clore

I'm always pleased to avoid Red Skelton at every opportunity. I turned the channel at 10pm last night, watched some Barney Miller reruns.

Thank you so much for the kind words. It is easier to write a review of a film that impresses me than on one that doesn't. I guess I don't want to spend that much time in thinking about it.

Here's a user comment that I posted on the IMDb just over 10 years ago: 17 November 2003 In "Seventh Cross" director Fred Zinnemann depicted the isolation of a concentration camp escapee (Spencer Tracy) with MGM studio sets stepping in for actual locations - that would have been impossible at the time. In "The Search" he made use of a ruined Berlin to tell the story of a very young concentration camp survivor - a young boy separated from his mother - using the ruins as a metaphor for the many ruined lives. In "Act of Violence" Zinnemann returns to the aftermath of war - this time telling of two prisoner-of-war camp survivors, one of whom was a Nazi collaborator, the other one a vengeful fellow prisoner who takes it upon himself to track down and kill his former friend. Cinematographer Robert Surtees makes great use of Los Angeles' seedier parts of town - I was reminded of how his son Bruce Surtees made similar effective use of San Francisco in "Dirty Harry" - this is noir at its best, not only in cinematic terms, but with those "only come out at night" characters you expect in a top notch thriller. Mary Astor is most effective as the barfly (couldn't make her a prostitute, though it is more than obvious) - and after her performance in the garish "Desert Fury" it's nice to see her in black-and-white again. We first meet her in a pub in which Van Heflin runs for sanctuary, the lighting there has us admiring the way she has held up, but when we move to the harsher lighting of her apartment (the lamp hanging on a cord is unshaded), we realize that the first impression was too kind. It's a magnificent performance - perhaps the best that I've seen of her. Barry Kroeger, whose altogether too infrequent appearances included such noir classics as "Cry of the City" and "Gun Crazy," makes the most of his few moments as an underworld "enforcer" who would be quite willing to kill Ryan for a price. While Ryan seems to be a man who is on the verge of violence at any second, barely able to restrain himself, Kroeger is even more chilling. His calm, rational demeanor puts him in a different class of predator - he's good at what he does and he's used to doing it, like Alan Ladd's character in "This Gun For Hire" we can be sure that when committing murder, he feels "Fine, just fine." Janet Leigh appears as Heflin's wife - it's an early turn for her, and while it is a most stereotypically written "wifey" role, she invests it with all that she has, but the ending is such that we have to wonder just how she will react. Right before that we have a taut scene with Heflin about to confront Ryan while Kroeger is watching. The tension is almost unbearable, all done through editing and camerawork and not one line of dialogue. Zinnemann would continue to look at war's effects on those who came home in "The Men" as well as "Teresa" and in "Hatful Of Rain" - the man may be among the most unheralded of classic film directors, but his resume includes Oscar winners such as "High Noon" and "A Man For All Seasons" as well as such nailbiters as this film and the original "Day of the Jackal."

>So MGM did no crime films or noirs prior to Schary's appearance on the scene? I think that MGM's logic was that "Crime Does Not Pay."

Hopefully the new and improved boards will be better able to defeat the spambots with the links to illegal downloads.

>But clore, this whole issue begs the question, "Why the hell hasn't the guest seen the film ?"" Oh no, there's no excuse for that. To show up for the gig and be completely unprepared is not tolerable from my perspective. This is why I'd consider just shooting the intros without the guest rather than give him the build-up and eventual exposure. If the person wants to complain, well too bad Charley, at least you got to spend a night in Atlanta.

I'll have to check that out on my DVD. Not a swashbuckler, but one of my favorites is in NORTH TO ALASKA. In the brawl at the end, John Wayne takes a sock to the the jaw from Ernie Kovacs. You can clearly see him losing his hairpiece.

>It is pretty outrageous for someone to be invited on TCM as a guest programmer and then have it turn out that they haven't even seen the films they suggest ! Well, I've seen hosts commenting on films and it can be obvious that neither he nor the researchers have seen the film. Such as the intro to THE WOLF MAN which contained the claim that "Claude Rains plays a scientist who's up to no good." Yes, I know, the hosts don't pick the movies so the situation may be different in that regard. But it can still come across to the viewer that the host does not know the subject, so the end result can be the same. As for a guest host who has not seen the films that he/she suggested - yes, that's pretty bad. But someone at TCM management still has the option as to whether to play the intros or not. Were it moi, yeah, I could have a perverse enough sense of humor to have my "revenge" on an uncooperative guest and show it. Or else, maybe the better path is to just bury the intros and thus not put the person's name out there as "Guest host of the month" and set the audience up for disappointment.

