fxreyman
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Posts posted by fxreyman
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If only posters around here would do the proper research instead of foaming at the mouth every time they suspect the cable companies and Congress are in bed with one another, you might want to do yourselves all a favor by reading the two articles Kyle posted earlier.
I will agree with you on one point. It is so much easier to blame someone else for any or all troubles that you are experiencing. But to step up and actually look into a problem fairly and without assigning blame first, well now that is the real test isn't it?
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> Prices more than triple? Of course, because they are unregulated thanks to the reciprocity with politicians, and they can steal like this. But it doesn't have to be. They have the technology to allow those who want it to get whatever channels they want, rather than bundling them. But they don't have to, so they don't.
> Thanks to the overcharging of the majority of customers who have to have all the channels and then some, they can afford to have an a la carte menu for those who want it. But they don't have to, so they don't. Just as FIOS doesn't have to force subscribers to have a landline with them in order to have television, they have the ability to break out the services (although the only other option is Cablevision and they won't come in a house just for the phone, I suspect). But they don't have to, so they don't.
> Bottom line, cable companies are crooks.
It is not that simple. Oh, I know that the politicians are involved but so is the powerful FCC. That is the way it is. You can't really blame the federal government here. Oh, you can whine all you want but this issue goes a lot deeper than what you have written here.
It is not so much the cable companies that are the crooks. You can blame the likes of the NFL for many of their problems. The cost of a-la-carte pricing isn't so much the cable companies fault, it is really the cost of the carriage fees that would more than double or triple.
If you look at the articles Kyle posted back on January 13th, the a-la-carte pricing is explained quite well in both articles he provided a link to.
Here it is -
http://forums.tcm.com/message.jspa?messageID=8020095#8020095
And the relevant article at the NYTimes -
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/business/media/24nocera.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print
Kyle goes on and writes:
Those that believe "a-la-carte" pricing will lower their cable bills should note every channel they watched over the past month and not just those they watched regularly.
Did anyone in your home watch any of the BCS football games on ESPN?
Did anyone in the household watch a Republican Debate or primary returns on cable news?
NBA Basketball on TNT? (And "March Madness" comes to TNT this spring.)
Weather or storm updates on the Weather Channel?
A Disney/Pixar film on ABCFamily?
Any "guilty pleasures" on A&E, Lifetime, Bravo, Discovery, SyFy or TLC?
A "classic" on one of the Encore Channels or Fox Movie Channel?
After totaling the number of different cable channels watched during a month, start your monthly cable bill with a base of $30.00 to $40.00 which covers the mandated carriage of every local broadcast channel. Now add $5.00 to $15.00 for each of the additional channels watched over the past month or two.
Then add the "tax and fees" that are part of all utility bills.
The total of these costs will provide a general idea of whether "a-la-carte" pricing will be cheaper or a more cost-effective plan for one's television programming choices.
For a few households in the community, it may be much cheaper. But I don't know that it is true for most households. And as a method for providing television programming to an entire community it will be destructive.
Cable systems want to provide programming that is attractive and interesting to an entire community. Many channels available today would no longer exist as there would be too few viewers able or willing to subscribe in the numbers (and at a price) necessary to cover their operating costs. Additionally, by not subscribing to a particular channel - especially a niche channel like TCM, - one is also affecting whether that channel remains viable enough to be offered to one's neighbors.
Your neighbors may not watch TCM, but you do. The fact that they are paying a few cents each month to cover the cost of offering TCM on the cable system is what allows TCM to be available to you. And the cents that you pay toward the carriage of BET or Nickelodeon ensures that your neighbors have access to those channels.
Kyle In Hollywood
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> I am sorry to hear of your need to drop TCM. It is sad to say I know of no other service which would deliver TCM for less than almost $70 a month.
Yes, you make a valid point here. I checked around and I could have gotten Dish network with TCM for around $40.00 for the first year but after that the rate would have gone up to around $60.00. Internet and phone service adding to that would total around $110.00 for the first year and then would have gone up to around $130.00 the second year. With Dish I would have been able to get TCM and many other HD movie channels.
With Comcast I lowered my bill, BUT also lost many of the HD movie channels and TCM. By doing this I lowered my bill almost $60.00. However, I was able to keep my very high speed internet and phone service.
As far as losing TCM and the other channels? It does not concern me at this time. Even if I was employed I am not so sure I would have not done the same thing. Most of my time in front of the tv involves watching political and news programs, sports programs and the history/military channels and the HGTV channel. To be honest in the last six months I may have only watched about ten movies on TCM.
Since I am unemployed I spend a great deal of time on my computer. That and taking care of my wife (who just had shoulder surgery in December) and taking care of chores around the house left me with little time to watch movies. And as I have written before, I have a substantial movie collection with over 300 pre-1960 films I can watch. So for now TCM can be deleted to help save me money.
> I am concerned that you have cable, telephone and internet service from one company. I could not do that. I would be afraid that one mistake by the company could deprive me of all at the same time. How would you contact them if they cancel your account when you lose both telephone service and e-mail access?
As far as you being concerned about me? Well that is nice of you.
But I have been bundling for over five years now and I have yet to have any problems with Comcast. I had Comcast in Chicago for many years and I was very satisfied with their service there.
I always read with interest the experiences of others and their troubles with Comcast. I am just the opposite. I have never had any problems with Comcast.
I have no problem bundling all three services. For one thing I pay one bill each month. And another thing I get what is probably the best internet service here about's. As far as worrying about Comcast cutting me for my contract? I don't think that will happen unless I stop paying them. Like I have said, I have always had good success with Comcast, so why spoil a good thing.
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I should have written that I have over 500 dvds and just over 100 vhs tapes in my collection. And that does not include my dvd collection of tv series. Sorry about that.
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> EugeniaH wrote: Sorry to hear that, fxreyman. Like a lot of people, I love TCM but hate all of the other garbage that passes for "entertainment" these days, so to have to pay a high price for one channel is painful. Maybe TCM can be part of an ala carte package at some point, but until then it has to come down to decisions like this. Great to see that you have other options, though!
