skimpole
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Posts posted by skimpole
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This thread is still open, you have two weeks to submit a list. Just bumping it to remind people about it.
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(1) Ralph Fiennes was robbed. (2) The Dardenne brothers get a competitive oscar nomination! (3) If "Selma" lost marks for being inaccurate about LBJ, why did "The Imitation Game" do so well for being even more inaccurate and apparently generally less good? (4) Whatever you think of "The Lego Movie," "The Tale of the Princess Kaguya" is a better movie. (5) The only nominated actress I've seen yet is Rosamund Pike. I suspect Cotillard gave a better performance than Moore, and I suspect Moore was actually better in Maps to the Stars. Tilda Swinton in Only Lovers Left alive and Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin gave very good performances, but since they weren't nominated, they count as 2013 movies.
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It was status of: Letty Lynton (1932) which did inspire me to add this option. It was not possible for any to air this movie for many years because of rights issues. It is extraordinary effort which yields now some hope of its re-release.
I must wonder how many other movies have suffered the same fate and have little or no hope of resurrection.
This optional Challenge is opportunity for entrants to showcase treasured favorites which are not reasonably or legally available.
Is there a place or a website which actually lists such films? Because aside from Disney animated films, which are not eligible, this is not a category with many obvious examples.
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Four movies of optional Challenge do not count against Premiere limit because that is incentive to participate. It is nature of optional Challenge that they would all be Premieres and so entrants would be limited to six Premieres for remainder of schedule. Such limitation would deter many from participating.
I must confess I find this a bit confusing. We can already use Disney animated films on Sunday and we can't use pornography. There are very long movies TCM won't run, but by definition you can't fit four of them in the ten or eleven hours of the evening schedule. So it seems the main category of movies are movies that no longer exist.
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Pornography will not be allowed!Define pornography. Obviously Deep Throat falls in this category, and presumably so would Caligula despite its A-List class. But what about Salo or In the Realm of the Senses?
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Incidentally here's my list
1. The Godfather, Part 2
2. The Godfather
3. Casablanca
4. A Man for all Seasons
5. Gandhi
6. Around the world in Eighty Days
7. Lawrence of Arabia
8. Schindler's List
9. Annie Hall
10. Oliver!
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Last week I saw seven movies. The remake of Total Recall was a perfectly pointless movie. The original was hardly a good movie, but at least the director had a personality and had some cruel fun with Schwarzenegger's lack of one. Life Itself was moderately interesting if, like Ebert's criticism itself, not very imaginative. On Approval, by contrast, is one of the most amusing of British forties films. And Criss-Cross is one of the most successful noirs. The Idiot was also an interesting movie, and worth taking another look at. The Mongols was a peculiar movie: it's a seventies Iranian film about a director making a movie about a Mongol invasion. I suspect it would be easier to appreciate if I saw it with English, and not French, subtitles. Finally, there's The Bling Ring, another of Sofia Coppola's movies about the shallow and over-privileged. At least Somewhere had a genuine relationship at it heart. By contrast, it's not funny enough for satire, nor does it have any real special insight.
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Yes, the results will be tabulated, but after the end of the month. The deadline is midnight on the 31st, MST.
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As it happens I just finished reading The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge, and will start tomorrow reading The Sun Also Rises.
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I've read michael keaton is very good in Birdman but is the film worth taking a look at?
It depends. What films from the last ten years have you liked? Have you seen any of Inarritu's films?
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The obvious reason some French people love some Jerry Lewis films is because they remind them of the style of some Jacques Tati films.
There's some truth to this: The Bellboy does seem like a very clumsy version of M. Hulot's Holiday.
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Here's an idea. People can list their 10 favorite Best Picture oscar winners in this thread, and I will calculate the winner based on all submissions to this poll by midnight MST Saturday January 31.
Oh wait. Can you include Sunrise in this list? Sure, why not.
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Bogart in Casablanca and Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc.
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I saw five movies last week, all disappointing I'm afraid. Big Eyes suffers from a performance by Christoph Waltz so broad and cartoonish that it makes Amy Adams look like an idiot for ever believing it. Doubt , the last movie I saw in 2014, is less a serious drama than someone's idea of an Oscarbait movie. It hard to take someone as a serious exemplar of moral conservatism when she's upset with ballpoint pens. Room Service does not have a reputation as a good Marx Brothers movie. The reputation is well deserved, the first half is absolutely deadly. The second half is not as remotely as good as other Marx Brothers movies, but it's more tolerable. Bells are ringing may be the least interesting musical Minnelli ever made. Somewhere has an interesting cinematic style, like Sofia Coppola's other movies, and there is some human interest in the story of lifestyles of the rich and utterly fatuous. I just don't think it's enough.
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I'm not getting the last half of the month. Someone should update the links.
