Fedya

Jack Carson. Pick your movie.

I only like half of them.

Where's he going to get the fluoride from?

Elmer Gantry would have been appropriate too, I suppose.

Well, if the movie is ... And God Created Woman

W.C. Fields and Alison Skipworth do the same thing in If I Have a Million.

Oh those headphones.

Oh those headphones.

Under the Volcano (1984). Albert Finney plays the alcoholic former British Consul to Mexico in 1938. His brother (Anthony Andrews) has given up fighting the Spanish Civil War, presumably to help take care of Finney. And then Finney's estranged wife (Jacqueline Bisset) shows up. That's about it to the movie, as it's a character study of the Finney character's alcoholism. He's a thoroughly unpleasant character in every way. Everybody does a good job acting, and there's some nice cinematography. Finney's alcoholism is probably more realistic than anything else put on screen before (especially The Lost Weekend and likely Days of Wine and Roses too). But I found the ending unsatisfying, and the movie as a whole wasn't what I was expecting. (For some reason I had the impression that the literal volcano was going to be under risk of eruption, as in The Devil at 4 O'Clock.) If you know what you're getting into and it's your sort of thing, the movie is probably a 9/10. But it wasn't quite my thing, so I'll give it a 7/10.

I know that Hitchcock would say later it was a mistake, but I like that he killed off the kid brother in Sabotage. Not that I want the kid to die; it's that it makes the movie work. The F/X are horrible, however.

It was on the old Fox Movie Channel years and years ago, and I think I may have a copy of it on VHS. I don't think I've got a working VCR, however. This is one FXM need to bring back out of the vault. That having been said, I'm glad The Day the Fish Came Out got taken out of the vault. That's another strange movie.

The drapes are a Macguffin.

La nuit américaine.

In Day For Night, Jacqueline Bisset's character makes a comment about not wanting to be remembered as "that woman from the movie with the car chase", or something like that. Obviously a reference to Bullitt. Speaking of Bisset, I watched Under the Volcano last night and the cinema at the beginning of the movie is showing Mad Love, and even has posters for Las Manos de Orlac, that apparently being the Mexican title of the movie.

I haven't seen much Buñuel, but I'd mention The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Just Imagine is strange, if only for everything they try to shoehorn into the movie Martha Ivers' love seems perfectly normal by comparison.

Godard had a falling out with Truffaut over the classic Day For Night because Truffaut's movie didn't challenge the right people.. To heck with Godard.

I think she's alone now.

It really should be Kirk Douglas for his centenary.

Drums Along the Mohawk wouldn't be a bad choice, if they can get the rights to it from Fox again. Maybe George Washington Slept Here?

So now you're a sexagenarian. /insert Thin Man joke here

The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 set the copyright term at 95 years for anything published after 1 January 1923. So Steamboat Willie should theoretically be entering the public domain in 2023, which means we're due for more lobbying for another copyright term extension. Stagecoach won't become public domain until 2034.

Getting back to the original subject, I'd rather see Alexander's Ragtime Band again, anyway.

So does Ah, Wilderness!

You mean like the hallway of doors opening in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound?

See, I thought the cavalry charge was tactically idiotic. Just besiege the place.