I think that given a person's own particular interests outside of the subject that draws us here like a magnet, one will spot "goofs" such as in this case, the flags. I'm big on cars of the 50s and 60s, so in contemporary films that are set in that era, I'm bound to spot the anachronisms. I can't help it - as age seven I could ID a car at night from two blocks away just by the taillights. One of my big groaners was when we went to see THE MIRROR CRACK'D. The film opens with "1954" appearing large on the screen while meanwhile, a major character is driving in a 1959 Cadillac. This may be the most distinctive Caddy ever made owing to its enormous fins - even by Cadillac standards.

I'd love to respond, but I've not seen the American version since 1968 and I haven't seen the Italian cut at all. I'll try to change that soon as I see that it's on Netflix streaming. I do recall that I enjoyed Karloff's segment as well as "A Drop of Water" but the one about the telephone had me unimpressed. That may change given that AIP did some alterations, so I hope to be pleasantly surprised with the original.

It's way too evident in ANIMAL CRACKERS.

Congrats to all of those who made the cut. No, I didn't bother to enter. I'm like George Raft - I can't bear the sight of watching myself. I leave the room if someone is playing video in which I appear. It's not stage fright - I'll sing in front of an audience, given hundreds of presentations in front of one. I'll try to catch all of the intros, even if I'm not going to watch the film itself. Again, my congratulations.

Yes, I've already changed my email and I'm glad that we had the chance to do so. As for "We?ve worked on a data migration strategy to ensure that 1 year or more of all topics and threads will be on the new boards" - I'm wondering if that means those threads which were started within the last year, or those that have had a last entry made within the last year. Not that I'm wedded to anything that I've launched, but there are some threads made by others that I'd hate to see disappear as they're so informative in more ways than one.

I didn't check out BUS STOP as Don Murray's character in there do annoys me that I just can't accept whatever other virtues that the film offers. SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL was 1.33:1, but it was 1.66:1 on release, so that was no big deal. I didn't bother with the rest. I've been given three free months of a channel called "Epix" and their On Demand channel has HUGO airing and as I have never seen it, I figured I'd check it out while waiting for the sandman. He never showed, but I was entranced - what a magical film.

It's especially annoying since my own viewing log shows that I saw it on FMC in widescreen back in 2008. I have friends who will buy imports of DVDs of Fox movies because the titles are not available in 2.35:1 in a Region 1 edition. I'm too frugal for that, but it doesn't make sense that we should get the inferior versions in the first place.

Have you ever tried that downloading site? I'd like to see it in the proper ratio as it's the NYC of my childhood. I just worry about some Russian site sending me a virus - my brother screwed up his PC with some site. But it not worth buying the $20.00 FOX MOD disc as it's in the Academy ratio. For some reason, one has to go to buy from a Region 2 DVD source to get their titles in Cinemascope.

That's because it's pan and scan. I'm getting the heebie-jeebies and it isn't because Mother hasn't given me my fix. TCM Programmers - Fox owes you. Accept no excuses, they've aired this film on FMC in widescreen.

SPOILER BELOW (I tried to put in a lot of white space, the system won't let me do that) ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... "Who's going to tell his wife?" "I will." That's my only knock on the film. Somehow I don't see her being comforted to see him at the door.

I remember Don Adams pulling double-duty with that voice. He was doing *Tennessee Tuxedo* cartoons on Saturday morning and appearing as a regular on Bill Dana's sitcom way back in 1963.

Wow - Ben Mankiewicz just apologized for the scheduling mishap. Way to go folks, that was considerate.

>All my life people like movie hosts on TV and other film "historians" have pointed to GONE WITH THE WIND as the first major motion picture that had profanity spoken in the dialogue( "Franky my dear, I don't give a damn!"). True. The other night during DIRIGIBLE, I heard a "damn you" when Ralph Graves was trying to revive Harold Goodwin. I guess GWTW stands out because the Code was challenged, but what's ignored are all the occurrences before the Code.

>Guess Fritz Lang decided that the title he ended up with sounds better, more intriguing, more noir-ish, than the more mundane "Chuck-a-Luck". In an interview with Lang in the book "The Celluloid Muse," the director claimed that he wanted "Chuck A Luck" as the title, but he was forced to deal with "Rancho Notorious" which Howard Hughes preferred. The latter thought that nobody would have known what Chuck-A-Luck was referring to, which caused Lang much confusion.

Thanks for the update, I've already set a reminder. The last print of the film that I saw on TCM did have the shield, but it was noticeably better than the copy they had been running prior to that. So, Sony has it now? Could they be thinking of some new Capra box set with restored editions? I thank my stars that Sony went through the trouble of cleaning up HIS GIRL FRIDAY for a Cary Grant set as I had never seen a decent print of it since the dawn of home video.

It aired as scheduled, followed by ACROSS THE PACIFIC which just ended.

>It's called not having a very attentive continuity editor. It must have been the same person who didn't notice that the carving on a post in THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR that Anna was told would be visible to all the ships at sea, was actually facing inland.