clore
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Posts posted by clore
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> {quote:title=finance wrote:}{quote}Tony Curtis must have also liked ANTHONY ADVERSE. He got his screen first name from that film.
That's interesting, I had not heard that before. I knew he was a film buff, going back to his youth, nice to know of another fan of the film.
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I went back and fixed it - it's that darn inconsistent quote feature that looks fine in preview mode, and sometimes screws up when one officially posts.
One can see in ADVERSE that WB was aspiring to greater things, they paid a fortune for the rights to the best seller and it's just under two-and-a-half hours - not common at that studio where even George Arliss films ran 90 minutes.
Yet it's still a WB film at heart, filled with social injustice issues, moral degradation and reformation, a wrongly accused hero and yes, one incredibly "hot" femme in Steffi Duna who managed to survive the Code in dress and manner.
No, while I say it seems a warm up for his MGM period, I mean that in terms of the scope, the length, the period settings - it was a big step up for LeRoy, a far cry from his 70-minute crime or contemporary films that preceded it, with the exception I guess of OIL FOR THE LAMPS OF CHINA.
I used to call the VP/GM of WABC, not only with complaints, but more often with compliments. I like to think that I had a bit to do with their going back to running credits at the beginning, it was a big issue for me and I even gathered a petition.
Both Richard L. Beesmeyer and John O. Gilbert his successor actually took the calls from a 15-year-old viewer - probably because my voice was so deep by this point that I sounded like Ray Danton.
Years later, I got to meet Mr. Gilbert when he moved out to Colorado and managed a TV station there while in semi-retirement. The company that I worked for repped his station and I used to issue tons of weekly info pieces in addition to being programming advisor. He called me to say he was coming to NYC and wanted to meet me as my name sounded familiar.
When I told him of our previous contacts, he said "Now I remember that voice, you should be doing voiceover work."
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> {quote:title=Swithin wrote:}{quote}
> I agree. He directed my favorite film.
That one is sort of a warm-up for his MGM period.
When I was a teen, I very much wanted to see ANTHONY ADVERSE, but WNBC had it under license and the only times that I saw it listed, it was on a school night after The Tonight Show. They wouldn't air it in the summer, no we got things in that slot such as SWAMP FIRE and MANFISH. "Festival of Thrillers" was about the only time that I'd watch a 1am movie on WNBC.
I didn't see ADVERSE until the last decade or so, and now I've seen it four times. I'm not crazy about March, down the cast list was Louis Hayward who would have been much more acceptable for me since Errol Flynn was probably busy elsewhere.
William Dieterle wasn't happy though, the project was snatched from him by Jack Warner "to keep peace in the family" since LeRoy was married to Harry Warner's daughter.
I'm not wild about LeRoy's MGM period and his return to WB showed he could make movies of stage plays that still looked like stage plays and with some blatant overacting or just plain bad acting. Gone was the inventiveness of his early period, replaced by point-and-shoot direction. At least he was better treated by the studio than was William Wellman who couldn't get budgets or stars and quit the biz in disgust when he came back to the fold around the same time.
Edited by: clore on Aug 31, 2012 4:16 PM
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It's not the first time that this has happened. I mean that they handed Osborne text that went against the grain of what was posted on the company site. I think that someone just confused the Amish of Pennsylvania with Quakers. It's like confusing egg noodles with puffed rice.
No insult to either intended.
The researchers should be forced to work in a room with the TCM promo shouting the virtues of TCM.com on an endless loop. Or else be given a proof-reader with some knowledge of film.
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Obviously, the researchers don't trust the family website:
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/88150|http://0/Friendly-Persuasion.html
Friendly Persuasion (1956)Producer-director William Wyler had Jessamyn West's novel Friendly Persuasion in mind for eight years before he brought the project to Allied Artists. He had just completed a five-picture deal with Paramount when he was offered a plum from Allied, a company looking to achieve major studio status by signing top directors like Wyler, Billy Wilder, and John Huston. *They gave him a $1.5 million budget for his first color film, and shooting was to take place in the story's original southern Indiana locale.* By the time it was completed, on a San Fernando Valley estate and at the old Republic studios, the cost had swelled to $3 million. But it turned out to be a popular success, despite its two-hour-seventeen-minute running time and its focus on the unlikely cinematic subject of Quaker values. It brought in $8 million in box-office receipts by 1960 alone.
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I have more of a problem with the MTV editing and the de-saturation of color in today's films than the CGI process. Even Cinecolor was better than what passes for color these days.
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If GWTW were made today, most of the bodies dying on the street in Atlanta would be CGI. Anyone who would want to call "fake" should consider that at least half in the 1939 film were dummies (as in props) anyway.
