skimpole

Perhaps. My problem with Ships of Fools is more with the director and the original source material than the cast, and I have the same problem with It's a Mad,...Mad World.

Perhaps. However, if you look at her most famous films, there's a clear tendency to distinctly older stars: Roman Holiday, Sabrina, War and Peace, Love in the Afternoon, Funny Face, The Nun's Story, The Unforgiven, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Charade, My Fair Lady, Two for The Road, and Robin and Marian. Of twelve movies, there's nine with romantic stars at least a decade older than her.

I'd suggest there'd be less Cooper bashing if TCM premiered Peter Ibbetson. It would also help if TCM showed Morocco, Lives of a Bengal Lancer, Beau Geste, Design for Living, Good Sam and Man of the West more often.

George Peppard from Breakfast at Tiffany's was only eight months older than Hepburn.

The logic of this escapes me. Essentially you're to have four actors you could imagine in a movie together, but nothing that otherwise connects them. So essentially you're having a block with your favorite actors.

I saw five movies last week. Laila was an interesting movie, and the first scenes where the title character is lost as a baby in a desperate flight from wolves is fairly impressive. However, for the baby to be refound, and then lost again, is a bit awkward. Bedlam is best for Karloff's performances, showing the desperation and sycophancy of someone in his awkward social position. Merrill's Marauders does not seem to me particularly memorable: it's less interesting than either The Steel Helment or The Big Red One. My thought on watching Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is that it's less interesting than the fourth installment, and I suspect that in a few years I'll remember of little of it as I do the second and third ones. Nightcrawler deals with a stringer trying to film crime scenes and accidents who is clearly more crazy than some of the people he is filming. Like many sociopaths, he expresses himself in glib corporate speak. It's interesting that his amorality does not quite lead to the moral disaster one might cynically speak, but it's not a particularly interesting movie.

I suppose it may be on too often, but I only saw the last half hour this year, and I wouldn't mind getting a chance to see the whole thing one afternoon.

I'm trying to think of movies where I don't really care how the romantic struggle ends. Not only is this true of TV shows like The Big Bang Theory and Young and Hungry, which I have found myself watching, but even of TV shows I actually like, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where I only really cared about the Cordelia-Xander relationship.

The great actress Setsuko Hara has died. In fact she died in September, such has been her isolation since her retirement from acting in the sixties hat only now have we been learning about it. Personally her performance in Late Spring is one of the greatest of screen performances. http://www.avclub.com/article/rip-setsuko-hara-japanese-screen-legend-228968

I suspect that I will horrify some woman by proposing marriage to her. I'll blame the movies for encouraging me to do this.

Well the war isn't actually over for Gabin and Dialo's characters at the end of Grand Illusion, the murderer is still free at the end of Vertigo, Alexander is still haunted by his stepfather at the end of Fanny and Alexander, the end of the Ian MacKellan Richard III suggests that the new Henry VII is not going to be an improvement, the baby is still dead at the end of Ordet. Arguably the end of The Leopard is as ironic as the end of The Graduate, but the result is of greater weight because we're dealing with an entire country, not just one post-graduate nitwit. Arguably, Somerset's comments at the end of Se7en falls into this category. By contrast, it's just possible that the protagonist's sacrifice may have served some good at the end of 12 Monkeys.

I saw three movies last week. The Good Bad Man had some interesting touches, though the thoughtless racism near the end certainly undermined things. Bessie Love is generally shot as one of those simpering asexual Victorian abstractions in early silent films that completely lose my interest. But there are a couple of interesting shots of her. (And am I correct in thinking that the villain may have been Fairbanks' character's father? Or was I just looking for more complexity than was actually the case.) The Black Pirate was a much better movie: the early Technicolor was good, and there were several exciting and clever scenes. (The love interest could have been improved. Full Moon in Paris does seem like an inversion of the last Rohmer film I saw, A Summer's Tale, except here one women wonders about three men, whether the first film dealt with one man concerned with three women. It's possible that my preference for A Summer's Tale is simply because the characters are more attractive physically. It might also be pointed out that the characters in the first movie are also nicer, though the stakes in this movie are higher as well.

I saw eight movies over the last two weeks: two last week and six this week.Tangerine is an independent film about a prostitute looking for the other prostitute who her pimp cheated on. The twist, such as it is, is that the prostitutes are actually male transvestites. I'm not sure I'm really the audience for this movie. Memphis deals with a blues singer who is facing a personal and artistic crisis. It has interesting aspects, though it meanders. The Spring River Flows East is a 1947 Chinese movie, which deals with a marriage strained by the Japanese invasion of 1937. It actually is of some interest, even if the reunion of the central couple is a bit implausible in a country which at the time had 500 million people. But the actual encounter is fairly effective. I also saw three documentaries this week. Drifters is a 1929 documentary by John Grierson about fishermen. It's interesting, if not especially informative. The Exiles, strictly speaking a quasi-documentary is by contrast more of a revelation. The Connection is by contrast a pseudo-documentary, actually a play about people being filmed for a documentary. It's interesting, if not brilliant. The Man from Uncle has some interesting set pieces and witty touches, but it suffers from its two uninteresting male leads. A Most violent Year is probably the best movie I've seen recently, with Isaac Davis giving a good performance as the businessman under siege (while Jessica Chastain is less impressive).

