LsDoorMat
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Posts posted by LsDoorMat
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Well here's the trailer for "No Leave No Love". There are some imdb reviewers who have seen it. They tell a humorous story of Van Johnson appearing on the set the first day of shooting and saying that the film was going to be a stinker so the cast should just have fun with it.
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4 minutes ago, papyrusbeetle said:
A question for PSYCHO-heads>>>
Aren't there Christmas Decorations downtown in Phoenix as Marian drives away?
just saying.....Yes there are Christmas decorations strung across the street. But I don't think another mention is made of Christmas during the entire film.
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Well, Christmas is also supposed to be a time of thanksgiving and reflection as well as giving. So maybe TCM is saying we should all be thankful to not be falsely accused of a crime, have a broken leg, be living across the alley from a murderer yet nobody believes us, be married to a ne'er do well who apparently wants to kill us for our insurance money, etc. Just guessing.
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Quite a few surprises here TB.
If you had just asked me the generic question "How well do you know the MGM films of the 40s?" I would have rolled my eyes and said I've seen 'em all. Apparently not so. Some by design -From 1940 I've never seen "Man From Dakota" , "Wyoming" or "Twenty Mule Team" - I'm not crazy about westerns. But I'd never even heard of Dulcy, nor had I heard of Florian. How interesting it has never been on TCM. Is it lost? Apparently it was circulating on TV at one time, because some imdb reviewers remember it. i'd also never heard of "The Hidden Eye", the follow up to "Eyes in the Night", the detective picture starring Edward Arnold as a blind detective, now in the public domain. I had no idea there was a follow up!
I will say that I tend to give wide berth to WWII era films because there is always somehow a tie in to WWII, which eventually becomes tiresome. I want to stand up at the midpoint of most war era films and scream " I get it already! The Nazis are EEEEVIL!!!!" But it is reflective of the times and how seriously the war impacted folks.
I will say one WWII era MGM film did surprise me. "The War Against Mrs. Hadley" was very well done with a good story and well acted by its cast. I wasn't expecting much since the director was Harold S. Bucquet, who is probably best known for the Doctor Kildare series and his other entries are usually simplistic and overly sentimental. Made early during WWII, I was expecting lots of flag waving, speechifying, and pat answers and situations. Instead this movie took on the war from a different tack and was quite human and realistic. It looked at the war from the vantage point of a very rigid society matron in Washington D.C. - a WASP upper class Republican to be exact, Fay Bainter as Mrs. Hadley, and how the war turns her well ordered world upside down. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and I'd say it certainly deserved that.
TB, have you ever seen the documentary about MGM made during the Turner era - "When the Lion Roars"? Basically, it says from 1946 it was downhill for MGM from that point forward. Their material was simply too sentimental and sweet for the post war years and the studio had a hard time figuring out which direction to take. It even postulates that perhaps it was curtains for MGM from the death of the boy genius, Irving Thalberg, back in 1936, and from that point they were merely skating on his leftover ideas. An interesting watch if you've never seen it.
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16 minutes ago, Bogie56 said:
Sunday, December 24/25
12:15 a.m. The Cheaters (1945). This has pretty good reviews and I’ve never seen it.
Absolutely worth it. It's a Republic picture that TCM got the rights to about 9 or 10 years ago. I still have a DVD copy I burned with Robert O introducing the only time it ever played before. I still haven't figured out why Olive Films, which seems to have the rights to the entire Republic catalog, has not released this one yet.
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2 hours ago, MovieCollectorOH said:
Going on IMDB yesterday I tried to search for a production company (by company). I was redirected to the signup page for IMDB Pro. Then I searched for and went to a specific movie and scrolled down to its production company and clicked on the company link. Again, I was redirected to the IMDB Pro signup page. So it seems they might be preparing to require a paid subscription just to look at basic movie listings by production company.
In the past IMDB Pro was mainly to see contact information of active movie personel, for the purpose of making business connections and networking. Any personel I might come across have largely been dead for many years. That and I have zero intention of networking with anyone in Hollywood.