If done well, it can create the proper effect. Same goes for any effects process as you have noted. Bad matte paintings (as in the end of WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE) can downgrade a film also. I didn't care for GLADIATOR, but that went beyond the bad CGI work in the first battle, I just thought that I saw it all before and the cliches weren't served up well enough for me to be more tolerant.
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No one on these boards can legitimately claim a greater love for classic movies than those who go the extra mile and create schedules for the TCM Programming Challenge (currently in progress).
I wouldn't go that far - and I don't. I worked in scheduling for years, it's too much like work for me to be doing in my retirement. But I stand second to no one in my appreciation of classic films. It's just that at this stage, I prefer to spend my time either watching them, or writing about them here and on other sites.
Mind you, I'm not belittling anyone's efforts on the Challenge, or their love of classics. But participation should not be considered as some finite mark of passion on the subject.
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"My father reads a little bit
Little words like 'if' and 'it'
But my father can read big words too
Like Constantinople and Timbuktu"
With apologies to Dr. Seuss.
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They've run it so many times in the past that it's earned a day off. It's not as if it has always been forsaken, just on this, his honored day.
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It's from Hitchcock's THE WRONG MAN.
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why didn't Walter Brennan realize that the victim was really Ricky Nelson in drag?
Cuz Stumpy's eyesight is worse than his singing.
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LADY BEWARE with Diane Lane is set and shot in Pittsburgh.
Nothing like going up what they call Television Hill when it's icy out.
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> {quote:title=Sepiatone wrote:}{quote}
> The main difference between "Noon" and "Bravo" that I can see is that in "Noon", Coop asks for help, and the people refuse. In "Bravo", The PEOPLE ask TO help, but are refused.
Yes, but in RIO BRAVO, those who volunteer are transients - other than the hotel owner and his wife, you don't see any townspeople who aren't hooked up with Burdette. Apparently there are more lawmen than people.
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My experience when having criticized Hitchcock films in the past, is that one of his big fans will come along and give me the old "it's only a movie" quote.
So why doesn't that hold up when they proclaim its greatness, why isn't it "only a movie" then?
But you're right, sometimes one can be so over-exposed to something that the cracks begin to show. With this film, it took me maybe two-dozen for some of then to appear, and this is going back some 25 years ago in my case.
Something else such as THE BLUE DAHLIA has me seeing all of the incredible coincidences the first time around and I can't enjoy it again save for a few lines of dialogue.
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Carpenter and Schickel stated that Wayne and Hawks hated *High Noon* so much they made this as an answer to it.
Hawks also did not like 3:10 TO YUMA. He said the problem with it was that all Heflin had to do was tell Ford that if anything happened, he would blow Ford's head right off. That's why he had Brennan in RIO BRAVO threaten Akins with a similar fate.
The problem there is that Heflin does say that at least once, I know it comes up in the hotel.
I like RIO BRAVO, but I liked I liked it more before I heard the background on it in the 70s. I started looking for its faults relative to HIGH NOON. One that really bugged me is that while HIGH NOON presents a town - whether we like them or not is irrelevant - Duke presides over a ghost town. John Russell has already taken over everything, including Brennan's ranch. Where was the law during all of that? Everyone we meet other than Wayne, Martin or Brennan is just passing through, or else works for Burdette.
The stage should have stopped coming ages ago.{font}
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Now, this is pretty much the case with just about all Hitchcock, but I'm thinking one that might be a little more accessible to the young folks would be *Strangers on a Train*.
Yes, but will they ever want to ride a carousel again?
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This past Tuesday made it 32 years since I bought my first Panasonic machine for $650, blanks cost me 16 bucks apiece. This is the very same machine:
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Here's another Megowan shot:
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Rod Cameron
Don Megowan
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How else to explain showing reality series titled "Whisker Wars" about men and their beard-growing "prowess" or the self-explanatory "Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys"?.
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This belongs in the George Brent thread.
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I could see there being a problem November 3/4 as we set the clocks back, but your gap is later in the month. Hmmm, curious.
James Caan on TCM ?
in General Discussions
Posted
> {quote:title=finance wrote:}{quote}Have some of Caan's contemporaries--- Pacino, De Niro, Hoffman, Nicholson--- been given SUTS days in the past?
I wonder if part of the problem with selecting some of these actors has to do with the mutha-friggin' language in so many of their films. TCM tends to hold off until midnight on such things, so if that means that Pacino is "honored" with REVOLUTION, BOBBY DEERFIELD or AUTHOR, AUTHOR during the day, it's not a favor.