Fedya

The Wrong Box (1966). John Mills and Ralph Richardson play a pair of elderly brothers in Victorian England who are the last surviving members of a tontine, a form of investment/insurance policy in which a group of people pool funds which are disbursed to the last surviving member. Each of the two brothers wants to be the last surviving member, but more than that, it's their young family members who want their hands on the tontine money. They'll go to great lengths to get at it. Michael Caine plays Mills' grandson, sutdying to be a doctor and trying to deal with Mills' increasingly parlous finances. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore play two of Richardson's (grand)nephews, with Nanette Newman being a cousin to them and Caine. She lives with Richardson (who lives next door to Mills), but falls in love with Caine. There are some funny moments, but some misses too. Peter Sellers is irritating in his two scenes as a corrupt and dissolute doctor, while Wilfrid Lawson is even worse as Mills' butler. Richardson, on the other hand, is a hoot as the old man who engages in trivial small talk that drives everybody else up a wall without his having a clue as to the effect it has. 6/10.

Isn't the urban legend that they're lesbians, just like Bert and Ernie are gay?

And yet look at how posters here whine and moan about what TCM does or doesn't do by way of a memorial for deceased actor. It's almost a certainty you'll get somebody complaining about TCM only showing "the usual suspects".

More heartbreaking is what they did to Jackson's daughter. That whole memorial service reminded me of the funeral scene in the Lana Turner version of Imitation of Life -- and I laugh at Susan Kohner losing it.

Ivy (1947). Joan Fontaine plays a spendthrift in circa-1910 England married to Richard Ney, but who has doctor Patric Knowles pursuing her (and the feeling is mutual). But then she meets businessman/adventurer Herbert Marshall, develops a crush on him, and uses him to get her husband a job. Money is still a problem, so she steals some of Dr. Knowles' poison and uses it to poison her husband. Fortuitously, the doctor shows up on the very day hubby dies, implicating him in the death. And Fontaine is happy enough to let him take the rap for it. The story is pretty good, but three of the four main characters are drips. The other one (Marshall) is absent for half the movie. The movie also goes on a bit too long; it probably should have ended after Marshall's final scene with Fontaine instead of going on for a few more minutes to the "satisfying" conclusion. 7/10 I watched this off my DVR, having recorded it during the TCM Spotlight on William Cameron Menzies back in January.

And here I thought this was going to be about Them!.

Oh come on. Would Mahogany do a thing like that? (Of course she would.)

There are probably a lot of biographical movies that use flashbacks, starting the story late in the person's life and then telling the story in flashbacks. Examples with real people would include Chariots of Fire, Amadeus, or The Great Moment. Examples involving fictional characters would be the aforementioned Citizen Kane, Lydia, or The Great Man's Wife. Actually Chariots of Fire is one of several movies that start off with a funeral and use that to introduce the flashback. There's also The Barefoot Contessa and The Power and the Glory; I think Miracle of the Bells might technically be another.

Of course, it turned out that the Ethiopian government used the food aid as a weapon in their civil war with the Eritreans: move to where the food aid is (and away from the other Eritreans fighting on your behalf), or die of starvation. Truly evil.

Considering your complaints about the yellow press, why should be any business of the public, or especially the state, if Prince wanted to medicate himself like this?

It'll be too bad if Prince's death leads to even more of a crackdown on prescription medications, considering the damage the crackdown is already doing to people who have difficulty getting the effective pain medications they need. Moving the effective cold medications behind the counter in an attempt to combat meth production did diddly-squat, and yet they haven't repealed the utterly failed policy. (I should also add that my sister has MS, but is not yet to the point where she's going to need those pain medications. Thankfully.)

Charles Boyer.George Sanders.

I remember the first time I watched Autumn Leaves, and the opening theme wasn't overwrought piano music, but a Nat King Cole song. Likewise, Percy Faith didn't do the music in the movie A Summer Place. (The music is by Max Steiner.)

