skimpole
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I saw six movies over the last two weeks: five this week, one the week before. Walk Cheerfully is a silent Ozu film before he had adapted his trademark style. It shows his compassion, but basically the story of a criminal redeemed by the love of a good woman is an old theme, and the result is less interesting that That Night's Wife, made the same year and which I saw last year, or Dragnet Girl which considers a criminal redeemed by the love of a bad woman, played with considerable energy by Kinuyo Tanaka, best known as the star of The Life of Oharu and A Hen in the Wind, as well as the mother in Sansho the Bailiff. The Three Musketeers is, as I suspected, better than the two sequels that appeared later in the seventies, though it not an especially memorable movie. '10" is a typically uneven Blake Edwards movie. One is inclined to compare it to a number of movies, such as Bedazzled, Avanti or Manhattan, and Edwards compares poorly to all three. He lacks Donen's inventiveness, or the equivalent of Peter Cook's performance. The style is one of crude slapstick (and the cinematography isn't that good either). Love and Mercy is a competent telling of the life of Brian Wilson, even if one doesn't believe that Paul Dano and John Cusack are the same person, or that Wilson is not genuinely crazy and not just being manipulated by his greedy psychiatrist. Elizabeth Banks does give a good performance. Life of Riley was Alain Resnais' last film. As such it is a movie of a play about people performing a play while at the same time involving three couples concerned abut the never seen title character. While not unenjoyable, I prefer his penultimate movie You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet.
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Actually a rather striking schedule: the animated The Lord of the Rings is one thing. But A Brighter Summer Day and The Confession, as well as an afternoon devoted to four Bresson films, as well as partial tributes to Lumet, Powell/Pressburger and Godard (Pierrot le Fou!) that's all to the good.
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Mrs. Miniver--Let's take the one foreign country that many Americans don't automatically look down at, and show we still can't make a reasonably accurate and perceptive movie about it.
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I vote for Lonesome Polecat.
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This week I saw five movies. The best one would probably be The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty, a 1927 Soviet film that commemorates the tenth anniversary of that event which is composed, with the exception of the director's subtitled commentary, entirely of footage from that time and before the war. It's rather striking, especially in the absence of pre-1917 Russian documentaries. Stray Dogs is not an easy film to appreciate, but one slowly gets used to its long takes and little movements as it shows a wretchedly poor Taipei family, where the father is reduced to holding a placard in the rain for real estate companies. Conflict is best known as the movie where Humphrey Bogart is the villain and Sydney Greenstreet is the hero. I'd have to rewatch it again to see if the clue that ultimately reveals Bogart works on the screen. Bogart is good, but one wonders whether the police could get away with hiding the corpse for that long. I also saw the 1967 The Taming of the Shrew, which is probably the most important Shakespeare play I hadn't seen up to that time. I must confess I didn't give the movie my full attention as it played, and so I'm not sure whether my problem was with the actual play or with how Zeffirelli directed it. Certainly the advertising campaign for it was crassly sexist. Finally, there's Judge Priest shown in a wretched version. Certainly Stepin Fetchit is almost inaudible, which is probably for the best. Will Rogers is not bad as the humane and tolerant minded judge.
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KRAYS AND WHISPERS
The striking story of how ruthless English gangsters realize that upper bourgeois Swedish women dying half a century ago is not the brilliant organized crime scenario they originally thought it was. There's striking emotional violence, and actual physical violence but the plan to make lots of money is hampered by the small problem of there being no logical connection between the two events. It's very frustrating, because they really think there would be.
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It's probably not a good idea to have TCM show television movies, since there's a good reason they appeared on television and not on cinema. However, I am curious about the 1980 movie The Mystery of Eva Ryker which I saw the first half hour or so, but never saw the rest of.
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Tarzan and His Mate
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For Little Dorrit:
Amy Dorrit: Ana Torrent
Fanny Dorrit: Sarah Sutton
Mrs. Clennam: Katherine Hepburn
Miss Wade: Julie Berto
Clarence Barnacle: Daniel Day-Lewis
Lord Barnacle: Laurence Olivier
John Baptist Cavlletto: Roberto Benigni
Jeremiah Flintwinch: Alexei Sayle
Mr. Merdle: John Gielguld
Rigaud: Alain Delon
Edmund Sparkler: Matthew Waterhouse
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Well it looks like Canadians are going to be prevented from being disappointed by this movie for some time to come.