It looks to me like they might be getting ready to wrap up the free services and move to a paid model.I had the same experience. I was looking at a lost title - "Jazz Cinderella". It starred Myrna Loy and Jason Robards Sr. and was made in 1930 by Chesterfield Motion Pictures. I clicked on Chesterfield Motion Pictures to see what other pictures they had made - so many of these defunct studios had their product wind up on Alpha DVD. I got the same paywall billboard for IMDB PRO that you got. I am not paying to find out what product defunct Chesterfield Pictures made in the 30s. I don't know who would.
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On 12/17/2017 at 12:29 PM, NipkowDisc said:
second sight about a sweet young canadian woman who falls in love with ackroyd who plays a blind guy.
saw it once decades ago on pay cable and found it utterly charming but it's like the film has fallen off the earth never to be remembered.
Yep, I remember that one. There are pieces of it on youtube, but not the whole thing. And then there is this dubious looking offering:
You have to buy a stinker of a DVD (seems that way looking at the description) in order to get "Love at First Sight". Its manufacturer is listed as "EastWest Studios". Indeed. If I had 15 bucks to blow I'd take a chance on that one. Maybe I'd have a good recording. But then maybe it is just somebody with a video camera pointed at their TV. You never know.
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On 11/19/2017 at 1:09 PM, calvinnme said:
Worldly Goods (1930) 5/10
If there had been more of it, I might have rated it higher. It was a poverty row film all of the way, yet it does not have laughable art design. Nothing looks like cardboard or a toy model. This was a blind buy for me, and I don't regret the purchase or the viewing. The problem is it just ends with no wrap up, plus there is no build up or motivation for the extreme changes in all three main characters.
The opening scene has John C. Tullock, industrialist, being told that the government is unhappy with the performance of his planes. He says "They meet spec don't they?". The answer is "Yes" and he ignores the complaint. Jeff, a WWI pilot, crashes in one of these "Tullock coffins" as they are called, lives, but is blinded by the head injury. Jeff has his best friend meet Mary, his fiancée, at the docks when their boat lands. He tells Mary Jeff died on the way over, because Jeff does not want to burden Mary with a blind man.
Jeff ironically ends up working at an airstrip owned by Tullock, all the time vowing revenge upon the industrialist responsible for his blindness. Mary is rooming with a party girl, and begins accompanying her party girl roommate to some of these parties, all the time retaining her freshness and positive attitude despite her turns of bad luck.
I'll let you watch - if you can find a copy - and see the rest of this, but these three characters - Tullock, Mary, and Jeff all have their lives intersect in such a way that there could be dozens of interesting denouements. The main transformation is that of Tullock from a money hungry tyrant into someone who genuinely does good works for the right reasons and then does something that nobody would say he owes the human race or anybody in it. Then the film just ends abruptly.
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On 12/15/2017 at 10:11 AM, sewhite2000 said:
I am curious what the purchase of the Fox back catalog by Disney will mean for TCM (maybe I should have titled the thread that way to make sure it stays in General Discussions!). Once upon a time, you saw a Fox film on TCM only once in a blue moon, but things certainly seem to have improved in the last 10 years. Looking at the 31 Days schedule, I see TCM is airing a whopping 25 Fox films during the month - not as many as Columbia, but more than Paramount and Universal films combined. And we had Alexander's Ragtime Band last night. I hope the amount of Fox films airing on TCM doesn't decrease because of the buyout. TCM seems to have had a pretty good relationship with Disney as well. Obviously we've got the Treasures from the Disney Vault thing going four times a year now, and we occasionally see something like The Absent-Minded Professor or Bedknobs and Broomsticks pop up on just a regular night's programming, not to mention Buena Vista or Touchstone films that mostly air during 31 Days. But I know Disney is getting ready to launch their own streaming service. They've already yanked or are about to yank their stuff from other platforms. What effect that will have on their letting Disney or Fox films be shown on TCM remains to be seen.
