skimpole

Not to be unduly mercenary, but I would prefer that the Lauren Bacall tribute doesn't interrupt the showing of Bombshell on the 21st or The Glass Key on the 31st. Although the fact that Bombshell will be showing next month gives TCM some leeway. I definitely hope they don't use it to cancel Telluride Monday this Labor Day, or the showing of Fanny and Alexander on the fourth. I would add that Bacall clearly deserved the Best Actress for 1944, and she should have also taken Ingrid Bergman's third oscar for Murder on the Orient Express. Wouldn't it be cool, or at least interesting, if they showed Dogville as part of the tribute?

I agree about Rogers and Davis, but I prefer Hepburn for The Philadelphia Story. As for 1957, I've only seen one of the best actress nominees (Woodward, the actual winner) and was hardly blown away by it. It does not seem to be a good year for actresses, especially Hollywood ones. Only three American movies make my top ten that year, and one of them has no women in it all, while the other two there is a brief appearance by one near the end, and a couple of easily exploited women appear throughout the second.

I will say the the only years I agreed with the best actor choice are 1942, 1966, 1980, 1982, 1990, 2002 and 2007 while for best actress it's 1951, 1969, 1972, 1977, 1979, 1991, 1995, 1999, 2000 and 2006, though to be fair I haven't seen all the winners. I would not say that Rex Harrison was an egregiously bad choice. He's certainly more memorable than either Burton or O'Toole (I haven't seen Zorba the Greek).

I've posted this earlier this year, but here's my ranking of the best picture winners: Winners that were actually the best Picture of the year: All Quiet on the Western Front, Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, A Man for All Seasons, The Godfather, Annie Hall, Schindler's List, The Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King Winners that were worthy of being nominated for best picture: Gone with the Wind, The Best Years of Our Lives, All About Eve, Around the World in Eighty Days, Oliver!, The Sting, The Godfather, Part II, Gandhi, The Last Emperor, The Silence of the Lambs, The English Patient, The Hurt Locker, 12 Years a Slave Winners that almost deserved to be nominated for best picture: An American in Paris, The Apartment, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Midnight Cowboy, The Deer Hunter, Platoon, Unforgiven Winners that are perfectly enjoyable: Grand Hotel, It Happened One Night, Mutiny on the Bounty, You Can't Take it With you, The Bridge on the River Kwai, My Fair Lady, The Departed, Slumdog Millionaire, The Artist Winners that are perfectly reasonable: Hamlet, From Here to Eternity, On the Waterfront, Patton, The French Connection, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ordinary People, Amadeus, Out of Africa Winners I'm largely indifferent to: Cavalcade, Rebecca, How Green was My Valley, The Lost Weekend, All the King's Men, Marty, In the Heat of the Night, Terms of Endearment, Rain Man, Million Dollar Baby Irritating Oscarbait (benign edition): Wings, The Great Ziegfeld, The Greatest Show on Earth, Gigi, Driving miss Daisy, Dances with Wolves, Shakespeare in Love, Chicago, The King's Speech, Argo Irritating Oscarbait (malign edition): The Broadway Melody, Cimarron, The Life of Emile Zola, Mrs. Miniver, Going my Way, Gentleman's Agreement, Tom Jones, Rocky, Kramer vs. Kramer, Chariots of Fire, American Beauty, Gladiator, a Beautiful Mind Special talented but meretricious category: Ben-Hur, Forrest Gump, Titanic, No Country for Old Men Just bad movies: Braveheart, Crash

I believe TCM showed Tout Va Bien well before last week, since I've included it on possible schedules as a moview already seen.

So we have two movies by Jean-Pierre Melville, and while Makavejev is not my favorite Eastern European director, or even my favorite Yugoslav director, having two of his movies sounds interesting. And we're having Rohmer's Summer! Yay! I must confess I've never heard of Keisuke Kinoshita, though it makes sense that mid-century Japan would have more than four great directors.

I saw three movies last week. The Curse of the Cat People is so visually beautiful and has so many interesting touches, it's a pity that the parents are a bit off which prevents it from being a truly great movie. The Mel Brooks To be or not to Be is so close to Lubtisch's original one wonders why he bothered. The Missing Picture was the most interesting movie I saw last week. Imagine a cross of the The Lego Movie with The Killing Fields, though the use of actual propaganda footage from the Khmer Rouge has its own morbid fascination.

