Film_Fatale
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Posts posted by Film_Fatale
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> {quote:title=Karloffer wrote:}{quote}
> When I read the novel "In A Lonely Place" (twice) I visualized Graham as Laurel...an excellent read although it differs significantly from the film.
Hi Karloffer.
I've not read the book, but like molo, I am vaguely aware of the differences, mostly because it is mentioned in the DVD's bonus materials. But I still think I'd like to read the book, someday.
Welcome to the boards, hope you like it here!
FF
*http://tcmfans.ning.com*
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Paulette Goddard
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I just realized Ann Rutherford is also Canadian... from Vancouver, B.C.! B-)
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Guess we posted at the same time... take to take a crack at Jane Greer? B-)
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Ann Rutherford was in *Two O'Clock Courage*
with _Jane Greer_ (billed as Bettejane Greer)
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S.Z. Sakall was in *Christmas in Connecticut*
with _Dennis Morgan_
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Nanette Fabray
Nice kitty, btw! :x
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Utley, Senator - Kenneth Welsh in *Timecop*
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Lee Marvin
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> {quote:title=ChipHeartsMovies wrote:}{quote}
> Once again, FF comes through with the right info!
>
Awww, shucks, thank you!
For what it's worth, I was just as puzzled when I found out that Sony had done something similar with the western *Mackenna's Gold*.
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It seems like a fun mini-site (or site-within-a-site) and one commends the fine folks who put this together.
However, it might help to have a spell-checker handy. Click on "Conversation with Robert Osborne" and you're told to *"TUNE IN _FEBRAUARY_ 6TH, ONLY AT TCM.COM"*
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Judy Holliday
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> {quote:title=ChipHeartsMovies wrote:}{quote}
> The *Annie* DVD is produced by Sony, and they don't appear (at quick glance) to produce a letterbox edition, although I could be wrong.
>
Actually, Sony did release a widescreen DVD edition of *Annie*, back in 2000, which is currently out-of-print:
http://www.amazon.com/Annie-Widescreen-Aileen-Quinn/dp/0767853636
Given that more and more people are getting HDTVs these days, I think there's a reasonable chance that it will eventually re-issue it in a widescreen format, or maybe a dual-format DVD and a widescreen blu-ray.
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> {quote:title=lzcutter wrote:}{quote}
> One thing's for sure, I miss those chats with Feltenstein and his crew. Looks like the last one was two years ago.
Seems more like two years to me. I would sure hope Feltenstein would find this a good year to chat with us some more, especially since WHV will be releasing 70th-anniversary sets of *Gone with the Wind* and *The Wizard of Oz*, plus the 50th-anniversary reissue of *Ben-Hur* (IIRC).
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*Turner Classic Movies tip for Feb. 2, 2009: The Solid Gold Cadillac*
by Doug Krentzlin, DC Classic Media and Performing Arts Examiner
_?The Solid Gold Cadillac,? Mon., Feb. 2, 2009, 4 p.m. (EST)_
?The Solid Gold Cadillac? (1956) is the best Frank Capra film that Capra never made. Instead, it was directed by the unjustly forgotten Richard Quine. This is a very sharp satire scripted by Abe Burrows from the hit Broadway play by George S. Kaufman and Howard Teichmann that seems even more relevant in these days following the home mortgage scandal and the Wall Street collapse.
The film gave late, great comedienne Judy Holliday her funniest and sexiest role as Laura Partridge, a ditzy stockholder (10 shares) in a multi-billion dollar conglomerate who accidentally stumbles upon evidence that the executives running the company are a bunch of crooks. (The corporate weasels include some of Hollywood character actors: John Williams, Fred Clark and Ray Collins.)
Laura takes her discovery to Edward McKeever (Paul Douglas), the founding CEO of the company who was ousted by his former associates and the two of them try to figure out how to expose the miscreants. In the meantime, Ed and Laura find themselves reluctantly falling in love.
Dryly narrated by George Burns, this is an old-fashioned feel-good comedy that doesn?t insult the audience?s intelligence. (Alas, the movie and its portrait of white-collar corruption hasn?t dated one bit.)
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*Turner Classic Movies tip for Feb. 2, 2009: Comrade X*
by Doug Krentzlin, DC Classic Media and Performing Arts Examiner
_?Comrade X,? TCM, Mon., Feb. 2, 2009, 8:15 a.m. (EST)_
It is a common irony in the film industry that often a knock-off of a popular hit turns out to be better than the original. The single best example of this is ?Casablanca,? which was made to cash in on the success of ?Algiers.? The satirical romantic comedy ?Comrade X? (1940) falls into this category. Produced by MGM as a follow-up their previous year?s ?Ninotchka,? ?Comrade X? is actually funnier and has stood the test of time than its better-known predecessor.
Clark Gable plays hard-boiled newspaper man McKinley ?Mac? Thompson, a foreign correspondent stationed in Moscow who smuggles inside expos?s past the Soviet censors under the alias of ?Comrade X.? Bumbling hotel valet Vanya (Felix Bressart) discovers Mac?s secret identity and offers to keep quiet if Mac will get his daughter Golubka (Hedy Lamarr) out of Russia.