My decision wasn't because of all of the other "garbage that passes for entertainment". My decision was purely based on economics. Before my decision, I watched many of those other so-called garbage channels at various times, but now I chose to go in the other direction. Out of the 120 plus HD channels available to me, I really only watched on average about 40 HD channels. TCM HD was one of those that I did watch. But economically right now I had no choice but to stop receiving the other channels. With the new basic package available to me I still get the basic channels I watch minus a few that I wished were still available, like TCM.
As far as an ala carte package is concerned, I do not ever seeing that becoming available to anyone. This has been discussed already. Even earlier this evening while I spoke with the Comcast customer service rep about my situation, he and I spoke briefly just about this possibility. He informed me that with an ala carte menu, prices would more than triple what they are now.
> Lanceroten wrote: Love TCM. Fortunate enough right now to have Fox Movie and HBO/Encore package also. In my case, and i've done this since 2004, I don't buy DVD's/Blu Rays, don't rent DVD's, will see an occasional film at the theater. Basically cut out the renting to have my movie channels in my TV package. I may be the only person who does this, have no idea. But, if I still rented movies like I did back in the 80's/early 90's, i'd have to cut out my cable. I get more movie bang for my buck by having my movie packages, buying a PPV a couple of times a year, and maybe seeing a movie at the theater every once in awhile. I'm very content to do that.
Well, I am just the opposite (somewhat). In my early twenties I started collecting VHS tapes of movies I had seen either on the old AMC or films I had rented but also wanted to own outright. I also taped quite often movies off of cable channels and the previuosly mentioned AMC long before their format changed. After we started getting TCM I taped off of that channel as well. When DVDs came out and I started replacing those older VHS tapes with newer DVD purchases. Now I have close to 600 dvds and just over 100 vhs tapes. Eventually I will have all of my old vhs tapes replaced, that is if I can afford the more expensive dvds like Criterion's The Cruel Sea.
While I was fortunate enough to be working for the last twenty five years I was able to make purchases each year. Now that I am unemployed, those purchases are now on the back burner. I have downloaded several films from itunes but the quality of the picture isn't anywhere close to dvds. I as I replied to EugeniaH, I have now cut back to basic HD cable. And that does not include TCM. I am sad that TCM is not part of the basic HD cable package but once employed again I can get it back. But I can live without it for a time. It helps that with those close to 600 dvds and 100 vhs tapes, my collection includes over 300 pre 1960 films. So I can still entertain myself.
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Well, I just made a painful yet financially important decision.
I just dropped TCM and almost all of the available HD movie channels I was subscribing to on Comcast.
I did this in a cost-cutting move. Since I am unemployed with really no concrete offers on the horizon I felt the need to do something.
By dropping down to the lowest tier from Comcast I lowered my monthly bill from $185.00 to $127.00. Some of you are wondering why the high cost?
Well, I had the third highest cable channel tier for this area plus I have phone and internet service as well. The cable part of the bill was the highest part of the bill, so I am saving a lot now.
I did think for a few days about switching to Dish satellite but their bundled services include either Earthlink or Centurylink for their internet and phone services. Several friends here in Colorado and in Chicago have told me horror stories about those two vendors, so I decided to stay put with Comcast. Like I told the customer service person with Comcast, since I have been with Comcast I have NEVER had any trouble with their customer service nor any long-lasting trouble with tv/phone/internet service.
The worst possible thing that will happen with this new decision of mine is that for the foreseeable future I will not be able to watch TCM. But to tell you the truth, I wasn't really watching much TCM the last six months, so to me this will be alright for the next six months or so.
I have well over 250 films from before 1960 in my library and I can still download films from the internet and on cable. Maybe in six months my mind will change. Only with a new job of course.
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In this category for 1953 the following actors were nominated:
Frank Sinatra, From Here to Eternity
Eddie Albert from Roman Holiday
Brandon de Wilde from Shane
Jack Palance from Shane
Robert Strauss from Stalag 17
Yes, the Best Acting category had Monty Clift going up against his co-star Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity. They cancelled one another out, thereby allowing William Holden to win for another war drama, Stalag 17.
Sinatra did not face any of his co-stars in his category and I think may have won because of two factors. One, his career was definitely going downward at this time and many people were aware of this. Two, his acting in this film is really, really great. Not many singers were able to translate to the silver screen as well as Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Bing Crosby.
I think his main competition for the award was from Strauss and Palance. And since his nomination as Best Supporting Actor from the film was the only one from the film in this category, and the way the film had become such a big hit, his award seemed much more plausible than the other actors.
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> Still can't figure out how Chill WIlls was nominated for The Alamo.
The list for Best Supporting Actor Oscars in 1960 were the following:
Peter Ustinov, Spartacus (won)
Peter Falk, Murder, Inc.
Jack Kruschen, The Apartment
Sal Mineo, Exodus
Chill Wills, The Alamo
Good question about how Chill Wills was nominated in 1960 for his supporting role in The Alamo. Who knows? There have been quite a few questionable choices over the years. This would be one of them.
Technically speaking, Wills' nomination is the only acting nomination from The Alamo. And since the film did not receive a nomination for either director or screenplay, one would have to assume that the Academy wanted an epic. Unfortunately they chose the wrong epic to be nominated. They should have chosen Spartacus.
The Alamo was nominated for Best Picture, the score was nominated, as well as the song, The Green Leaves of Summer, Sound Recording which the film did win (it's only win), Cinematography, and Film Editing.
I think the biggest reason Wills did not win was because his publicist had placed an ad in Variety saying that all the cast were praying harder for Wills than the original defenders of the Alamo had done for themselves. Another ad extolled Will's charm telling potential voters that they were his cousins. Whatever the reason, Wills went on to lose to Ustinov.
So we are left with possible choices beyond Chill Wills.
The Golden Globes nominees for 1960:
Sal Mineo, Exodus (won)
Lee Kinsolving, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
Ray Stricklyn, The Plunderers
Woody Strode, Spartacus
Peter Ustinov, Spartacus
There could have been so many more nominated in place of Wills and Kruschen......