Fast times at Ridgemont High is certainly the best teen film with gratuitious nudity, but Dazed and Confused, which is filmed 11 years later but which takes place only a few years earlier is the better film. The Long Day Closes and Quadrophenia which were made close to the movies, but take place a decade or two earlier are better still. I haven't seen the 1949 Little Women, but I suspect the 1994 one is much better, and should be shown next time TCM wants to do a spotlight on woman directors. Petulia and Shampoo are movies I need to resee. Carnal Knowledge shares with Catch-22 the overwhelmingly urge to ask how anyone ever thought Mike Nichols ever had a sense of humor. Body Heat struck me as sharing with the other Lawrence Kasdan and William Hurt movies as being quite mediocre. Seriously, it's 37 years after Double Indemnity: how can Hurt's character not realizing that Turner's is settinng him up?

Perhaps. I suppose I will have to actually see Babes in Toyland. I have vaguely positive memories of seeing at least part of it. I suspect many cinephiles don't like the way that Disney monopolized children's movies, and the live action movies never showed true genius or insight.

SECRETS AND THIGHS Paul Verhoeven decides that a kitchen sink drama would be better with gratuitous nudity. But it turns out the nudity is not only ironic but designed to make male viewers distinctly uncomfortable. Also, there are giant rampaging bugs invading Islington. Meanwhile Mike Leigh tries to seize back control of his film by having Daleks talk with Marianne Jean-Baptiste about being a metaphor for fascism, as well as their interest in Eric Rohmer movies. Verhoeven retaliates with asking whether the Daleks are actually a scapegoat for and of fascism, while including explict sex scenes that only guarantee a NC-18 rating, but also makes the investors shoot themselves off camera.

I'd like to second this recommendation.

Here are different reviews of Brooklyn, which I haven't seen yet: and http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/brooklyn-2015

TCM should show Conversation Piece. And it wouldn't hurt to show Atlantic City more often.

Those wouldn't be rotten choices. But there's no shortage of problems. Each foreign language film has to be nominated by its country of origin. So from Iran Kiarostami, Panahi and Makmalbaf were submitted once, and none were nominated. France only nominated Godard once, and he wasn't nomninated either. Wong-Kar Wai never made the short list, one could go on and on.

I saw four movies this week. Lina Wertmuller's reputation has largely vanished in the 39 years since Seven Beauties, and seeing Love and Anarchy gives me little reason to challenge that view. It strikes me as broad, a bit vulgar and ultimately not very interesting. The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is amusing, if not brilliant. The Headless Horseman's chase is certainly interesting and clever, and it's not wrong that it should supplant the original story, which is a just a piece of small time bullying. Escape from Witch Mountain is competent, but it lacks any special spark. There is a bland homogeneity which growing up watching "The Wonderful World of Disney" or whatever the TV show was called I mistook for reality, but which made me wonder why so many of classmates in my by no means particularly diverse community didn't have WASP surnames. It's striking that Donald Pleasance gives the most striking performance. Manakamana is a documentary more odder than interesting. Basically it takes place in the mountains of Nepal as various people ride a cable car from one mountain to another, usually set in long takes. Some of the people are native Nepalese, some more closer to the traditional culture than others. There's a couple of English speaking tourists, a trio of young haired men who could be Indian tourists, a couple who play musical instruments, and even a batch of goats. As I said, more odd than interesting.

Fanny and Alexander is one of my favorite films, but if the roles played by Gunn Wallgren, Ewa Froling and Jan Malmsjo had been played by Ingrid Bergman, Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow, I can't say for sure if it would have a been a better movie, but it would have won more Oscars. I have a dream version of Death on the Nile where Lois Chiles is replaced by Catherine Deneuve.

The foreign language films the Academy has been nominated contain as many rotten choices as the English language nominees. But if TCM could premiere A Separation and Cries and Whispers, that would be neat.

Well in Canada the first three female director movies, including Away from Her and The Hurt Locker have all been replaced with movies from the forties, the first two for apparently no other reason than that they star Ida Lupino.

One could think of a lot of funny actresses, but even actresses who weren't funny or had no sense of humor would be better if the movie had a better director.