Fedya

At least those scenes didn't have Ricardo Montalbán!

It is, of course, only 132 minutes; it just feels more like 132 hours.

The Pride and the Passion (1957) I've read that Stanley Kramer like to make "message" pictures. Apparently, Kramer's message with this one is, "I'm arrogant enough to make a costume drama with Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra and think it'll work." Spain, 1810. The French are occupying Spain, led by Theodore Bikel of all people! Some of Napoleon's forces have abandoned a cannon, and the Brits have found out about it. They send naval man Cary Grant to recover it and bring it to the coast. Grant and his men get waylaid by rebel leader Sinatra, who together with his girlfriend Sofia Loren, plan to take the cannon to Ávila which is where Bikel is. Thereupon follows a bunch of tropes that look like they were lifted wholesale from any number of wagon train westerns as they move the cannon overland. Using thousans of Klansmen to cover up their moving the cannon into a cathedral (in what is supposed to be a tiny village!) is an interesting touch. The movie goes on like this for 132 hours, with Loren living a surprisingly long time between getting shot in the battle for Ávila and dying -- just long enough, in fact, for Grant to hold her one last time. 3/10. Not even the Technicolor cinematography of Spain can save this dud.

So Tab Hunter is a damned fool?

Friday, Oct. 27, 2016 William Gargan day on TCM (even though his birthday is in July). Of the movies, I've seen the interesting Aggie Appleby, Maker of Men (7:00 AM) and British Agent (a Leslie Howard/Kay Fwancis vehicle airing at 10:45 AM). No, I haven't seen Cheers For Miss Bishop. Of the two I've seen, the first one is better, I think; a fun little pre-Code. Gargan also wrote what looks like an interesting autobiography.

Blame the government for that. They're the ones who arrogated unto themselves the power, going back to the days when companies actually had to add wires to the phone/electric poles to provide cable. Did you read the Virginia Postrel piece I linked to earlier in the thread? It should be of interest. (My favorite part is how the cable companies first tried to use the law to prevent DirecTV from providing local over-the-air channels, since that gave the cable companies content they thought viewers wanted, only to switch on a dime and think that making DirecTV add those channels would eat up their bandwidth. Regulatory capture for the win.) Unfortunately there are a lot of people who see large businesses, think those businesses have a big pile of money they roll around in bed on like ZaSu Pitts in Greed, and think, "Dammit, that's just not fair!"

It is of course not a noir, but Father of the Bride has a prominent scene with a coke bottle, Spencer Tracy, and Carleton Carpenter. Carpenter brings it up in the Word of Mouth piece he did that shows up on TCM.

Joan Crawford would have flayed them alive for ordering a Coke with the burger.

Virginia Postrel wrote about this back in July 2000. It's amazing how much people overlook local governments and their role in helping create the cable monopolies. (See also regulatory capture.)

Too bad they didn't have the money to send us 3d glasses to watch it.

In westerns, I try to count the number of stars on the flags to see if they're accurate.

More than Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven?

No; it's just that when I think of Cugat I think of Arnaz consistently mentioning him as a rival on I Love Lucy.

I thought it was an antisocial chat forum.

Does he come across a down-on-his-luck gambler in Buenos Aires?

EVERYDAY PEOPLE

Apparently there was quite a bit of dispute about Charo's date of birth back in the day. After all, she married Xavier Cugat in 1966 when he was 66 and she was, well, you figure her age. (Xavier Cugat outlived Desi Arnaz, for what it's worth.)

I wish TCM could have gotten the rights to show Americathon.

I'll recommend the movie that precedes it: 3:48 AM The Case Against the 20% Federal Admissions Tax on Motion Picture Theatres (1953). An interesting look from the theater owners at all the wonderful things they did for the community, in the days before sixtyplexes became a thing. The Library of Congress invites suggestions for movies to be selected for its preservation thing, and I've actually suggested this one since I think it's an interesting look at where we were as a society back in the early 1950s.

It was designed to remember the Civil War. As I mentioned in the last Memorial Day thread, the only war movies they should show are Civil War movies. And on Armistice Day they can run the World War I movies. Frankly, I wouldn't mind not seeing any war movies on the schedule for once, since since 9/11 society has really gone down the rabbit hole of the idea that dishing out state-sanctioned violence is both necessary and sufficient to be a hero.

David Bowie was incredibly impressed by Giorgio Moroder's production on Donna Summer's "I Feel Love".

Does that Chianti go with fava beans, too?

Wait until Dylan goes to the awards ceremony and discovers the Physics laureate has been replaced by a doppelgänger.

Cruise of the Zaca, with Errol Flynn? Of course, that wouldn't have been the 60s. Besides, WB shut down its shorts unit in '63, didn't it?