Fred MacMurray in The Apartment
Eddie Fisher in BUtterfield 8
Arthur Kennedy in Elmer Gantry
Ted de Corsia in From the Terrace
Dennis Weaver in The Gallant Hours
Robert Mitchum in The Grass is Greener
Charles Laughton in Spartacus
Laurence Olivier in Spartacus
Tony Curtis in Spartacus
Peter Ustinov in The Sundowners
Hume Cronyn in Sunrise at Campobello
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Yes, I think you've got it!!!
I agree that all three actors could have won and might have been deserving as well. The deserving part is something that is taken into account each year. *They deserved the award, but the other guy was better!*
The three supporting nominees from this film all could have started their own teaching studio. They were that good.
This was Stieger's first Oscar nomination. He would not get another one until 1965 for his performance in The Pawnbroker for Best Actor. Of course he would go on and win Best Actor for In the Heat of the Night in 1967. Did you know that he was offered along with Robert Mitchum the part of Patton? He turned down the role because he did not want to glorify war. After Scott won the Oscar (Scott refused the Oscar) Stieger called his refusal the dumbest career move he ever made.
Lee J. Cobb had a long and distinguished career as well. Early in his film career he would often be cast as older characters despite his age. He just looked older. This was Cobb's first nomination. He would later get another nomination for BS Actor for The Brothers Karamazov in 1958. He will always be remembered for giving life to the Willy Loman character in the original 1949 Broadway production of Death of a Saleman. He would later go on to TV with a major role in the NBC 90 minute western The Virginian from 1962 to 1966.
Karl Malden was one of our finest actors. Starring on Broadway, in television and in the movies, Malden had a great career. He was nominated for and won the BS Actor Oscar for his role in A Streetcar named Desire, a part he had played on Broadway. Four years later he would be nominated again for the BS award for this film, but did not win. I have always thought that he should have been nominated for his role as General Omar Bradley in the film Patton. He was almost as good as Scott was as Patton. A miss there from the Academy.
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> Wow you did a great and quick job of providing a lot of useful information.
Thank you.
> With regards to the point of whether multiple nominations for the same movie cancel each other out while the sheer numbers support that claim, that doesn't mean the actual single movie nom winner in that year didn't deserve the award over the others. e.g. Sinatra in 53 or Mitchell in 39. IMO they had the best performances as well as some of the others, but again, that is just my opinion.
You make a good point here. Look, I am not saying that whomever wins the Best Supporting Actor for a particular year does not deserve their award, they probably do. I am just pointing out that in some years there seems to be enough of a reason to support an idea that multiple nominees could cancel one another out. In 1954 to me, that would seem to be the case. But since we are not privy to the actual vote counts from the Academy Awards, we will never know.
> If as you say "but in the end, I am sure that they would still award the person they thought performed the best" why would the 'cancel out' theory change that?
Oh, so sorry. What I meant to write was "vote" not "award". I was referring to the actual actors who get to cast their vote for a particular nominee.
Your view is very well taken. And you could be right. I don't know and we will probably never know how members of the actors branch voted and how many votes each actor did receive. In O'Brien's case he received the higher amount of votes because he DID win that year.
> Using 54 again, why would someone vote for O'Brien instead of say, Cobb, just because Malden and Stieger were in the same movie? If I had a vote I would vote for who I believed had the best performance, period. I assume you would do the same.
Another good point.
I am not saying that because Cobb, Malden and Stieger were in the same movie that they did not get any votes for their nominations. What I am saying is that in this case, 1954, it is obvious that O'Brien received more votes for his nomination than the other four guys did. And because there were three nominees from the same movie, there were three chances that those three actors could split any of the votes that they all received, leaving Tully and O'Brien to receive higher vote amounts.
> Of course if studio lobbying impacts how someone votes (and I have heard that it has an impact), than that could explain the 'cancel out' theory. i.e. the studio doesn't wish to back only one of their actors, the support is therefore split, while someone like O'Brien received the full backing of the studio.
You may be right here. However, I do not recall a year where a studio had multiple acting nominations in one of their films and chose only to support one of the actors that appeared in that film of theirs.
I think the cancel out theory works only with the voting. In 1954, the voters for this category had three choices to pick from in one movie. That left two actors from two other films to be picked from. It could be that Malden, Cobb and Stieger got a lot of votes, but because they were from the same movie, their vote totals canceled each other out and someone else (O'Brien) received a larger block of votes than the three from On the Waterfront. I am not saying that is wrong, I am just thinking that this could have been the case.
Had five actors from five different films been selected, then the cancel out idea goes away. All five would have had a chance of winning the award. But in this case, having three fine actors compete for the same award, obviously hurt all of their chances on being selected as the winner.
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> I'm not sure more nominees (e.g. 10), would result in a so called better outcome (final result). Of course more nominees would decrease the odds a deserving performer is left out but then it could also lead to more undeserving performances getting a nomination (not per se in 1954, but in other years). Thus instead of us asking 'why did Joe get one of the 5 nominations, we would be asking why did Joe, Sam, Abe and Steve get one of the 10! So I think 5 is a good number.
> One idea has been to limit a movie to one nominee per category. As others have pointed out O'Brien might have won because there were 3 nominees from On The Waterfront. Personally I don't support that idea or the 'cancel each other out' theory.
Well, I am not going to argue here with you about this. Simply because the Academy has had for many years five nominees for the acting categories. I was just posting an idea.
But, lets say that the Academy did have in it's place a system that did include ten nominations. I have read countless stories from actors who have said that just being nominated was enough of an honor than actually winning the award. Because they are still being honored for their contributions for that year they have been nominated for. I am sure many of the nominees think they had no shot of winning, and that just getting nominated was an honor.
So if the Academy did nominate ten actors for each award, yes I am sure that there would be more difficulty for the members of the acting branch to make their decisions, but in the end, I am sure that they would still award the person they thought performed the best.
So lets take 1954 for instance.
Lets say the Academy kept the five nominees they did nominate for Best Supporting Actor but then added five additional actors to the mix.
