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clore

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Posts posted by clore

  1. Mr. Roberts is cool - but he's really working hard at it. It's mentioned early that everyone else is close to cracking since there's been no liberty and it's up to Fonda to remain cool or calm in order to set some sort of example and get things done.

     

    The captain has him by the you-know-whats because Mr. Roberts can't afford to let go just a little as it would show up in an evaluation and further hurt his chances of a transfer.

     

    I've read that there was more of an edge to his character on stage, but perhaps that was just Fonda recognizing the difference between the stage and the studio. I just wonder if Fonda wasn't allowed to show some seams in his facade as Ford wanted to emphasize the comic aspects, or as Fonda once called it "the boys will be boisterous" approach with which he so disagreed.

  2. I have to agree there. A lead is expected to hold the screen, that why if attention is diverted to a supporting player, they say the scene is stolen.

     

    But I have long said that William Powell does steal MR. ROBERTS from Fonda and the rest. He's the center of calm amongst the wildly animated Lemmon and Cagney and the stoic Fonda, whom I think at times is just walking through a performance that he gave several hundred times already on stage.

     

    That may have been owing to his problems with Ford on the changes made, but that's the stuff of another thread perhaps.

  3. I have to confess I was as clueless as the editors of Black Mask concerning the other meaning of gunsel (though catamite is a great word if one ever gets a chance to use it.)

     

    I wasn't aware of the other meaning either until a Lit professor that I met in a pub mentioned it to me. As for "catamite" - it sounds like some substance that Julie Newmar would use on BATMAN to hypnotize the caped crusader.

     

     

    I guess one could get the idea that Gutman and Wilmer might have a relationship, but that's a minor point and also a mental picture that one doesn't want to think too much about.

     

     

    I just hope for Wilmer's sake that he doesn't get the bottom berth.

  4. I've seen a few of those Hugo Haas films and they're actually not bad. Noirish stories of an older man (Haas) who falls for some young blonde (Cleo Moore or Beverly Michaels) and his inevitable path to destruction.

     

    I'm surprised that TCM hasn't picked up the ones he made for Columbia since there seems to be an open door to the Columbia vaults.

     

    His film LIZZIE with Elaenor Parker in a sort of road company version of THREE FACES OF EVE is worth checking out.

  5. I know someone who was approached by a fellow patron of a pub in which they both hung out. They knew each other fairly well, having chatted a number of times. Finally he was asked by the other one "Just how is it that you're so cool?"

     

    He replied "Don't say that. The moment that I start thinking that I might be cool, I'm not."

  6. > {quote:title=TopBilled wrote:}{quote}

    > Technically, this is not a sequel, because she was playing two different characters in two different productions, but the way it was edited, it did seem like a continuation of the same story.

    1999's THE LIMEY did something similar by using scenes from POOR COW, a 1967 film, to serve as flashbacks for the character played by Terence Stamp in the newer film.

  7. There was an episode of MURDER, SHE WROTE that featured three members of the cast of the 1949 film STRANGE BARGAIN and had Jessica trying to determine if a death presented in the film was a murder or suicide.

     

    The episode was titled "The Days Dwindle Down" and aired in 1987, 38 years after the original film.

  8. Whew! Thanks to your quote, I spotted an error in typing in which I was lucky enough not to have thrown back at me.

     

    As far as the two horror films go, here the "source" material was obvious in the title, regardless of whether or not they were faithful adaptaions or not. The titles more or less screamed that they were twisting the material to fit.

     

     

     

     

  9. My memory may be slipping, but as I recall BLACULA, he was an African Prince played by a black actor who is bitten by Dracula. Then we segue to contemporary times and he's on the prowl again.

     

    For me, it was a blaxploitation spin on the character and while not exactly a faithful retelling of Stoker, in reality most other film versions weren't either.

     

    I've never seen BLACKENSTEIN but I figured it worthy of inclusion as it is an attempt to rip off a theme associated with whites and fashion it for a black audience.