When Mac meets Golubka, who works as a streetcar conductor, she turns out to be pretty ardent in her belief in Communism, so Mac has to pretend to be a loyal Party member in order to woo her. After they are married, however, he starts teaching her the joys of Capitalism. Eventually, the authorities learn of his activities and Mac, Golubka and Vanya are forced to flee the country.
?Comrade X? (which criminally is not available on DVD) was directed by King Vidor (his only comedy) and written by the great screenwriting team of Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer from a story by Walter Reisch. (Hecht and Lederer also wrote two of Howard Hawks? best films, ?His Girl Friday? and ?The Thing from Another World,? although at Hecht?s request, both scripts were solely credited to his prot?g? Lederer). The climatic slapstick chase scene, in which the three fugitives escape in a tank being pursued by an entire fleet of tanks, was the uncredited work of comic genius Buster Keaton.
The outstanding supporting cast includes Oskar Holmolka, Eve Arden, Sig Ruman, Vladimir Sokoloff and Edgar Barrier.
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> {quote:title=hlywdkjk wrote:}{quote}
> *"Yes, it IS spamming when someone else (not you, by the way) intentionally overloads the thread with these reviews..."* - MrHoneywell
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> As long as these "reviews" are confined to this single thread, it really isn't "spamming" nor a distraction. The posters are only maintaining and updating a thread with material they feel the membership will find interesting or useful.
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> If the "Tip Of The Day" doesn't interest you, just avoid it in the future.
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> Kyle In Hollywood
On this matter, I am in complete agreement with Kyle. There are very few syndicated columnists nationwide who tend to write about classic movies (playing on TCM or anywhere else for that matter) on a daily or near-daily basis. Such writers are doing their bit to raise awareness and appreciation of classic movies, and we should be grateful that there are some such writers at all, whether we agree or disagree with their opinions on any particular film.
To suggest that if someone starts a thread about DK's movie column, people just shouldn't post DK'S movie capsules is akin to suggesting that no Judy Garland pictures be allowed in a thread dedicated to Judy Garland.
There are several "tribute" threads where TCM viewers have posted dozens and dozens of photos of their favourite movie stars. If such threads are allowed, and folks allowed to post dozens of photos (sometimes in one day), then a thread about a column that highlights TCM showings on a regular basis should be more than acceptable to TCM.
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> {quote:title=lzcutter wrote:}{quote}
> If it was a problem on TCM's part, I'm willing to wager that TCMProgrammr will make every effort to reschedule the film.
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> He's been very good about doing that in the past when they were shipped an edited version of a film or the films that get cancelled due to a Tribute Memorial being scheduled when a beloved actor or director passes away.
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> I see no reason why he wouldn't make the effort for this.
Hope you're right about that, Lynn. This sounds like a pretty rare movie to me -- I'd love to have them reschedule it.
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Marjorie Main was in *Rose Marie* (1954)
with _Fernando Lamas_
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> {quote:title=lzcutter wrote:}{quote}
> Does the bill require the stations to wait until June before switching over to digital? The networks/tv stations have been working towards this goal for, what, ten years now.
>
I believe the bill as written didn't require stations to wait until June. However it may still be modified before it is signed into law.
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Hello CK. Yes, it IS spamming when someone else (not you, by the way) intentionally overloads the thread with these reviews for no other purpose than annoying others. THAT is the very definition of spamming.
The only purpose of offering these recommendations is to provide information that may or may not be useful to others in determining which movies they want to watch on TCM.
People who aren't interested in these movie capsules can simply avoid them by not reading this thread. If you're not interested in them, simply ignore the thread.
If someone keeps coming back to this thread even though they claim they aren't interested in anything that's in here, then they obviously simply have an issue of a personal nature with another TCM viewer.
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stratosphere - *The Right Stuff*
nw: impeachment
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Dany Robin was in *Follow the Boys*
with _Russ Tamblyn_
IN MEMORIAM (Obit Thread)
in Hot Topics
Posted
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/movies/01steckler.html
February 1, 2009
*Ray Dennis Steckler, Low-Budget Auteur, Dies at 70*
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
?SEE: the hunchback of the midway fight a duel of death with the mixed-up zombies! SEE: the world?s first monster musical!?
So urged an ad for ?The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?,? the 1964 cinematic tour de force by Ray Dennis Steckler, a director whose surrealistically impossible plots went beyond zombies to display superheroes, rockers, bikini-clad beach girls ? and flourishes of what some saw as inspired moviemaking.
His cultish fans point to scenes like the one in ?The Thrill Killers? (1964) in which Mort (Mad Dog) Click stabs a prostitute to death in her dark hotel room, while outside a neon light flashes in perfect counterpoint to the plunging knife.
So when his wife, Katherine, announced Mr. Steckler?s death of heart failure, at 70, in Las Vegas on Jan. 7, the Internet buzzed with comments on him.