Lee J. Cobb as Johnny Friendly in On the Waterfront
Karl Malden as Father Barry in On the Waterfront
Rod Steiger as Charley "the Gent" Malloy in On the Waterfront
Tom Tully as Commander Devriess in The Caine Mutiny
And winning the award was Edmund O'Brien as Oscar Muldoon in The Barefoot Contessa
And lets just say for argumentative purposes that these five additional actors were added:
Fred MacMurray as Lt. Tom Keefer in The Caine Mutiny
Charles Laughton as Henry Horatio Hobson in Hobson's Choice
Walter Hampden as Oliver Larrabee in Sabrina
Fredric March as Loren Shaw in Executive Suite
Paul Douglas as J. Walter Dudley in Executive Suite
This really boils down to which actor that was nominated in 1954 was really an acceptable choice for winning, in this case the award went to O'Brien which many felt he was not deserving of the award. But maybe had five additional actors been nominated I think then a different actor would have won. Because in this instance I do think the three actors that were nominated for their performances in On the Waterfront, did in fact cancel one another out. And that left two actors, O'Brien and Tully. Tully was really a journeyman actor, and that is not to say he was not a good actor, but compared to O'Brien he was not as good or as well known. So O'Brien wins.
But had March or MacMurray been nominated, I think one of two things would have happened:
1. One of the actors from On the Waterfront would have won.
2. MacMurray and or March would have won. Based on their performances. Of course this is just MHO.
But I do think that having more actors from one film being nominated in any given year helps to support the idea that one cancels out the other.
There have been sixteen years where multiple nominees from one movie were all nominated for that one film. Out of those sixteen years, there have been five years where one actor that was nominated out of a group of two or three from the same movie won the award. Eleven years exist where all the multiple nominees from one movie lost to another actor from a different movie. So from this information I think that multiple actors do cancel one another out.
There have been three years of Academy Award history where there were three nominations from one film in the Best Supporting Acting category. And in two of those years a different actor from a different film won the award. The only year that did not happen was 1974:
1954 (listed above) where Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden and Rod Steiger were all nominated for their performances in On the Waterfront. O'Brien won for The Barefoot Contessa.
1972 where James Caan, Robert Duvall and Al Pacino were all nominated for their performances in The Godfather. Joel Grey won for Cabaret.
1974 where Robert De Niro, Michael V. Gazzo and Lee Strasberg were all nominated for their performances in The Godfather, Part II.
here is the exception. De Niro beat out his two co-stars.
There have been nine other years where at least two actors were nominated for their roles in the same movie and another actor won from a different movie.
1939 where Harry Carey and Claude Rains were both nominated for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but lost out to Thomas Mitchell in Stagecoach.
1953 where Brandon de Wilde and Jack Palance were nominated for Shane, but lost out to Frank Sinatra in From Here to Eternity.
1957 where Arthur Kennedy and Russ Tamblyn were nominated for Peyton Place, but lost out to Red Buttons in Sayonara.
1959 where Arthur O'Connell and George C. Scott were nominated for Anatomy of a Murder, but lost out to Hugh Griffith in Ben-Hur.
1961 where George C. Scott and Jackie Gleason were nominated for The Hustler, but lost out to George Chakiris in West Side Story.
1967 where Gene Hackman and Michael J. Pollard were nominated for Bonnie and Clyde, but lost to George Kennedy in Cool Hand Luke.
1976 where Burgess Meredith and Burt Young were nominated for Rocky, but lost out to Jason Robards in All the Presidents Men.
1986 where Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe were nominated for Platoon, but lost out to Michael Caine in Hannah and Her Sisters.
1991 where Ben Kingsley and Harvey Keitel were nominated for Bugsy, but lost out to Jack Palance in City Slickers.
There have been four times where two actors were nominated for the same movie and one of the actors won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
1971 where both Ben Johnson and Jeff Bridges were both nominated for their roles in The Last Picture Show. Johnson won.
1977 where both Jason Robards and Maximillian Schell were both nominated for their roles in Julia. Robards won.
1980 where both Timothy Hutton and Judd Hirsch were both nominated for their roles in Ordinary People. Hutton won.
1983 where both Jack Nicholson and John Lithgow were both nominated for their roles in Terms of Endearment. Nicholson won.
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> Didn't K. Hepburn win 2 consecutive ones a couple years after that?
Yes, Katharine Hepburn won two Best Actress Awards in a row. She won the award for Best Actress in 1967 for her role in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and followed up that award with another award for Best Actress in 1968 for The Lion in Winter. But also winning Best Actress in 1968 was Barbra Streisand for her role in Funny Lady. They both had the same amount of votes for the award.
The only other time in Oscar history that there was a tie was in the Best Acting category for 1932. Fredric March (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) received one more vote than Wallace Beery (The Champ). Academy rules at that time considered such a close margin to be a tie. So both March and Beery were awarded the Best Actor Oscar. Under current rules for a tie to occur, there has to be the same amount of votes for each contestant to win. An exact tie.
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> While on the topic of "Waterfront," may I ask. Is there anyone out there who actually thinks Edmond O'Brien deserved best supporting actor over Cobb, Steiger, and Malden?
The short answer..... probably not. O'Brien was much better in a supporting roles in White Heat, Up Periscope, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Seven Days in May (where he was nominated in this category again), and The Wild Bunch.
The Best Supporting Actor category for the 1954 Academy Awards is another reason why IMHO all of the acting awards should be expanded to ten nominations. Or in retrospect, these awards should have had ten nominations back in the day. Considering the fact that back then many performances were really above average and should have been given a chance at being nominated.
That year the following actors were nominated for the Best Supporting Award for 1954:
Lee J. Cobb as Johnny Friendly in On the Waterfront
Karl Malden as Father Barry in On the Waterfront
Rod Steiger as Charley "the Gent" Malloy in On the Waterfront
Tom Tully as Commander Devriess in The Caine Mutiny
And winning the award was Edmund O'Brien as Oscar Muldoon in The Barefoot Contessa
As far as I am concerned, there were many other fine acting performances that also could have been nominated that year. And if there had been ten nominations instead of the usual five, just think how hard it would have been to consider the following for an additional five awards, or replace some of the actors that were nominees that year in the first place.