I suspect most foreign language film actors will never be star of the month.

I want to second the annoyance at the cancellation of Bergman night.

Many of the movies I saw help show the importance of directors. Fassbinder is not my favorite director, although if you sit down to watch his movies his virtues become more apparent. World on a Wire, while an interesting movie, is a bit longish. This is especially so as the concept, while undoubtedly disturbing in 1972, has become almost commonplace in the post-Matrix age. Similarly The Long Gray Line shows some of Ford's virtues, and some scenes show an admirable restraint. But to get to them, one has to go through a lot of sentimental stage Irishry, some of Ford's trademark incompetent slapstick, his unwillingness or incapacity to deal with emotional issues with particular depth, for what is basically a very long advertisment for West Point. Ford made at least a half dozen movies in tribute to the military life, and none of them achieve what The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp does. Remorques, the third of the Jean Gremillion movies, may be the least of them, but this story of Jean Gabin playing a captain who falls in love with a woman he encounters on a rescue mission is still a fine piece fo work. Witness for the Prosecution as a short story and play suffers from Agatha Christie's shallo moralism, and a not very surprising twist. The movie, like Sleuth also suffers from an unconvincing disguise at a crucial point. But Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich and even Tyrone Power almost make it work under Wilder's direction. And finally there is the movie of the week, Comrades: almost a love story, which, notwithstanding the title, is an interesting, thoughtful romantic comedy, with useful things to say about Hong Kong and China in the last two decades of the 20th century, and which includes shots of the World Trade Centre and the Statue of Liberty looking at each other.

I only heard about the TCM tribute today, and I must say how annoyed that the Ingmar Bergman tribute has been cancelled. Who knows if TCM will ever show Through a Glass Darkly or The Silence again. Why choose this over the Lee Grant tribute on the 30th, which doesn't even include Shampoo?

TCM Canada: keeping Canadians from seeing To Be or not to Be since 2007.

I saw five movies last week. The Spy in Black showed some of Michael Powell's future virtues, even if the TCM didn't have the best sound or picture. Hard to Handle was a fun Cagney film. The Criminal Code had some virtues, with Houston and Karloff giving good performances, with the couple at the centre of the film being least successful, and the play the movie was based on working less well. Devi was an interesting Satyajit Ray film about a woman whose father in law believes, incorrectly, is an incarnation of a goddess. I think the best film this week was Le Ciel Est a Vous, the sort of film one would think that Hollywood would be good at making. This story, about a mechanic and his wife who become fascinated with flying, benefits by by more realistic and less histronic than a Hollywood version would be.

One thing that is not sufficiently commented on is that notwithstanding the charisma of Malcolm MacDowell's performance he is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. His response to mutiny in the ranks is to engage in a pre-emptive attack, with the result that they betray him the first chance they get (that very night as it happens).

I have seen all the best picture winners, with Gentleman's Agreement being the last one I saw (earlier this year on TCM as it happens). As for best picture nominees, let's see 2010-2013 37 out of 37 (100%) 2000-2009 54 out of 55 (98%) 1990-1999 44 out of 50 (88%) 1980-1980 47 out of 50 (94%) 1970-1979 44 out of 50 (88%) 1960-1969 38 out of 50 (76%) 1950-1959 36 out of 50 (72%) 1940-1949 57 out of 70 (81%) 1927-1939 77 out of 100 (77%)

I saw five movies this week, and they work rather well. I'm not really a Harryhausen fan, I suspect most of the Spielberg generation arent't and it doesn't reflect very well on the title character's intelligence in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad that when he recruits a crew from prisoners, they almost immediately mutiny. But if you accept this on its own terms it can be enjoyed. The Housemaid becomes increasingly delirious as it proceeds, and one can't help but wonder about the movie and the repressive quasi-confuscianism of 1960 South Korea. The Marrying Kind is a surprisingly successful attempt at a realistic picture of marriage, even its 1952 audience had to have the divorce wished away (not entirely unlike the way The Housemaid ends with the adultery plot wished away). Calcutta is a decent documentary, not as good as Rossellini's India made a decade earlier, and with the topic of overpopulation playing a very prominent role indeed. The best movie of the week was Lumiere D'Ete with its menage a trois, or menage a cinque becoming increasingly dark, provided with more intelligence than most filmmakers would present in 1943.