     

    Oh, here's another four that come to mind:

     

    GET CARTER = HIT MAN

     

    THE ASPHALT JUNGLE = COOL BREEZE

     

    ODD MAN OUT = THE LOST MAN

     

    THE INFORMER = UP TIGHT!

  10. I didn't get the impression that Ben was bashing Kazan, just making reference to the event and noting that Kazan was still the subject of controversy even nearly 50 years after the HUAC appearance.

     

    As far as Kazan being brave, he was merely following the crowd in order to save his own Hollywood career. Even Kazan admitted that he only gave names that they already had, so where's the bravery in that? It would possibly have been braver for him to defy the committee if he were so inclined as he, unlike so many others, could have retreated to the stage again. Why not just say "I can't add anything to your list" and go back to Broadway?

     

    Instead, he appeared, gave names and then signed the contract to do the film which he would never have gotten to do had he not "cleared" himself before HUAC. Hollywood does pay better.

     

    This is not my indictment of Kazan for what he did, the climate of fear was unlike that that came before in our short history. Your next door neighbor only had to imply to the right source that you were a Commie and that would have been enough to ruin your life.

     

    What has dogged Kazan since is that many perceive him as the person who could have stood up to HUAC and perhaps changed the course of events. He was the "hot" director of the moment and would still have had the option for a career move.

     

    Whether that perspective is accurate, no one will ever know.

     

    Most of these "victims" deserved to be outed and more. Hollywood has never come to terms and admitted their culpability with those crimes.

     

    Of which crimes are you referring? Even HUAC could never find any actual criminal activity and the hearings failed to result in the enactment of any new legislation at all. Which "victims" deserved it and which ones didn't - do you know? So what if a few innocents had to be sacrificed, right?

     

    "It is better one hundred guilty persons should escape than that one innocent person should suffer."

    Benjamin Franklin

  11. I lived in Ridgewood, so I didn't get to the Forest Hills theaters too often as I had the RKO Madison, the Ridgewood, the Oasis and in the earliest days, the Parthenon and the Starr Theater which is really the home of most of my childhood viewings. These were all in walking distance.

     

    Once I was old enough to drive, then I got around and was in the Forest Hills area more often. My son lives on Saunders Street, if he could walk through walls, he's in a straight line south of the Trylon. I'm in Jackson Heights where we only have one theater left and it's been so chopped up that the screens seem only slightly larger than my TV.

     

    But the Kaufman is just a 15 minute bus ride away.

  12. Yes, I noticed and put up a post in a thread on the film in the Hot Topics folder a few minutes after it started. This also happened with a couple of Abbott and Costello monster films a few Sundays ago and the Sunday before that it happened with JOAN OF ARC.

     

    But the films were fine on the SD version of TCM.

     

    The online monthly schedule does have STATE FAIR indicated as being letterboxed. Maybe someone saw that and pushed the wrong button.

  13. Those watching it on TCM HD are getting a print filling the whole of a widescreen TV. The heads are getting chopped off in the process.

     

    Turn to the regular TCM SD channel to get the proper 4:3 ratio.

     

    I get the heebie jeebies watching fake widescreen movies. But maybe someone at TCM saw that the month's online schedule does have it listed as a letterboxed movie.

  14. You have a good point. Gene Hackman had no control over his birth date and he is considered one of our best actors of the last half-century. That should not exclude him from consideration as long as the year that a film was nominated for an Oscar doesn't exclude it.

     

    Nor should it exclude someone like Robert Duvall who does not seem to have been mentioned in this thread.

  15. > {quote:title=Swithin wrote:}{quote}Interesting topic for a thread -- actors who played Napoleon Bonaparte. Rollo Lloyd in Anthony Adverse is another. But there are probably hundreds. But Albert Dieudonne in the Gance film would have to come at or near the top of the list. That film may be silent, but it sings!

     

    You may enjoy this:

     

    http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0027456/

     

    Just glancing, I see a couple of actors played him two or more times - Herbert Lom, Emile Drain and Egon von Hagen.

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