Wendell Corey as NYPD Detective Lt. Thomas Doyle in Rear Window
Fred MacMurray as Lt. Tom Keefer in The Caine Mutiny
Van Johnson as Lt. Steve Marek in The Caine Mutiny
Jos? Ferrer as Lt. Barney Greenwald in The Caine Mutiny
Charles Bickford as Oliver Niles in A Star is Born
Charles Laughton as Henry Horatio Hobson in Hobson's Choice
Walter Hampden as Oliver Larrabee in Sabrina
Mickey Rooney as Chief Petty Officer Mike Forney in The Bridges at Toko-Ri
Fredric March as Rear Admiral George Tarrant in The Bridges at Toko-Ri
Fredric March as Loren Shaw in Executive Suite
Paul Douglas as J. Walter Dudley in Executive Suite
I can see how the three actors from On the Waterfront were nominated. They were all very good in their parts. I can also see how Edmund O'Brien could have been nominated.
Tully, although a fine supporting actor most of his career, this role was really nothing more than a cameo. IMO Tully should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor in another World War II era film, Destination Tokyo with Cary Grant in 1943. In that film Tully portrays the fatherly figure of Mike, one of the chiefs on the USS Copperfin, the submarine that Grant (Captain Cassidy is in command of). Mike takes under his wing the young sailor Tommy Adams played by Robert Hutton.
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> I remember Julie Christie winning for DARLING, but I think that was '65, in her lame jumpsuit, such a wonderful outfit. Am I wrong on the year?
The year the picture was released is correct.
The 1965 Academy Awards presentation was shown live on ABC-TV for the first time in color. The broadcast was held on April 18, 1966.
Bob Hope was the host.
The Best Actress category had the following actresses nominated for the award:
Julie Andrews ? The Sound of Music
Julie Christie ? Darling
Samantha Eggar ? The Collector
Elizabeth Hartman ? A Patch of Blue
Simone Signoret ? Ship of Fools
The Best Actress Oscar was won by Julie Christie for her performance in Darling.
Had Julie Andrews won, it would have been the second time an actress had won two consecutive Oscars for Best Actress. The first actress to do this was Luise Rainer who won in 1936 for The Great Ziegfeld and in 1937 for The Good Earth.
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Here would be my top ten films for 1985.
Actually these are considered my favorites for that year:
After Hours
Back to the Future
Into the Night
Murphy's Romance
Out of Africa
Prizzi's Honor
A Room With a View
Silverado
The Trip to Bountiful
Witness
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The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a bill that was introduced in the US House of Representatives in October 2011, by a bipartisan group of 12 co-sponsors. The bill, if made law would expand the ability of US law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. There is also a corresponding bill in the US Senate.
Proponents of the bill say it protects the intellectual property market and corresponding industry, jobs and revenue, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws, especially against foreign websites. They cite examples such as Google's $500 million settlement with the Department of Justice for its role in a scheme to target U.S. consumers with ads to illegally import prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies.
Opponents say that it violates the First Amendment, is Internet censorship, will cripple the Internet, and will threaten whistle-blowing and other free speech actions. Opponents have initiated a number of protest actions, including petition drives, boycotts of companies that support the legislation, and planned service blackouts by English Wikipedia and major Internet companies scheduled to coincide with the next Congressional hearing on the matter.
But as of January 14th, President Obama has indicated that he may not support the bill, and key legislators from both political parties have indicated their desire not to support the bill either. So who knows?
Maybe the bill will go back to committee and be reworked or it may just die a slow death in Congress. According to the Huffington Post, Obama has had to pick from two of his biggest support groups for his re-election hopes. He has decided to stay with the technology and Internet side of the debate.
Here is a link to the Huffington Post article about Obama:
The Website, CNET also has an excellent article about SOPA. Here is that link:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57329001-281/how-sopa-would-affect-you-faq/
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> Oh, and 1985 is nowhere near the worst year for film. I'd rate 1996, 1999 or the years 2003-present waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay lower.
You obviously have not seen many post 1999 films.
To write that 1996, and 1999 plus any year past 2003 is really much worse than 1985 makes me think that you have not seen some of the greatest films to have been produced during those years. 1985 was not a great year, oh, it did have some good releases but not on a par with what we have seen from the mid 1990's onward. In fact I would say that the films that have been really good since 1996 onward have been very good in high production quality. Probably the highest ever.
I would say that compared to the golden years of 1933 through 1952, the years you have sighted did not have as many quality films released. But to say that the years you mentioned were the worst years for film is actually a little off. The following films released between 1996 and 2010, were really fine films. Some would say that these are in no way comparable to the golden age, but I would argue that some years during the golden age weren't all that good either. I would cite 1938, 1943, 1945, 1947, 1951, 1952, 1956 and 1958 as some of the average years for releases. There were some fine films released during those years, but they weren't outstanding years either.
The following lists are good, and I think could stand up quite well against many of the golden era films.
1996
The Daytrippers
The English Patient
Fargo
Flirting With Disaster
Hard Eight
Lone Star
Mother
Secrets and Lies
Star Trek: First Contact
A Time to Kill
1997
Air Force One
Amistad
Boogie Nights
Contact
The Game
Good Will Hunting
L.A. Confidential
The Sweet Hereafter
Switchback
Wag the Dog
1998
Bulworth
Elizabeth
Next Stop Wonderland
The Parent Trap
Pleasantville
Primary Colors
Ronin
Saving Private Ryan
A Simple Plan
There's Something About Mary
1999
Being John Malkovich
The Cider House Rules
The Green Mile
The Insider
The Limey
Mumford
Notting Hill
Office Space
Sleepy Hollow
The Straight Story
2000
Almost Famous
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Erin Brockovich
Gladiator
Memento
Requiem for a Dream
Return to Me
Thirteen Days
Traffic
Wonder Boys
2001
A Beautiful Mind
Heist
Kissing Jessica Stein
Life as a House
Monster's Ball
Moulin Rouge!
