and edited many important films, including a few for Kubrick (e.g. Dr. Strangelove, Lolita ). He also played Ptolemy, Vivian Leigh's little brother, in Caesar and Cleopatra. He lives out on Long Island -- I know him pretty well. He'd be great on TCM.
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That is a great line!
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RM, I think the point is that if TCM bans you, using your IP address, you would need to go elsewhere -- like a library where you can get free access -- to log on, with a different IP address. I would actually be interested in knowing -- TCM would know this -- if any of the posters here with different names have the same address. If so, I would guess they are probably the same person, not a different poster in the same household.
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*Drood* was on December 5. Many of us had been requesting it, I took it's debut as a response to requests and discussions on this board. I recorded it. Yes, it's horror genre -- that's how I first saw it, years ago, on the old Shock Theater television series in NY.
I think I agree with you about the three films you mention. Of course the best example of hysterical laughter in a film is in The Mummy (1932), when Bramwell Fletcher laughs himself to death. But that's not comedy, it's pure horror/terror: "He went for a little walk...you should have seen his face!"
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In the threads which address TCM hosts, etc., I generally come down on the side of not wanting too much chat -- from Robert O., or Ben, or anyone (a little goes a long way). But I think it would be interesting to show a bunch of zombie films and have a scholar discuss the the concept of zombies in folklore/tradition, particularly in Haiti, and how the films reflect that. It's a fascinating subject which has a body of scholarship to turn to (Metraux' book et. al.) as well as sensationalist literature, including Seabrook's The Magic Island, an early work which helped introduce the concept into the American consciousness.
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Zombies can't eat salt. in anthropologist Alfred Metraux' seminal book, *Voodoo in Haiti*, one of my favorite books in college, Metraux reports: "If imprudently they are given a plate which contains even a grain of salt the fog which cloaks their minds instantly clears away and they become conscious of their terrible servitude. Realization rouses in them a vast rage and an ungovernable desire for vengeance. They hurl themselves on their master, kill him, destroy his property and then go in search of their tombs."
Or, to put it in film terms, as Samantha says to Jeff in *King of the Zombies*, "If a zombie eats salt, he dries up and gets dead again."
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Like many cast members of Werewolf of London, Hobson was also in the same director's (Stuart Walker's) other 1935 film, the atmospheric Mystery of Edwin Drood.
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Didn't know that, you're right, just looked it up. Valerie had a bit of trouble later in life -- her husband was John Profumo.
Famous Movie Cats
in General Discussions
Posted
Just remembered another of my favorite cat scenes. It's a brief scene with Victor Francen in *The Mask of Dimitrios.* Peter Lorre goes to see Francen, who introduces and talks about his cats Abelard and Eloise, two Siamese, I believe. It's a great scene; Francen's performance is brilliant, and the cats are sweet.