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I saw six movies last week. The Ice Pirates is a low budget sci-fi movie full of ideas, none of them good ones. We can start with the premise which suffers from the same flaw that Silent Running has. Just as human life can't survive on earth without plant life, making the authorities decision to kill Bruce Dern exceptionally idiotic, it's hard to believe an interplanetary civilization could last very long if water is as rare as it is in this movie. Also the characters are not very interesting, there are cheap homophobic gags, and in retrospect Angelica Houston's talents are just wasted. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: the Cradle of Life may be the most uninteresting high budget summer blockbuster movie ever made. It's like Angelina Jolie could not be bothered to show anything but the most perfunctory personality. And the film couldn't really take up much interest in a final plot twist which might give it some gravitas. But Looker is exceptionally disappointing. It was one of four movies Albert Finney made in quick succession to revive his career in 1981-1982 (the other three were Wolfen, Shoot the Moon and Annie, none of which I've seen). But it is a ghastly failure, dramatically less competent than Michael Crichton's previous movie The Great Train Robbery. Finney gives a performance that Pauline Kael suggests may be the laziest in film history. He has little motivation for his actions, his love interest is also dull, showing more nipples than personality, and the conceit--a plan for brainwashing people during commercials--has dated very badly. There is a hypnotic pulse gun which gives its victims the illusion of jumping through time, but other than that, it's a waste of time.
So it's the three Asian movies that are worth watching. Ginza Cosmetics and Wife are both interesting thoughtful dramas about women under difficult circumstances, one trying to remain in business, the other one dealing with an adulterous husband. Even more striking is Street Angel, which is a vague remake not of the Janet Gaynor movie of the same name, but of the other Gaynor movie Seventh Heaven. Although made in 1937, it's an early sound film for China. Unlike other early sound movies, when given a choice between camera movement and proper sound, it chooses camera movement. Its rhythms are completely different from what one would think given the didactic nature of Chinese culture at the time, and for decades to come, as its characters are humorous, eccentric and off-beat. Zhou Xuan gives a striking performance (she would die two decades later as a consequence of Mao's purges).
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It would be nice if TCM showed Dreams and Rhapsody in August.
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People thought Stanley Kramer movies were controversial, up until Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, when they realized they really weren't.
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Yes - young nudity was a no-no for some people, as was the idea of young sex.
I believe it was her co-star (Ames?) who quipped "this is the first ever children's rights movie."
Actually Christopher Atkins.
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Well Countess Dave you have lots of interesting choices: Fig Leaves (which I used in a previous challenge), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (which I was tempted to use as an offbeat love story), as well as Barry Lyndon. Shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors is certainly the sort of movie TCM should show, and it's certainly an offbeat variation of the Rome-and-Juliet theme. Plus you have Amelie, Clue and a whole new genre most people hadn't known existed: thirties British musicals!
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"We all try: you succeed." Rick Blaine to Victor Laszlo in Casablanca.
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I've actually wanted to comment on the other three schedules for some time, but for some reason I've been unable to log into the other post. Anyway neat schedule Lonesome Polecat! Sleeping Beauty is one of those Disney classics I've never actually been able to say. Having Monty Python and the Holy Grail is also cool, and opera on film is also a great idea. Also good to have The Empire Strikes Backs and the Ronald Reagan The Killers. Barton Keyes, I really like the idea of having Keaton's The Railroader appear. I'm also intrigued by the fact you have The Drowing Pool appear, as well as The Last Tycoon. The combination of Elia Kazan's last movie and Robert DeNiro in a period when he could do wrong sounds very promising. Lydecker, I like having Mizoguchi in the foreign film spotlight, the 100th anniversay of vampire films, and a whole schedule based on quotations from Hollywood films.
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Well I saw three movies last week. Penguins of Madagascar is more amusing than usual for a Dreamworks animated movie, with more good jokes and better action sequences than usual. It would be better if it didn't have a didactic plot about Skipper being nicer to Private. I may have seen The Goddess before on TCM, but rewatching does allow one to see Ruan Lingyu in a truly great performance as the wronged woman. The Kozintsev Hamlet is also worth watching, it's better than the Olivier version, though I have a special place in my heart for the Branagh version. Innokenty Smoktunovsky does offer a special intensity which does make the is-he-mad-or-not question particularly interesting.