Mulholland Drive
The Royal Tenenbaums
The Shipping News
Shrek
2002
About Schmidt
Antwone Fisher
The Good Girl
The Hours
Laurel Canyon
The Pianist
Signs
Spider-Man
The Sum of All Fears
Tadpole
2003
American Splendor
Lost in Translation
Love Actually
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Mystic River
Open Range
Seabiscuit
Secondhand Lions
Something's Gotta Give
The Station Agent
2004
The Aviator
Crash
Garden State
Hotel Rwanda
The Incredibles
In Good Company
Million Dollar Baby
Shrek 2
Sideways
Silver City
2005
Batman Begins
Capote
Cinderella Man
The Constant Gardener
Good Night, and Good Luck
The Squid and the Whale
Syriana
The Thing About My Folks
Walk the Line
The World's Fastest Indian
2006
Casino Royale
Children of Men
The Da Vinci Code
The Departed
The Good German
Infamous
Letters From Iwo Jima
Pan's Labyrinth
The Queen
We Are Marshall
2007
American Gangster
The Bourne Ultimatum
Breach
In the Valley of Elah
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men
The Savages
The Visitor
You Kill Me
2008
Appaloosa
Body of Lies
The Dark Knight
The Express
Ghost Town
Gran Torino
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Iron Man
Last Chance Harvey
The Reader
2009
The Blind Side
Crazy Heart
The Hangover
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Julie & Julia
Me and Orson Welles
Sherlock Holmes
Star Trek
State of Play
2010
127 Hours
Black Swan
The Fighter
The Ghost Writer
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The Kings Speech
The Social Network
True Grit
Winter's Bone
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I totally agree with you.
When I stated earlier that I did have Comcast and I wrote that I had no real problems with them, what I should have added was that I AM shopping around for a better deal on cable service.
And I am not going to say that I am treating Comcast like the best company on the planet. Far from it. But at the time they offered the best package I could find. Now, since I have been unemployed I am looking around. Cable tv with high speed internet and phone service all combined into one payment is far better for me at this time.
And I agree with you that the majority of programming on cable leaves much to be desired. But to get the channels I want sometimes you have to make choices.
I applaud you for taking the stances you have decided to make.
However not all of us can make the same decisions. Each decision made by each person is different than the next person.
You are correct. There are so many other avenues available to people who want to be entertained.
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> I'm don't want to argue politics with you but I do find Reagan's remarks disingenuous. He didn't help liberate the camps and for him to imply that he did is a disservice to those servicemen who did.
You know what Lynn? I don't want to argue about politics either.
But do you know what I don't like? I don't like it when people here decide that they are going to take advantage of a thread or hijack a thread simply because they either don't like a person or because they feel slighted by the actions that the person did while he was President of the United States. It's the kind of actions that get people's blood boiling and they do not belong here.
He may have misspoken. Guess what? All presidents and many other politicians do as well. And I am not saying that is alright.
I just have a hard time believing that we are discussing the fact that his birthday falls on February 6th and because his birthday is within the 31 Days of Oscar month, he does not get his own celebration on his birthday. At least that is how I saw this thread starting. Of course, around here almost everything eventually leads into a political discussion, actually more like a one-sided political discussion.
As has been mentioned earlier by mrroberts, Micheal, our current administrator and moderator has told us that political discussion away from the movies will not be tolerated.
In this instance, the discussion about Reagan was ultimately going to shift away from his acting abilities and more toward his political career. He is one of the few actors from the golden age of Hollywood that went onto a career in politics where many people here can not separate his acting from his service as Commander in Chief.
As mrroberts said in his earlier post, I do agree that Reagan was a mediocre actor, however I do not agree with mrroberts that he couldn't act worth a darn. I think that is one of the reasons why he was successful as our president. He knew how to speak in front of a camera. Many of our recent presidents should have studied him far more closely.
I just find it curious that with a thread about Reagan, the focus has shifted away from his acting and towards a statement he spoke while he was president.
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> Reagan's fable about being present at the liberation of concentration camps is noted in Lou Cannon's definitive biography of Reagan. It was also reported in the American and Israeli press in November 1983 when he told the story at a dinner for the Israeli president. The account was corroborated by an Israeli cabinet minister. It's inconceivable that someone like President Obama would get away with such an outrageous whopper. But now, nearly 30 years later, the sainted Reagan can still do no wrong on the eyes of many.
Okay, so you decided to pick one comment that former President Reagan said about something he may have not participated in. I wouldn't be so harsh on the former president, considering his age at the time he made these comments. The way you make it sound, he was totally in the wrong about what he said and that he should have at least recounted what he said. Would that have made it better or you?
There are plenty of instances where politicians say things that later can be said were either falsehoods or lies. This is one of those statements. I'd like to know what you thought of Hilary Clinton's mis-statements of getting off of a plane in Bosnia and coming under fire from snipers. Which later proved to be inaccurate.
So before you want to start listing mis-statements from Reagan, you might just want to indicate that all politicians from time to time have said things that weren't really factual.
As far as Obama is concerned, you obviously do not either watch cable news or read newspapers.
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> In the Favorites forum I listed what can be called my "top" movies.
Yes I remember. Fine list too.
> Has any person researched the number of movies released each year and what percentage of them were poor, good or great?
Okay, here is the ultimate problem with your question. Who is to say which movie was poor, good or great? I mean, any reviewer will tell you his/her likes and dislikes, but in the end, all reviewers opinions are subjective. Even organizations like AFI, and other websites like Tim Dirks' filmsite.org where he has maintained his own lists of greatest movies based on criteria he has set up, have their opinions.
So in the final analysis, its not really important as to which films you think are the greatest, really it is your opinion only that matters to yourself. I have found that if I make a list and call it the greatest, then its really a list that I consider only the greatest. I can't impart my feelings and opinions and hope others will agree with me. Because everyone has opinions on what movies they feel are the greatest.
And the other thing to remember is that lets say there has been someone or some organization that has done the research into trying to figure out which film is great or the best or whatever the qualification is. It does not really matter. Look at IMDB's lists. Most of the films in their top 50 are recent films. And that is because younger filmgoers are voting for newer films. I think it is almost impossible to list a greatest list. I found that out myself over on my LISTS thread months ago.
So I have decided to go forward with lists of my favorite films instead. Because in the end, that is the only real list that matters. I can share that list, but I can not think that others will have similar feelings about the films I have chosen.