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I saw four movies over the last two weeks. The Babadook is an above horror movie. Its subtext is the tensions between a widowed mother and her young, highly-strung son. Ultimately, the movie is not successful in resolving them, but the attempt is interesting. The Reluctant Dragon is less successful, and not simply because it's basically an ad for Disney studios. The three animated sequences all have their flaws. I'm not a Goofy fan, while the "Baby Weems" segment, which starts out with the interesting idea of being a series of storyboards, is flawed by its casual racism. As for the title sequence, the title character can only be described, to put it bluntly, as a flaming queen. I suppose it's the movie's obscurity that meant this wasn't recognized earlier. Claire Denis is an interesting, often successful director, but my first impression about her "vampire" movie Trouble Every Day is that it's more opaque and esoteric than strictly necessary. By contrast, The Legend of the Princess Kaguya is not only the best movie of 2013, but a work of considerable charm and beauty. It's by the same director of The Grave of the Fireflies but in a very different style.
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Another point that occurs to me is that when Mason finally partially made it in Hollywood, he was in his forties, which is not the best time for a leading actor. It's not an infallible rule--Bogart was also in his early forties when he finally made it, but he was playing a very different type of character.
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I must confess I've never really been a big fan of "so bad they are funny" movies. I suppose if TCM showed Plan Nine from Outer Space I'd watch it. But the whole bad movie genre pioneered by the Medved brothers is very dubious in many ways. Their list includes two of the greatest movies ever made (Ivan the Terrible and Last Year in Marienbad), important work by major directors that don't deserve to be crudely dismissed (Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and Zabriskie Point), movies which could hardly be considered the worst ever made (the original The Omen). I am curious whether Parnell is as bad as they say, and whether Jamaica Inn could really be so bad. I did watch on TCM once The Terror of Tiny Town, a western musical known for it being cast entirely by midgets. This might seem to a so bad they are funny movie, since the whole concept is underwhelming, to say the least. But in fact the whole movie is strikingly dull.
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Is there some reason why no-one has mentioned Casablanca, a movie where nearly every supporting character shines? Or am I just being unusually obtuse?
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Considering why Mason didn't get quite enough recognition is an interesting question. Some of these have to do with the rules of oscar nominations: winners should be serious, but not offend anyone. That, at any rate, is my explanation for why he wasn't nominated for North by Northwest on the one hand, and Lolita on the other. And some of his roles were not prominent enough for Hollywood: Odd Man Out and Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, as well as The Reckless Moment. As for Julius Caesar, the whole point of the play is that Brutus is outshone by Mark Antony. I've never seen An Officer and a Gentleman, but I suspect that it doesn't last as well as either The Verdict or Robert Preston's role in Victor/Victoria.
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Could someone tell me how the drunken butler managed to survive the wreck?
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I saw several movies last week. Separate Tables is the sort of movie that the oscars liked to honor in the fifties that stands as a monument to its seriously poor judgement. Essentially the trick to winning oscars since 1939 is to make serious movies that can't possibly offend anyone. As such the movie is contrived (Niven and Kerr are much better in Bonjour Tristesse, which came out the same year). Lancaster, as is often the case, does his best, but he and Hayworth are not a convincing couple and it is sentimental to suggest otherwise. Partly because it is slightly confusing, and partly because I didn't devote my full attention to the first half hour, The Law of the Border was a bit difficult to follow. Since the police officer seems to embody the Turkish state's conception of it itself as modern, humane and progressive one might wonder why the army sought to destroy it after the 1980 coup. It's interesting, but the earlier movie in the World Cinema project from South Korea, The Housemaid, is more successful, as well as several examples of Brazillian novo cinema. Birdman may win Michael Keaton an oscar, and one can appreciate why one would find the virtuoso long takes enjoyable. On the other hand, it seems like a parody of itself: long ago blockbuster star Michael Keaton stars in an independent (but not too independent) movie about a long faded blockbuster star trying to find aesthetic redemption in a Broadway production of Raymond Carver. I'm inclined to agree with Richard Brody that the style hides the conventionality of the movie. The Sure Thing isn't a bad movie. Indeed if I had seen it at the time it came out instead of nearly three decades later I might even have been deeply moved instead of just mildly amused by it. Susan Slept Here is another Tashlin movie that doesn't work for it. Powell and Reynolds are not a good couple. Even granted that Reynolds is more than 17, Powell is nearly 50, not 35 as the movie suggests, and the results are not pleasant. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada does not start well, but it does improve as the scrambled chronology gels into the story proper, the characters become clearer, and Tommy Lee Jones' character makes some mistakes. So the real movie of the week is Le Petit Theatre de Jean Renoir. If not his most profound movie, it is still charming and worth seeing, and it's nice that he went out on a high point.
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I have been thinking of an idea for Diamonds are Forever, which is sort of a sequel, in which Blofeld is played by Cary Grant. He's also the hero, while for much of the picture Bond is played by Catherine Deneuve in disguise.
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15th: Another Silent/Import night overruled for Disney stuff (would be fine if it wasn't on Sunday)
I'm not enthusiastic about Disney movies replacing silent and foreign film night, but The Three Caballeros is the closest TCM is going to have to having a great Disney animated film.
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TCM Canada Schedule
in General Discussions
Posted
Nobody's been updating this thread, which is kind of irritating to me. I just learned today that TCM Canada this Monday will not be showing The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie or Diary of a Chambermaid. Instead it will be showing two forties films will nothing in common with Bunuel.