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Not avaiable in Canada.
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Well it's not completely without merit. Now I get to see The Great Garrick and The Ipcress File. And the day for Bergman does include all four Rossellini movies, a Renoir and an Ingmar Bergman.
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All About Eve: “Shucks, I just sent my autograph book to the cleaners.”
All the President's Men: “Now hold it, hold it. We're about to accuse Mr. Haldeman, who only happens to be the second most important man in America, of conducting a criminal conspiracy from inside the White House. It would be nice if we were right.”
And the Ship Sails On: “Do you know rhino milk is really first class.”
Brazil: “Care for a little ****?”
Casablanca: "This place is full of vultures, vultures everywhere, everywhere"
"Are my eyes really brown?"
"But everybody's having such a good time.":
Chinatown: “You can't eat the venetian blinds, Curly. I just had 'em installed on Wednesday.”
“Course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough,”
“I don't blame myself. You see, Mr. Gits. Most people never have to face the fact that at the right time, the right place, they're capable of anything.”
Duck Soup: “Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot and look like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot.”
The English Patient: "I can still taste you."
Grand Illusion: "I just shot down a Caudron fighter. If they're officers, invite them for lunch."
"Cancer and gout aren’t working class diseases, but they will be, believe me.”
Henry V (Branagh version): "May I with right and power make this claim?"
Love and Death: "Wheat! Wheat with feathers!"
Manhattan: "Not everyone gets corrupted—you’ve got to have a little faith in people.”
Monty Python and the Meaning of Life: “O Lord…you are so big.”
The Princess Bride: “Inconceivable!” “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
The Producers: “We find the defendants incredibly guilty.”
Red River: “You know, there are only two things more beautiful than a good gun: a Swiss watch or a woman from anywhere. You ever had a good Swiss watch?”
Reversal of Fortune: “And a vial of insulin please.”
Richard III [ian Mackellan version]: "I thank God for my humility."
The Rules of the Game: “I have no choice but to dismiss you. It breaks my heart, but I can't expose my guests to your firearms. It may be wrong of them, but they value their lives.”
The Shining: " I'm sorry to differ with you, sir, but you are the caretaker. You've always been the caretaker. I should know, sir. I've always been here."
Shoah: "If you could lick my heart, it would poison you."
The Thin Man: "Yes, it's the best dinner I ever listened to."
Time Bandits: "Champagne please--with plenty of ice."
2001: A Space Odyssey: “Stop, Dave. I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it.”
The Usual Suspects: "I know he was good."
Yankee Doodle Dandy: “My father thanks you, my mother thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you.”
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I saw five movies over the last two weeks. Clouds of Sils Maria on the one hand shows the difference between a movie with great acting, as this one does with fine performances by Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart, and the knid of movie that the Academy thinks has great acting. like The Theory of Everything or Dallas Buyers Club. The question is whether that is enough to make it a great film. Most of the reviews have been favorable, but Richard Brody was so withering in The New Yorker that one wonders about the overall achievement. There is much less to doubt about in The Ice Storm, another one of Ang Lee's meretricious manipulations. With Kevin Kline starting off with in an awful seventies collar and Tobey Maguire with an idiotic analogy of family it starts off flattering its audience with its sense of superiority over the seventies. There are then several ghastly scenes about adultery and sex, a predictably cringeworthy key party and finally the portentous death of a child. Here's Your Life is an interesting bildungsroman about an early 20th century worker who will eventually become the novelist whose autobiographical novel will be the source of the movie. It's interesting that there were so many great filmmakers in the sixties that one forgets Jan Troell's first feature on the grounds that a realistic drama would be nothing special. Prometheus has one good idea, Michael Fassbender doing an excellent impression of Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. Otherwise Ridley Scott doubles down on the flaws of the original Alien: such as having an even more uninteresting cast and having gaping plot holes (such as why is the Engineer so ready to destroy Earth when his biological weapon for doing so has wiped all out his colleagues.) Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was widely loathed when it originally came out, but having now seen it a quarter-century after the original Twin Peaks and after having seen Eraserhead and Inland Empire in the meantime, it actually works rather well and the lack of interest in dealing with all of the questions fans with the show is actually fairly impressive.
July 2015 on TCM Canada
in General Discussions
Posted
So they'll have Pennies from Heaven on twice on one evening?