We can all state which films we think belong on TCM. As has the great majority on this thread have maintained, most if not all post 1960 films aren't considered on the same level as pre-1960 films. And that is okay. But to sit here and say that post 1960 films do not belong on TCM is foolish. According to the mission statement from TCM, it is their goal to showcase films from every time period. And lets face it, even though more post 1960 films are popping up on the channel, the vast majority are pre-1960 films, and will be for the many years going forward.
> I suspect the apparent dearth of good movies after 1960 is because of studios making fewer movies and tailoring the ones they made to suit the least common denominator. In such an environment a person could expect a lower number of great movies and a slightly lower percentage of great movies.
Yes, I would agree with your statement here. There are not as many films being produced today and that is a reflection not so much on creative forces, rather it is a reflection on what competitors film makers have now. In the golden age of the movies, filmmakers only had to contend with the live theater and radio. Now they have to contend with live theater, television, cable, internet and other hi-tech forms of media. I would venture to say that out of all the movies made each year, less than 10% could qualify as average or above. But one could argue that point on pre-1960 films as well.
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Actually Fred there were some very fine films made during the 1960's. I prepared a listing of my top ten films from each year over on the Favorites Forum on my LISTS thread.
1962 and 1964 are the two best years of the decade as far as I am concerned. Plus all of these films listed here were a whole lot better than what you got to see today.
Here is the list:
1960
The Apartment
Elmer Gantry
The Gallant Hours
Inherit the Wind
The Magnificent Seven
Psycho
Sink the Bismarck!
Spartacus
The Sundowners
Swiss Family Robinson
1961
The Absent-Minded Professor
Breakfast at Tiffany's
The Children's Hour
The Guns of Navarone
The Hustler
Judgement at Nuremberg
The Parent Trap
A Raisin in the Sun
Two Rode Together
West Side Story
1962
Cape Fear
Lawrence of Arabia
Lonely Are the Brave
The Longest Day
The Manchurian Candidate
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Miracle Worker
The Music Man
Ride the High Country
To Kill a Mockingbird
1963
Billy Liar
Charade
From Russia With Love
The Great Escape
The Haunting
Hud
Lilies of the Field
McLintock!
Sunday in New York
Tom Jones
1964
The Americanization of Emily
Becket
The Best Man
Fail-Safe
Goldfinger
A Hard Day's Night
Mary Poppins
Seven Days in May
The Train
Zulu
1965
36 Hours
The Agony and the Ecstasy
The Bedford Incident
The Flight of the Phoenix
In Harm's Way
Mirage
Repulsion
The Rounders
The Sound of Music
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
1966
The Battle of Algiers
Blowup
Born Free
Fantastic Voyage
The Fortune Cookie
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
A Man for All Seasons
The Professionals
The Sand Pebbles
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?
1967
Bonnie and Clyde
Cool Hand Luke
The Dirty Dozen
El Dorado
The Graduate
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Hour of the Gun
In Cold Blood
In the Heat of the Night
Point Blank
1968
2001: A Space Odyssey
Bullitt
The Lion in Winter
The Odd Couple
Once Upon a Time in the West
Planet of the Apes
Romeo and Juliet
Targets
The Thomas Crown Affair
Will Penny
1969
Anne of the Thousand Days
Downhill Racer
Easy Rider
Midnight Cowboy
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Support Your Local Sheriff!
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
True Grit
Where Eagles Dare
The Wild Bunch
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Did you ever see Steve Allen on What's My Line?
Absolutely hilarious. Very funny guy and very very smart.
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This is a fun thread to read!!!
I have had one brush with fame with a really well-known actor from a television show in the sixties that was unceremoniously cancelled due to low ratings.
I met James Doohan who had portrayed probably the greatest starship engineer of all time. He was set to appear at a sci-fi gathering at my community college in Glen Ellyn, Illinois back in October 1982.
He was one of the special guests. I remember sitting there in the audience listening to him recall his career as a starship engineer and I was enthralled! After speaking they set up a table for him to sign autographs. I was lucky. I must have only had to wait a few moments and when it came time for me to meet him, he looked up at me and had this wonderful smile on his face. I told him that he was my favorite actor from the series and that I hoped he was feeling better since his illness (he had had a heart attack in 1981).
He was amazed that I had known about his illness, but then again in Star Trek II as Kirk and his boarding party come aboard the Enterprise, Kirk notices Scotty and asks "Scotty, you old space dog.....you're well?" and Scotty replies, "I had a wee bout of....." and McCoy finishes his line with ".......shore leave!"
With that and the news I found in the trades from earlier in the year that Doohan had indeed suffered a stroke of some kind. So he went on and asked my name and he signed the book I had right under his picture. It was a great moment for me.
The other brush with fame I have had is that I met Cubs baseball announcers Harry Carey and Lou Boudreau at Wrigley Field sometime in the eighties. My friend and I had just watched another terrible Cubs loss when we found ourselves standing right at the entrance to the press box. Both Carey and Boudreau were walking down the platform and my friend and I asked for autographs. Carey asked us if we had a beer that he could drink. We didn't, but he laughed anyway and signed our programs.
The last brush with fame was one day that another friend of mine and I were going to play a round of golf at a local course near Huntley, Illinois. We were walking to the clubhouse to check in (we were an hour early) when we saw Walter Payton standing on the golf range hitting golf balls. We must have stood there for 15 minutes watching him hit drives so clean and long when suddenly, he turned to us and said......"Haven't you ever seen a bear play golf!"
We laughed and wished him a nice afternoon. We sort of figured that he was there trying to improve his game and the last thing he wanted was to be interrupted.
Comcast moves TCM to higher tier. It costs $89.00 per month extra
in Hot Topics
Posted
> I just went back to double check, and are you referring to the treatise on what the per channel price would be if an a la carte menu were enacted as mentioned before the cable companies paid off the politicians and the entire idea was dropped like a hot potato? Wow, so you believe the prices as stated, and not the prices that SHOULD be charged if the crooked cable companies which pay off the crooked politicians would charge what they COULD charge IF they took into account all of the OVERPRICED payments they are charging the schmucks who pay for the bundles? Is THAT what you are referring to?
