Cinemascope

I'm tempted to wait until I can rent the Criterion DVD but I might just give in and watch it this Sunday.

I'm not doubting what you're saying about "Christmas Holiday"or any of the others, it's just that I can't see MU putting their reputation on the line by selling grey market items. Well the copy they have of A Matter of Life and Death (Stairway to Heaven) (1946) seems to me to be a "grey market" item. That film has never been officially released on DVD in the US, only in the UK. The last official release was done on VHS by Columbia TriStar Home Video. Not sure if they still have the rights.

And what a great month it's going to be! :x

What a great start to the first SOTM tribute after the Oscar season! That doc they showed certainly explains a lot about the bad blood between GK and Louis B. Meyer. For Me and My Gal is a terrific choice for the first movie, GK and Judy Garland looked sooo young in that one! It sure makes you yearn for those early days of the 1940's!

Any hotel that refuses Cheney's request is alright in my book!

Yeah that's the remake that they included in the new special edition of the original. Always heard it was bloody awful!

> > I liked him a lot in While the City Sleeps. > > That's a great film with a great cast (Directed by > Lang too!). It's coming up soon. Good to know, I'm dying to watch it again!

He played the same part in every role he ever had Funny, many people think the same of Cary Grant, Clark Gable, John Wayne, etc.

Sometimes suspension of disbelief goes a long way!

That's not a bad analysis of Kubrick's technique. As for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World, well, I'm not the world's biggest fan, but it does have a few moments and you have to give it credit for trying out the concept of the "epic comedy". The fact that I know so many people really enjoy it tells me it should be showcased because there's a good chance many more people who haven't seen it will enjoy it. And the other movie, well, haven't watched it recently, but I'll watch anything with Alan Arkin!

Yea, all those $1. movies at the check out stand PD and many of the titles that sell for under $5. there so cheap cause they dont have to pay fees. Actually I thought they were cheap because they'll use the first source material they use, never investing anything in looking all over the world for better source to use for a video transfer, never spending a dime on film restoration, etc.

I remember that!!!! And the Pabst Blue Ribbon special! :0

I haven't even tried to listen to the audio commentary. On a disappointment scale of 1 to 10, a bad transfer of a Technicolor musical that messes up the colors is like a 12. That's why I am still fuming over that. I just hope they fix it at some point in a future edition. Did you see the Busby Berkeley doc in the same DVD? At least the colors in those clips look great -- and the bananas and strawberries look so yummy!

Danny that's a great list, but I'm wondering why you didn't consider Lady and the Tramp to be more of a classic film, since it came out in 1955 and was in fact the very first animated movie in Cinemascope.

To me a Hollywood star is someone who becomes a star doing Hollywood movies. Johnny Carson in my view was a celebrity, but not a Hollywood star. Yes he did have a show in Los Angeles and he interviewed a lot of Hollywood stars. Yes he hosted the Oscars, but so did David Letterman (well at least once! ) And yes, he was recognizable, but as someone you see on TV, not in the movies. Not that there's anything wrong with being a TV celebrity, at least not the way Carson did it.

Brazil is very much like the kind of picture you'd expect from Terry Gilliam. I guess that's just another way of saying if you like some of his other movies, there's a chance you might enjoy this one. He has a nice way of coming up with sometimes amazing imagery and often takes you by surprise narratively, or at least tries not to be too predicatable. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen or Time Bandits might have given you some idea of what to expect, if you've seen them. If not, well, it is a weird blend of some Orwellian dystopian future with some very beautiful "mind-over-matter" allusions, although the end result strikes many as somewhat in the bleak side. Of course, his vision was so original and offbeat that Universal Pictures butchered the movie upon its original release, cutting out I think half an hour and ending it with a conventionally happy ending. There was another longer cut, but Gilliam's cut of Brazil (originally released on home video by the Criterion Collection) is far more challenging and in some ways unsettling. (The Criterion box set includes all 3 cuts of the movie). Jonathan Pryce, Robert DeNiro and Bob Hoskins are engaging and Kim Greist seems to strike the right note as the enigmatic angel-like figure that Pryce falls in love with.

There are quite a few sets coming you, you're right. I guess I just kinda meant that no matter how many films the home video companies turn out, there's always dozens of titles people are still asking for. But yeah, with so much stuff coming out, and HDTV looming on the horizon, I wonder which titles it makes more sense to rent now and maybe consider buying in a HD format at a later date.

To me it was always a face that was more closely associated with friendly TV host than with handsome movie star. Wonder if he ever thought of becoming a Hollywood star himself?

Does WHV have the rights to the comedies DK made for Samuel Goldwyn?

(there must be something in the water in Omaha that pumps out good looking men - Johnny Carson, Henry Fonda and Marlon Brando all came from Omaha, Nebraska). That's one of the most interesting theories I've heard in a long time... but Johnny Carson? He seemed looked like a very nice man, but I wouldn't think of him as particularly good-looking, not movie-star good-looking.

That's a great photo I love that cuddly puppy! :x Thanks for sharing mongo

Ack! I'd forgotten about Glenn Close in that movie. For some reason it also brings to mind Jeremy Irons in a totally different movie -- A Reversal of Fortune. It was menacing in an unusual way, but very effective nonetheless.

While I've read that some feel that this movie is not truly a noir for a variety of reasons, it is an engaging drama Well, I would probably have enjoyed the movie a lot more if I hadn't been expecting film noir. As a crime drama, it is fairly well done, and has a lot of good things going for it. As a noir -- and of course people's definitions of film-noir may vary -- it just didn't strike me as anything much, with overly bright photography and much of the action taking place during the day instead of at night or in dark places. Nor does it have as a protagonist someone who is doomed from the get-go. Just one of those cases where a movie might be more fun if no one told you what genre to expect.

So, TCM's foreign-language movie for Sunday, March 11th is Seijun Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter. Anyone looking forward to this? For more info check out this: http://criterioncollection.com/asp/release.asp?id=39