Actually this is an interesting schedule, even with all the usual Halloween movies. Swing High, Swing Low was on TCM a few years ago, but my cable company had recently complicated how to record things, so I didn't catch it. The Ritwik Ghatak movie looks interesting. Not only do we have The Spirit of the Beehive, but we also have Erice's follow-up feature El Sur.. And I'm also pleased about what I suspect are the premieres of Mountains of the Moon and The Others. Now if they could only get The Shining.

Well here's two different views of Ida: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/170850/hoberman-ida-pawlikoski http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2014/05/i-didnt-like-ida.html

I vote for Speedracer5

Are you going to extend the deadline? Otherwise I'll vote later tonight.

Well if I was to play Ferguson in Death on the Nile I'd replace Chiles with Catherine Deneuve, Olivia Hussey with Julie Berto, bring in on Michael Palin to play the crooked Italian archaelogist in the original novel, have Madhabi Mukherjee play the ship concierge and treat her with more dignity, and keep Ustinov, Niven, Farrow, Davis, Smith, Lansbury and Warden.

I must say the TF0 schedule is very impressive, what with broadcasting Berlin Alexanderplatz and the television version of Fanny and Alexander, as well as Raul Ruiz movies.

I've probably said this before about Harry and Tonto, but by no means a bad film, it came out the same year as Al Pacino in The Godfather Part II, Jack Nicholson in Chinatown and Gene Hackman in The Conversation, not to mention great performances that year by Peter Falk, Albert Finney and Erland Josephson. So Art Carney's oscar that year was preposterous.

This week I saw an unusually large eight movies. The Pawnbroker has its virtues, with Rod Steiger giving an unusually dignified performance, and with a downbeat ending. The Story of Three Loves also has its virtues, though the story of Kirk Douglas as a trapeze artist is both the longest and the one I found least interesting. I must confess none of the three stories quite moved me. The Glass Slipper is an interesting example of the live Cinderella genre. I haven't seen The slipper and the Rose for more than three decades, and I haven't seen Ever After since shortly after it came out. In this genre, Leslie Caron has a certain charm, and I always like a good ballet. But Michael Wilding is almost 19 years older than her, and there's a failure of chemistry. This Land is Mine was perhaps the biggest disappointment of the week. Charles Laughton is good, actually very good, as the protagonist. Una O'Connor is good as his mother, and Walter Slezak provides some nuance as the Nazi officer. But Renoir didn't get a chance to fully show his versatility. And the screenplay has too many false notes. (Sanders' character might have been more unctuously flattering, but in real life he would make sure which way the wind was blowing. The one resister has only the vaguest, least controversial politics conceivable. And the Nazis had a high idea of Plato, so they wouldn't try to ban him or Tacitus either.) And given that is the star of the month, Maureen O'Hara is the least convincing person trying to be a European. Basically remembering all the great movies Renoir made in France, this awkward Hollywood imitation of it is flawed. Black Moon is Louis Malle's attempt at surrealism, and it strongly suggests that he would be better off sticking what what he knows. Having seen I'm no Angel and Belle of the Nineties I must say that I like the idea of Mae West Movies more than the execution. Partly I suppose it's because she doesn't play well with others: Cary Grant in the former certainly doesn't show his promise here. The Marx Brothers get to play off themselves, and Margaret Dumont. Also, their jokes go farther than innuendo. Finally I saw Arrebato, a 1980 Spanish movie also known as Rapture which stars a mediocre horror film director with a drug problem who encounters an eccentric young man and his peculiar film experiments. Although not entirely successful, the last few minutes are genuinely creepy, achieving everything The Ring did without any of the melodrama.

I'm not sure. One day I will have to look up back issues of the small town newspaper where I grew up for showtimes, but I suspect I saw either Hansel and Gretel: An Opera Fantasy and the Disney animated version of Robin Hood before I saw The Shaggy Dog.