You know what? This is definitely not the best way to communicate with others here. Especially when other posters are not willing to entertain any idea or thought that others might offer up.
Now, you might be right. I'll give you that. But to say that you are right and I am wrong simply based on what you believe based on what you think is going on between the cable companies and Congress, well then that is your right. I just happen to think that there are plausible ideas and or reasons why the cable companies can or cannot go to an a-la-carte price offering.
Did you even read the article that I posted and that Kyle had posted before on January 13th? Because it sounds as if you still think the cable companies and the politicians are in bed with one another. Right?
Then I am to assume then that you are in the group of people who believes in the conspiracy about the "grassy knoll" shooter of JFK on November 22, 1963. *I am joking here.* But it does make me think why you can't even read an article and possibly come to a different opinion. I have no problem if you did read the article and still believe the way you believe based on what you wrote in your reply to me.
You might be right about the politicians making money off the cable companies decisions, but if you just read the following excerpt from the article, I still can not find any other source except for conspirators to say that the two entities, Congress and the cable companies are in bed with one another. What I did find when searching this subject online through Google were plenty of op-ed pieces from consumers who are unwilling to even accept any possible answer to the question about a-la-carte plans being available.
This is part of the article Kyle had posted:
For backers of ? la carte, their big moment came in 2004, when Michael K. Powell, a champion of deregulation, was still F.C.C. chairman. Asked by Congress to look into the feasibility of ? la carte pricing Mr. Powell had the F.C.C.?s economists work up a study. To the surprise of many ? including, I?m told, Mr. Powell himself ? the study concluded that ? la carte would have the exact opposite effect from what its backers claimed. Instead of reducing prices, ? la carte would cause cable bills to rise for most people. And it would cause many channels to go out of business. Mr. Powell turned the study over to the Congress, and that was that.
Except it wasn?t. Soon afterward, Mr. Martin was named chairman of the commission ? and one of his first acts was to ?redo? the F.C.C. study. Sure enough, the new study attacked the old one, and claimed that ? la carte would, indeed, be good for consumers. That, in turn, led to a flurry of condemnations and yet more studies that picked apart Mr. Martin?s study. The F.C.C. chairman was accused of doctoring the numbers to get the result he wanted. The study fiasco so hurt Mr. Martin?s credibility that when an ? la carte bill came up in the Senate Commerce Committee last year ? a bill Mr. Martin backed ? it lost 20-to-2.
But wait: how can it be that ? la carte will cause cable prices to rise? If you are subscribing to far fewer channels, doesn?t it therefore follow that your bill will be lower? Strange as this may seem, the answer for most people is no.
True, if you decide to take only one or two channels, ? la carte pricing will save you money. But how many people are going to limit themselves to one or two channels? In fact, even if you pick as few as a dozen channels, ? la carte will almost surely cost more than your current ?exorbitant? cable bill.
The reason is that unmoored from the cable bundle, individual networks would have to charge vastly more money per subscriber. Under the current system, in which cable companies like Comcast pay the networks for carriage ? and then pass on the cost to their customers ? networks get to charge on the basis of everyone who subscribes to cable television, whether they watch the network or not. The system has the effect of generating more money than a network ?deserves? based purely on viewership. Networks also get to charge more for advertising than they would if they were not part of the bundle.
Take, for instance, ESPN, which charges the highest amount of any cable network: $3 per subscriber per month. (I?m borrowing this example from a recent research note by Craig Moffett, the Sanford C. Bernstein cable analyst.) Suppose in an ? la carte world, 25 percent of the nation?s cable subscribers take ESPN. If that were the case, the network would have to charge each subscriber not $3, but $12 a month to keep its revenue the same. (And don?t forget: with its $1.1 billion annual bill to the National Football League alone, ESPN is hardly in a position to tolerate declining revenues.)
And that?s one of the most popular channels on cable. What percentage of cable subscribers would take Discovery, or the Food Network, or Oxygen, or Hallmark ? or the many, many more obscure networks that you can now find up and down your cable box? Five percent? Ten percent? According to Mr. Moffett?s analysis, if every African- American family in the country subscribed to the Black Entertainment Network, it would still have to raise its fees by 588 percent. He adds, ?If just half opted in ? still a wildly optimistic scenario ? the price would rise by 1,200 percent.?
And that?s just the effect on fees. Networks would have to charge less for advertising because they would lose the casual viewer ? a k a the channel flipper. Marketing budgets, on the other hand, would skyrocket, because the channels would have to pay huge sums to persuade people to subscribe. ?Identifying everybody who likes the Food Network and getting them to pay for it is hard to do,? says Christopher Yoo, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied cable bundling. One of the nice things about the current system is that once a station gets on extended basic, it can be discovered by viewers ? and that wouldn?t happen in an ? la carte world.
Indeed, it is quite likely that many of the smaller channels would simply vanish because they wouldn?t have enough subscribers ? or couldn?t charge enough to stay in business with the subscribers they did have. It is undoubtedly true, as Mr. Kemp wrote to me, that he never watches most of the cable channels that come into his house. That?s true for most people. But there are also probably one or two small networks he does watch from time to time.
We all have our particular interests and tastes, and under its current business model, cable does a remarkable job of satisfying those interests. Diversity of programming is one of the real benefits that cable has over the old over-the-air broadcasting system. When we pay for the cable bundle we are, in effect, subsidizing those channels for everybody ? including ourselves.
The cable industry is far from perfect, of course. Its customer service leaves much to be desired. Its relentless price increases are galling. Because of its monopoly roots, it can still act like a monopolist at times.
But the bundle of networks cable delivers into your home? That?s not one of the problems with the cable industry. That?s one of the blessings.
As another poster here warned me about a few weeks ago..... Some posters here on the message boards just like to cause trouble when they respond to others here. They like to whip up a frenzy and then watch as others get hot under the collar. They are not at all interested in helping solve an issue, all they are interested in is causing trouble. Are you one of these people?
In fact, this is going to be my last post regarding any replies to posters who are unwilling to accept different ideas or even entertain the thought that they *might* be wrong. Its just not worth my time.