Fedya
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Posts posted by Fedya
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Yes, you're the only one.
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It's been done before:
Edited by: Fedya on Jan 25, 2014 9:37 PM, because apparently TCM's broken software won't let me put an apostrophe in the text description of a link
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> When will this madness end????
It will end [in 3 minutes, 44 seconds|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwIe_sjKeAY]
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For some reason that photo makes me think of the chess scene in *The Thomas Crown Affair*.
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> But I don't agree about Sirk. ( I like his films, there are good soaps and lousey ones, Sirk's are the good ones, imo)
I laugh when Susan Kohner shows up at the funeral in *Imitation of Life*. By the same token, I also enjoy *Written on the Wind*, but more as comedy.
I can't take much more than the first half hour of *Magnificent Obsession*, which makes *Guess Who's Coming to Dinner* look subtle by comparison. There's not much subtlety to Jenny Stewart in *Torch Song* either.
That's more or less why I compared this to the work of Douglas Sirk.
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I was more wondering how Graham could afford the place. It always seems that everybody in movies like this (see also *Black Widow* ) lives in a palatial apartment.
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I think I've finally recovered from the two hours I spent on the floor laughing after the movie finally ended. Oh boy what a hilariously awful mess. Where to begin?
Joan Crawford starts off with a dance number that shows off her legs. This is silly, but at least naturally shows her legs as the dress moves around them. It's not as "****" inducing as the oversized poster that shows off one leg, and has the other wrapped in the 1950s substitute for spandex.
The plot hinges on one of the hoariest of tropes, that of the blind guy who can see what everybody else can't. Still, Joan Crawford gets to zing him with such memorable lines as suggesting he get a seeing-eye girl. Of course, he's already got one of those.
Joan Crawford's bedroom, in all its sea green push-button glory. But for some reason, the layers and layers of drapes aren't operated by push button.
Harry Morgan with a moustache. Or at least, it sure looked like a moustache.
Was the music deliberately supposed to be bad to try to make a plot point about the Joan Crawford character's true abilities? Or did it just seem like dreadfully subpar music to me?
Joan Crawford in blackface. Yowza. Especially when she pulls off the wig in anger at the end of the scene. Double yowza.
Feel free to add your laugh-inducing moments to the list. I'm just amazed the movie wasn't directed by Douglas Sirk.
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> Often, I catch myself watching a film and I say to myself, why was this made?
They were trying to entertain people?? For some reason, I'm reminded of Jean-Luc Godard and his negative reaction to Fran?ois Truffaut's *Day For Night* because it wasn't challenging anybody. I mean, how dare Truffaut try something as prosaic as making a fun film that will entertain the masses?
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> Did I miss anything?
They hired Ben Mankiewicz instead of me! ;-)
(Of course, Helen of Troy had the face that launched a thousand ships. I've got the face that broke a thousand cameras.)
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> Don't forget HOFFA. There are scant others I can't recall just now,
*Anatomy of a Murder*.
I'm in Ulster County, NY, so I'll pick *Tootsie*, since they actually filmed at the Hurley Mountain Inn not too far from here.
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Congratulations, LP!
To be honest, I'm surprised I got any votes at all, since I was compiling my schedule fully expecting nobody would actually vote for it. :-)
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After much consideration, I'm going to vote for *Remy Orpen*.
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"Dialog" as a verb sounds like some sort of business buzzword to me, as opposed to standard everyday English. Like leveraging proactive synergies or something. Or maybe Variety-speak.
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> The verbing of nouns is in the best tradition of the English language.
When I hear "dialog" used as a verb, I am for some reason reminded of [this commercial|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIxcxfL5jas].
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John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn both had their centenaries in May 2007 and were joint Star of the Month as a result. One got one week, the other a different week (I think the exact week with the centenary, but I don't have the May 2007 schedule). I think Wayne was programmed with a zillion movies in a row; I can't recall if they took daytimes off for Hepburn.
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> you would of thought that as part of the anniversary Time Warner would expand more exploration of film history.
Please please please run The Story of Film: An Odyssey again!
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> Or, they COULD offer DVDs of all his "Private Screenings" interviews.
Would you like to try to get the rights to all the clips and photos used? ;-)
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Four or five of the commercials they showed were for different beers. It made me wonder whether Robert Osborne was a lush back in the early 1960s. :-)
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I liked when they showed Robert Osborne's first introduction on TCM. :-)
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> A finite amount?
Technically, they're limited by the number of atoms in the universe, which is not infinite. ;-)
> There were so many movies made in the '30s that TCM could show a different one in each time slot for the next 30 years without running out.
12 films a day x 365 days a year = 4380 films, x 30 = 131400 films. Plus a few for leap days. :-)
Seriously, though, there is only so much from the 1930s that TCM can get. Either Universal doesn't normally like to let TCM run the old 1930s Universal movies, or Columbia movies haven't been converted to a playable format (heaven knows we've seen enough Columbias pulled from the schedule for presumably that reason), or like *Letty Lynton* there are rights problems. More generally, there are going to be fewer and fewer premieres from the 30s, if only because TCM is going to wind up going through every single movie in the old Turner library (MGM/WB/RKO) from that decade.
I wish I could find the thread I wrote in last year where I argued that TCM wants to keep us diehards, and bring in new fans because eventually we're all going to die and need to be replaced as TCM viewers. (That's an overstatement, but I hope you all get the point.) In asking the question of how we find those people who might be fans of, say, Busby Berkerely musicals and not know it, or the glamorous Jean Harlow, or what not, without yet knowing it, there are too many people here who would answer that question with, "I don't care. Just give me what +I+ want."
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> And yet another problem arises when the old classics are repeated so many times, such as THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL again tonight.
As far as I'm aware, they aren't currently making any more pre-1960 movies. Perhaps you might want to get into your DeLorean and go back to the 1930s to make some new pre-1960 stuff?
Eventually, they're going to have to repeat the pre-1960 stuff, because there's a finite amount of it. And when you complain, "Oh, that pre-1960 movie is a repeat", it gives the distinct impression that no matter what TCM does you're going to complain.
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>> Must be a new producer/programmer??
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> No actually, the Programming Staff hasn't had a turnover in staff. They are the same people who have been programming the channel for years. Programmer Charles Tabesh, who you see in interviews, has been with TCM almost 20 years.
I think I called it in my Programming Challenge schedule. Amazing how many of the themes there show up in a thread like this. ;-)
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I just hope they can all get oot and aboot with that terrible ice storm they've had.
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[*The Unknown Soldier*|http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048752/reference]
It's about a lesser-known part of World War II, the Continuation War. After the Winter War between the USSR and Finland ended, there was an uneasy peace between the two countries, until Germany attacked the USSR in June 1941. Finland, who had been invaded by the Soviets in the Winter War, felt this was an opportunity to get "their" land back, and so they attacked the Soviets too.
Philo Vance, man of a thousand faces...
in General Discussions
Posted
And Roz Russell as the love interest. (And Leo G. Carroll as a butler.)
Young Kent Smith and his pencil moustache showed up in the next one, a decade before he fell for Nora Prentiss.