What the purchase of Fox by Disney would mean for TCM was the first thing I thought of too. I'd hate to see those classic Fox films go away, and I'm glad I've got just about everything in their classic catalogue that Fox put on disc in my library. But maybe Disney really won't care about these films since it seems they really have their eye on all of the Marvel and Star Wars stuff, which I could really care less about. I'm talking about Star Wars in its recent "big explosions without a soul" form, not the 1977 and 1980 classic Star Wars films.
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20 hours ago, EricJ said:
That was then--Now, we have Warner in search of a Holiday Icon (for ex., they don't own any of the big-four of the Rankin-Bass holiday icons that Classic Media owns, and have made a cottage industry out of ramming "Year Without a Santa Claus" down the throats of 'Boomers who only remember one scene from it), and we live in a generation that's been indoctrinated to literally consider Will Ferrell's "Elf", Jim Carrey's Grinch, and Chevy Chase's "Christmas Vacation" as, quote, "Christmas classics", unquote, for lack of anything else Warner-labeled besides Charlie Brown.
Okay, betting pool open, who's going to be the first poster to protest "....But they are classics! I grew up with them!"?
I'm a boomer and I never even heard of "A Year Without a Santa Claus". I had to go look it up to see when it came out. Oh, and I was 30 when Christmas Vacation came out, but it isn't Christmas at my house until we've watched it.
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22 minutes ago, drednm said:
To me. it looks like a cosmetic change. Reviews may now be listed by "helpfulness" but that makes as much sense as before, when they were listed in a random pattern.
Before you could list reviews by prolific authors, "loved it", "hated it", and you could move to any page of ten reviews you wished for a given title. Now some people are saying they can go through all the reviews - 20 at a time. Others say they do not see that scroll button.
Individual reviewers cannot look at all of their reviews. We can look at the last 200, that's it. We can't sort by highest voted, chronological, or alphabetic. Why would anybody review a big budget modern film if it that review is just going to get buried by the first few fan boys who posted, and their analysis usually tells you nothing?
To me it is much more than cosmetic.
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I think they gave users NO warning before making our reviews impossible to access exactly because they figured we were going to do what I'm going to do - make a copy of the reviews to a safe place and then delete my review from imdb. It will just be harder now because of what they did. I hope Bezos and his cronies have fun writing all of the reviews that those of us in the 1000+ club intend to delete. I may post some in the worthwhile "I Just Watched" thread on the TCM boards, making it clear I did not just watch them, and then either find another place for all of them OR maybe even start my own blogspot.
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I always hoped they'd give us all of the private screenings Robert did in one evening, but I don't think ten hours is enough time. Not for all of them. There is also the problem that somebody might tune in during the middle and somehow believe Robert is still alive.
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1 hour ago, limey said:
Not only that, but Amazon has developed a nasty habit of including multiple products on one page (like a dozen different varieties of sunglasses), so you need to check which one any given review may actually refer to.
However, Amazon's own reviews can still be sorted by other factors than helpfulness...
Tell me about it. I was trying to by a DVD the other day, and the Kino Blu, the Kino DVD, an alpha DVD, and some unnamed source that was probably a bootleg outfit all had reviews on the same page. It was a mess figuring out what review applied to what, although at least they will usually say "Blu Ray" if that is what the customer bought. I've even seen VHS tapes dumped into the same review page.
And what Ammy may not realize is that I often decide to buy or stream a film from their site based on imdb reviews that until yesterday I could sort by various methods. Now I am stuck with a few top rated reviews that may just be fan boys, making it completely invalid.
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3 hours ago, limey said:
They'd probably be happy with 1-line reviews along the lines of This movie ROX - buy it yesterday!!!1!!111!!
Having said that, the helpful/unhelpful tick-box system could come back to bite the commercial side of things, judging by the waves of negativity the Ghostbusters reboot attracted, even before it got near a cinema screen - positive sale-encouraging reviews could be buried by the mob looking to join the downvote bandwagon.
I don't know what happened to Amazon reviews, but ten years ago most Amazon product reviews were pretty artful. Now half of them are about shipping - "Came well protected and packaged- 5 stars" "The discs were scratched - 1 star". You have to LOOK at the reviews to make sure that 3 star review didn't come from packaging!
I think that much of this poor writing comes from people so addicted to their phones that they abbreviate everything.