How long after Freddie Mercury's death was it before people started playing "Another One Bites the Dust" again? As for Prince, I think my two favorite songs of his are "Thieves in the Temple" and "Money Don't Matter Tonight", although I've probably got the title wrong on the latter.

They say this as though it were a bad thing.

Misswonderly: You forgot "The Letter" and "The Moon and Sixpence".

Lawrence: I wouldn't call "Tender Love" a rap song. And the Fat Boys would later show up with Ralph Bellamy in "The Disorderlies". And with the Beach Boys singing "Wipeout". The video is, I think, on Youtube.

Marie (aka Marie: A True Story) (1985). Sissy Spacek plays Marie Ragghianti, a single mother of three who escapes her abusive husband in Georgia, moves back to Tennessee and her mother, and gets her degree. After getting her degree, she meets old college friend Eddie Sisk (Jeff Daniels), an appointee of the new Governor, and he gets her a job in the clemency and extradition bureau. She does her job well enough that Gov. Blanton (Don Hood) eventually appoints her to the parole board. On the parole board, however, she learns there may be high-level corruption going on, with paroles and pardons being sold, as well as delays in extraditions. At every turn she's stymied, until the governor fires her. She sues for wrongful dismissal, hiring former Senate Watergate counsel Fred Thompson (playing himself). Also in the cast are Keith Szarabajka as the civil servant trying to win Marie's heart; and Morgan Freeman as a fellow Parole Board officer who not only isn't impossibly virtuous, but is in fact a bit of a bad guy. The performances are good, especially Spacek's, and the trial scenes are particularly good, as there's little of the histrionics that generally appear in Hollywood courtrooms. In fact, the courtroom itself is pretty cramped and much less majestic-looking than in most movies. The movie is generally based on a true story, although I do wonder how much liberty was taken with that story since Ragghianti has to go through so much that it gets ridiculous by the end. The other problem with the movie is the heavy-handed music score, which makes it very obvious when Something Dramatic Is About to Happen. It was to the point that I started laughing when I heard the change in music. Still, don't let that put you off the movie. I give it a solid 7/10.

Everything's coming up noses.

I thought that you wouldn't get a true hi-def picture if you use the old red, white, and yellow cables. That, and it screws up the aspect ratio. Or, at least, the latter is what I found with my old DVD player. 4:3 movies I could get to show up properly if I set the proper aspect ratio on the TV, but wide-screen movies like Mahogany didn't look right no matter what I tried. Thankfully, the old DVD player was also freezing quite a bit, so I had an impetus to get a new player. I got the Sony BDP-S1500 (I think; the instructions list three different models; I've got the bottom of the line model since I don't do 3D TV) Blu-Ray player. That, the HDMI cable, and the tax came to about $81. Setup was a breeze; the most difficult thing was getting through the mass of cables/plugs behind the entertainment unit. Now every DVD I've tried looks to have the correct aspect ratio, with one exception, and that one I think it's the DVD not being listed in the proper aspect ratio on the box. I haven't bought any Blu-Rays yet, although I think I've got the Saboteur Blu-Ray in my Amazon cart waiting for me to make another order. (I've got an order of several DVD box sets on the way currently, so it'll be a while before I make another purchase.)

We moved into a new house in 1974, when I was two. I grew up with avocado bathrooms and a harvest gold refrigerator.

"Remote Control'. William Haines plays an obnoxious jerk who stalks a woman back to her place of employment, a struggling radio station, where he finds he knows the boss: her brother. Haines gets a job and hires new talent, including a phony clairvoyant (John Miljan). Miljan is actually the leader of a gang of bank robbers, and uses his show to send his partners messages. Haines figures this out and gets kidnapped for his troubles. Amazingly, Haines ends up with the woman he stalked at the beginning of the film. Thankfully "Remote Control" is only a little over an hour, so it's mercifully brief. 5/10.

The harbor town looks as impossibly gorgeous as the cast members.

The movie was later remade under that King of the Khyber Rifles title, with Tyrone Power starring.

So Warren Beatty is playing the zebra?