Swithin
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Posts posted by Swithin
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I love Angela Lansbury and look forward to her as SOTM. I'm not a fan of The Harvey Girls and Till the Clouds Roll By, but there's still plenty to enjoy. I think it would have been interesting thematically to program State of the Union back to back with The Manchurian Candidate.
I had a really nice phone chat with Angela about ten years ago. She is an extremely kind and down-to-earth person. Btw, I never watched her television series.
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You are correct, mr6666. Give us our first test of 2012!
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Yes, I think relative greatness is certainly a matter of subjectivity. But there is a point at which art must be recognized and where the recognition of that transcends mere opinion. I've been re-watching Rohmer's film recently. What an incredible body of work!
But regarding A Passage to India (and Judy Davis), the cross-cutting between the scene of Davis on the witness stand, recanting her rape accusation, right after the shot of Peggy Ashcroft's casket being lowered into the sea -- is brilliant. As is the scene at the end of the film, of Davis at the window in London, gazing at the rain. Lean brilliantly demonstrates the possession of Judy by "goddess" Ashcroft in the one scene; and evokes Davis's great sacrifice in the other, bringing to mind Shakespeare's great words, "The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven... It is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes."
One of the great mysteries of A Passage to India is whether a rape took place in the Marabar Caves. People have been arguing about that since the novel was published in 1924. Lean artfully allows that mystery to continue in his 1984 film. I'm of the opinion that Davis (as Adela) was indeed raped but becomes suffused with a very mysterious grace which causes her to recant her accusation in an incredible act of self-sacrifice. I think A Passage to India is to David Lean what The Dead is to John Huston: a towering work of art made by a director who made many great films but whose greatest achievement came at the very end of his career.
Happy New Year!
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I like Lean's films very much but think that he didn't make a masterpiece until A Passage to India. His early work, though impressive, was too talky (for example the overrated but enjoyable Great Expectations ). His epics -- Lawrence and Ryan -- were beautiful, important films to look at but could have been better. But by the time he made Passage, he had truly learned the language of cinema. I know of no other movie that is as true to the spirit of a great novel without necessarily always being true to the facts of the novel. And he beautifully retains and enhances the eternal mystery of what really happened in the caves.
So to answer your question, in my opinion, yes, there were greater directors than David Lean. But rarely has any director topped the achievement of A Passage to India.
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It would be nice to see *Every Day's a Holiday*, my favorite Mae West movie, which opens on New Year's Eve 1899/1900:
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I think it IS sort of a fun clue and not too hard, if you think about it. But just so I don't send anyone off in the wrong direction, let me give a clue:
"There may be trouble ahead. But when there's moonlight, and music, and love, and romance..."
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Come after the ****
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I initially thought of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, but that wouldn't make sense. Oh, I just got it! *Judgement at Nuremberg* !
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Tony Randall was married to the same woman for 50 years, until her death. Three years after his first wife's death, he married again. I knew Tony slightly in his later years. He was deeply in love with his wife and devoted to his children.
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Very timely. *Witness for the Prosecution*.
An earring ripped out of someone's ear.
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Interesting, Krieger. Christopher Lee has a great duet with Diane Cilento in The Wicker Man. Here's the song, with a montage of images from the film:
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So sorry to hear that! I once had a recording of her singing a song about Sodom and Gomorrah to the tune of "O Solo Mio." It went something like this:
"There's no Gomorrah, the town has flown;
And where is Sodom, address unknown...
Their morals were far from good;
In fact they did things, they never should.
They went in swimmin', in the nude with wimmin;
spent 3 or 4 g's, on their nightly ****;
they held debauches, on brocaded couches;
with wine and song they vanished long ago.
RIP, Kaye.
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Here's one of the creepier ape scenes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=WKxh_5j6WuM
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The demise of Cheetah, whatever his pedigree and c.v., has obviously caused a frisson among members of this board. So let's talk about our favorite films with "ape" characters. The quotations are because I mean any ape-like animal, apart from humans.
Two of my favorites: Son of Ingagi (1940) and The Monster Walks (1932).
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*Don't Be Afraid of the Dark* (1973) was a pretty scary TV flick with Kim Darby, Jim Hutton, and William Demerest. Kim Darby was tormented by little creatures that live in her house.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TpWSNT5QhE
There was a 2010 film with the same title, but I don't know it.
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I agree. There was another story a few years ago where two people went to visit their chimp "son" with a birthday cake. He bit someone, so they put him into a chimp "shelter." When they were visiting him, they were attacked by two other chimps.
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Earlier this year I saw *Christopher and His Kind*, a BBC movie made for television. It's based on Christopher Isherwood's 1976 autobiography, written to set the record straight as to what really happened in Berlin. Isherwood felt that Cabaret (particularly the film), based on his Goodbye to Berlin stories, was being taken as factual by too many people.
Christopher and His Kind is a beautifully written and acted full-length TV movie featuring Matt Smith (the current Dr. Who) as Isherwood and Imogen Poots as Jean Ross, the woman on whom Sally Bowles is based. Here's a clip of Poots in a heartbreaking scene, though perhaps not ideal out of context:
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So based on Wikipedia, I guess Cheetah-Mike is our man and may indeed have been one of the Cheetahs in the original films.
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What about those chimps/monkeys who played in Sheena, Queen of the Jungle; Jungle Jim; and Ramar of the Jungle ? There must be a genealogy. I hope it doesn't turn into an Angels and Insects sort of story! The kids are probably all those marmosets in the Werner Herzog South American films.
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Roald Dahl's children's work has been successfully adapted for film, particularly James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and The Witches. Dahl's Matilda has just been adapted by the Royal Shakespeare Company as a stage musical and is now one of the hottest tickets in London. A friend told me it was one of the best shows she's ever seen.
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The Times actually updated their story later in the day, adding this sentence: "But the announcement drew skepticism and recalled a previous incident of mistaken chimpanzee identity." It's also possible that there were different chimps playing Cheetah in the same film.
On another post, scsu implied that Cheetah was having a a secret affair with Bonzo. That gives new meaning to the title, Bedtime for Bonzo.
In any case, we probably haven't heard the last of this saga.
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How about Sydney Carton in *A Tale of Two Cities* ? Conflicted character, beautifully played by Ronald Colman, in the 1935 version of course. A hero who makes the ultimate sacrifice.
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But it was on the front page of The New York Times (at least the online edition)! Though, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell, "I have known strange errors in that publication." It makes sense that, if the Cheetah who just died in Florida was born around 1931, that he could have been the Cheetah -- or one of them -- who played in the early Tarzans.
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Sorry about the Jersey jokes, C.Bogle. I have since traveled the state more and find that NJ has some truly beautiful spots -- particularly in Somerset County. Regarding the word "in," I think the state's land mass is considered to extend a certain distance beyond the shoreline.
Angela Lansbury as SOTM in January 2012
in General Discussions
Posted
It looks like you added something to my comments -- it goes from my saying I never saw "Murder She Wrote" to saying it's my favorite television series ever. How'd that happen?
I had a brief but totally pleasant professional association with Angela, on a specific project. And I've seen her at receptions with RO, so I assume they're friends.