Swithin
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Posts posted by Swithin
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Jackson Heights is very hot now I hear, and all those great Indian restaurants! I lived in LIC from around 1981-2002. Nearest subway stops were Court House Square on the 7, and Ely Ave. on the E.F (until they changed that). They built the Citicorp bldg. while I lived there, that was a couple of blocks away. I lived on 45th Rd./21st St., right near P.S. 1, if you know where that is.
I was coming home from work one day in May, many years ago. I noticed when I arrived at the Court House Square station that there was snow on the station's window panes. Then I saw that all the shops had signs in Yiddish, then I saw a director's chair which said "Mr. Mazursky." They were filming Enemies: A Love Story. Court Square of the 1980s, under the El, passed for Jerome Avenue in the Bronx of an earlier era.
When they shot Someone to Watch Over Me on my block, the lights lit up my apartment. LIC was a quiet neighborhood, especially at night, and very near Manhattan, so good for film locations.
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I forgot about the New Yorker! I grew up in the Bronx, and although I've lived in Long Island City Queens, and then Manhattan for ages, Brooklyn was and remains the farthest point on the planet to me. I occasionally go to BAM if there's something I really want to see; but I haven't ever been to Brooklyn to see a film since I saw Harold and Maude at the Brooklyn Heights cinema. I had seen HandM when it opened at the Loew's Paradise in 1971 and became a groupie (an original cult member). One of its early returns to NYC was to Brooklyn Heights, so I had no choice but to go to Brooklyn.
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In those pre-video days, there were many wonderful revival houses in NYC. My favorite, despite the generally poor prints and rear projection, was the Theater 80 St. Marks. There was such a feel of the love of cinema there. They used to provide free coffee at the really nice snack bar. The place was run and owned by Howard Otway, who got Gloria Swanson to officiate at the opening of the film revivals series in 1971 (a few years before I became a regular audience member).
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/21/obituaries/howard-otway-72-ran-revival-theater.html
After Otway's death, the film reverted to a theater for live performance -- the excellent Pearl Theater Company. A renovation is planned.
Other revival houses in Manhattan in the '70s/80s were the Elgin (now the Joyce, largely used for live dance performance) and the Thalia, which I visited often. They were fine, but despite the great films, they didn't have the spirit of the Theater 80.
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That Show Boat (the best of all musical films) used to be shown regularly at the old Theater 80 St. Marks in the East Village. That's where I first saw it, in the early 1970s, I think, sometimes on a double bill with the old Cimarron. There were many 16 mm prints of the 1936 Show Boat floating around in those days -- we had one where I worked. They were not exactly pristine prints, but it's hard for the beauty of that film not to shine through.
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No need to be sorry, we all have our likes and dislikes. I know The Great Kate is not to everyone's taste.
I sometimes like to resort to what seems to be the ultimate sacrilege on this board: I think Barbara Stanwyck is overrated! I like her and her movies well enough, I just think the slovenly devotion to her overrated self could be more deservedly showered on better Brooklyn blondes, like Mae West or Joan Blondell. Or even Brooklyn brunettes, like Susan Hayward and Helen Westley.
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Golly, Bebe, you've got three of my faves on your "can't watch" list: Cagney, Garson, and Kate Hepburn! Two actors whom I don't like are Bing Crosby and Gene Kelly.
Robert Mitchem, whom you like, is absolutely reviled by a few people I know.
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I didn't know what it was either. I thought it had something to do with the Second Vatican Council (aka Vatican II)!
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Another shame for you, The Return of the Seacaucus Seven is John Sayles' best film.
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Salo is actually quite an affecting movie, there is beauty amid the ****.
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But it also has the number 7 in the title!
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I understand there are people who have an aversion to a particular actor -- mine is Roberto Benigni -- but Horst Bucholtz?? Actually, Bucholtz was in One, Two, Three; so he doubly would not see that film; although Mr. Krieger, according to your interpretation, he might see it, but not One, Two, Three, Part Two.
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It's a shame you have a thing against the number 2. Two Women is a powerful film, one of Sophia Loren's greatest -- her Oscar winner. Too bad you can't watch it.