?He is not dead,? insisted a blogger on MetaFilter Community Weblog (metafilter.com). ?He lives on in every dark glimmering heart of movie maniacs; his soul flickering across the surfaces of corneas and psyches scarred by the brilliance of his fiendishly bloody, brilliant cinema.?
In the 1960s and 1970s Mr. Steckler?s work ? he eventually made more than two dozen films ? riveted audiences at drive-ins and in theaters with floors sticky from spilled sodas. It then faded so much that Michael and Harry Medved theorized in their 1980 book, ?The Golden Turkey Awards,? that ?Creatures? never really existed. Some assumed it was only a hoax by the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland.
But, like a corpse tossed in a lake, ?Creatures? eventually bobbed to the surface on cable television and video, at film festivals and in college film courses. Directors like David Lynch, John Waters and Quentin Tarantino drew inspiration from some decidedly B movies, and Mr. Steckler?s name began to be mentioned with those of genre masters like Russ Meyer and Ed Wood.
In their book ?Incredibly Strange Films? (1985), V. Vale and Andrea Juno applauded Mr. Steckler?s films as ?weird, individualistic and radical,? exemplifying an ?unfettered freedom? impossible in big studios.
?I don?t think I?m allowed in Hollywood ? I have to sneak in and out,? he said in an interview for the book. ?I?m not saying I?m a great filmmaker or anything; I try to just be different, not to be like everybody else.?
Raymond Dennis Steckler was born in Reading, Pa., on Jan. 25, 1938. His love of films grew from the long Saturdays he spent at the movie theater while his grandmother, who largely reared him, worked at a hosiery mill.
When he was 15, his stepfather gave him an eight-millimeter movie camera, and he drafted friends for a film about pirates. They all nearly drowned on a handmade raft. Then came the Army, where Mr. Steckler studied photography. In 1959, his wife said, he and a friend called Punchie drove west until their car broke down at the corner of Hollywood and Vine.
Mr. Steckler found work as a movie prop man, then advanced to cameraman. In 1962 he shot ?The World?s Greatest Sinner,? directed by and starring the character actor Timothy Carey, with music by a young Frank Zappa. That film is now considered a cult classic.
In 1963 he began producing and directing ?Creatures,? with himself (credited as Cash Flagg) as the star. The picture combines a carnival fortuneteller, disfigured zombies, trigger-happy cops and acid thrown in people?s faces ? spiced with Las Vegas-style musical numbers.
Crystal Guillory, vice president of the New Orleans Worst Film Festival, perceived a message in all this. Writing on horror-wood.com, she summarized:
?Don?t go to fortunetellers with huge moles with a sister who works as a stripper, or you will be a zombie. This may not be as important as the Golden Rule, but it is a final point to think about.?
If the movie looks good ? and almost everyone says it does ? it owes much to those who shot it. The director of photography was Joseph V. Mascelli, who wrote ?The Five Cs of Cinematography.? Two Hungarian ?migr?s who would become pre-eminent cinematographers assisted him: Vilmos Zsigmond and Laszlo Kovacs.
Mr. Steckler made ?Creatures? for $38,000, the most he ever spent on a movie. The poverty somehow powered his protean productivity.
No scripts. Using relatives and neighborhood children as actors. Somehow squeezing two actors into the same scene. Sneaking into abandoned buildings for indoor shots. Casting the family car. Nervously dodging union regulators. Dubbing in the sound later.
Actors were not paid: one who could not speak English learned his lines phonetically. Mr. Steckler, while making a movie, was once accidentally slugged and lost his front teeth. Rather than lose a day?s shooting, he replaced the teeth with little pieces of Styrofoam.
His ?Rat Pfink a Boo Boo? (1966) was a psychological thriller until halfway through the shooting. Mr. Steckler then had an idea: wouldn?t it be fun if Batman and Robin popped out of a closet? So the second half of the film was a goofball superhero parody.
The result of this haphazard approach was intriguing. Michael Weldon, who has written widely on very, very unusual films, said in an interview on Thursday: ?He had this way of mixing childish things with really bizarre kind of adult-oriented things. You didn?t know quite where he was coming from.?
Mr. Steckler moved to Las Vegas in 1970 and continued making movies, including soft-core pornography (it was his blue period). Some of this later work was done under pseudonyms. He taught film classes at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and owned video stores.
Mr. Steckler?s first marriage, to the actress Carolyn Brandt, ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife of 23 years, Katherine Steckler; two daughters from his first marriage, Linda Arnold of Maui, Hawaii, and Laura Steckler of Sunland, Calif.; two daughters from his second marriage, Morgan and Bailey Steckler, both of Las Vegas; his sister, Judy Conrad of Reading; and two grandchildren.
One of Mr. Steckler?s notorious cinematic inventions was ?Hallucinogenic Hypnovision,? which involved ushers? wearing masks and bounding through the aisles with rubber knives. He himself sometimes joined in, until a patron shot him with a pellet gun.