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I like Bill Hader. Of course Saturday Night Live isn't what it used to be. They do impersonations and get all excited if it seems a little like the real thing, but it's not always funny. I've seen Bill H. in my neighborhood -- the Upper West Side of Manhattan/West 60s.
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This is so sad. In addition to his screen credits, he had a great stage career. I saw him play Nathan Detroit in a highly acclaimed revival of Guys and Dolls at London's National Theatre, around 1982.
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Seven Year Itch ?
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I love Alice Brady. She also had a brilliant career on the stage, from Gilbert and Sullivan to playing Lavinia in the original Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra. Perhaps her best-known film line, from In Old Chicago (for which she won an Oscar): "We O'Leary's are a strange tribe... and what we set out to do, we finish."
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*Carry on Teacher*
Next: campaign rally with singing
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*Black Orpheus*
Edinburgh Castle depicted in the 20th century
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Krieger, as you said, the 1956 *Man Who Knew too Much* is a great example of music as a plot device. The Albert Hall symphony which gives the cue to the assassin; "Que Sera Sera," which not only is deeply involved in the scene, it's title comes from Dr. Faustus, by Marlowe, which clearly hints at Hitchcock's derision of fundamentalist religion: the bad guy (or one of them), is a fundamentalist minister. And further, the hymn sung in Ambrose Chapel is the bleakest of Good Friday hymns, sung on a Monday by very plainly dressed, puritanical parishoners. Check out this article, which give a brilliant assessment of the meaning of that hymn in the context of the movie:
http://labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/ambrose_chapel.html
Hitchcock's villains are often people who appear to be pillars of society. In the case of the 1956 Man Who Knew too Much, it's the (mostly Wesleyan church) he goes after. The fact that an Anglo-Catholic would take such pains to set that scene in a chapel, and not in a Catholic or Church of England setting, leads us to Hitchcock's meaning. He was giving us his opinion of Born Again Christianity!
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Burgess Meredith's birthday is on November 16. He would be a great SOTM. TCM could show *The Day of the Locust*, an amazing and terrifying film about classic Hollywood that is not as appreciated as it should be. A film by the way that, because of its subject, cries out to be shown on TCM (has it ever been shown on TCM?)
I had some very pleasant dealings with Burgess 15 years ago. He even sent me a present -- a CD featuring his recordings of gold mining songs of the Old West: "Xmas with the Golddiggers, sung by Burgess Meredith and His Gang".
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It was, I haven't seen the film in ages, but I can still visualize the crazed expression on Paxinou's face as she pushes Wanda Hendrix out of the window.
Your thread...
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It is indeed. It's a great film, not as well known as it should be. Perhaps one of the first horror films to deal with the ethical use of science. (Violet Kemble Cooper to Boris Karloff at the end: "My son, you have broken the first rule of science," as she smashes the antidote, causing her son's fiery death.)
Your thread, Mr. 6's.
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Yes, Roughly Speaking was based on Louise Randall Pierson's autobiography. Louise was played by Rosalind Russell in the film.
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October rocks! A Bresson and a Dreyer I haven't seen; and one of the few movies that I have been truly panting to see again: My favorite version of Poe's *Fall of the House of Usher* (1949), directed by Ivan Barnett, will be on Wednesday, October 24 (actually the wee hours of the 25th). This almost experimental film, a British version of Poe's classic, is so much creepier than Corman's stodgy '60s version! It used to be on the old Shock-o-Rama series on Channel 13 in NYC, before Channel 13 became PBS.
Lots more to look forward to in October as well!
Rare "NIGHT FLIGHT" 8/10 10:15 pm Eastern time
in General Discussions
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When I was a kid in the Bronx, I had a small Panasonic tape cassette recorder/player. It broke, and I had to take it to a service place in LIC. I got off the subway at Ely on a freezing January day. I thought, **** am I, this is the middle of nowhere! Little did I know that I would later spend 20 very happy years of my life there! My favorite Italian restaurant in NYC is still there -- Manducatis on Jackson Ave.