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5 hours ago, MovieCollectorOH said:
I just hope Amazon doesn't completely ruin IMDB. With these updates they are essentially trying to squeeze a multifaceted system, one that took decades to form, into a newly built prefab structure - just because that would make life better.
They already have ruined it. First the message boards and now this. Bezos just wants to sell movie tickets to Star Wars XXIII versus Pacific Rim Versus the XMen Meet Shrek XVII. He could care less about all of the free labor that went into these movie reviews that made the site special. Whoever OK'd this project to mess up the review presentation should be fired.
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These commenters are far more eloquent than I on the subject:
Bottom line - If you contribute to imdb you might want to read this and join in on the tirade.
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I'm OK with the new hosts. I think Tiffany has improved dramatically and has a good delivery. Eddie Muller certainly knows his stuff on Noir Alley. Alec Baldwin, always my favorite co-host of The Essentials when RO was alive, is doing a great job there. Ben has a style that is very different from RO. I can't say that it is as good as RO, and he certainly has his own style of delivery, but he is holding his own. But maybe it is unfair to even compare Ben to RO. He was originally hired to handle the weekends and was probably instructed to use an informal and humorous style. Remember that went on for eight years before RO's sudden illness in 2011 abruptly shoved him into the primetime spotlight which had an entirely different ambience than what he had been doing. RO just had such a unique background - a middle class guy from small town Washington who winds up a friend to just about all of the golden age stars and was an avid film historian to boot. That's just not going to happen again.
P.S.- Just one negative. David Letterman's beard! Yikes! It looks like a whisk broom and is very distracting. Is there no gentle way of bringing this up?
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James Cagney and Barbara Stanwyck only worked together once in 1956's "These Wilder Years".
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English speaking films with the biggest U.S. Box office released from
2000 through 2009.2000
1. How The Grinch Stole Christmas 260.04M
2. Cast Away 233.63M
3. Mission Impossible II 215.41M
4. Gladiator 187.71M
5. What Women Want 182.81M2001
1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone 317.58M
2. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of Rings 315.54M
3. Monsters Inc. 289.92M
4. Shrek 267.67M
5. Rush Hour 2 226.16M2002
1. Spider Man 403.71M
2. Lord of the Rings: Two Towers 342.55M
3. Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones 310.68M
4. Harry Potter & Chamber of Secrets 261.99M
5. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 241.44M2003
1. Finding Nemo 380.84M
2. Lord of the Rings: Rtn of the King 377.85M
3. Pirates of the Caribbean:Curse of Black Pearl 305.41M
4. Matrix Reloaded 281.49M
5. Bruce Almighty 242.83M2004
1. Shrek Two 436.47M
2. Spider Man 2 373.59M
3. Meet the Fockers 279.26M
4. The Incredibles 261.44M
5. Harry Potter & Prisoner of Azkaban 249.36M2005
1. Star Wars III - Revenge of the Sith 380.26M
2. Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe 291.71M
3. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 290.01M
4. War of the Worlds 234.28M
5. King Kong 218.08M2006
1. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest 423.32M
2. Night at the Museum 250.86M
3. Cars 244.08M
4. X Men: The Last Stand 234.36M
5. The Da Vinci Code 217.54M2007
1. Spider Man 3 336.53M
2. Shrek 3 320.71M
3. Transformers 319.07M
4. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End 309.42M
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 292.00M2008
1. The Dark Knight 534.86M
2. Iron Man 318.41M
3. Indiana Jones & Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 317.10M
4. Hancock 227.95M
5. Wall-E 223.81M2009
1. Avatar 760.51M
2. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen 402.11M
3. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince 301.96M
4. Twilight Saga: New Moon 296.62M
5. Up 293.00M
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English speaking films released from 2000 through 2009 with the highest IMDB
ranking per year. Each must have > 50000 votes. U.S. Box office
numbers were included just for comparison.2000
1. Gladiator 8.5 187.71M
2. Memento 8.5 25.54M
3. Requiem for A Dream 8.3 ????
4. Snatch 8.3 30.3M
5. Dancer in the Dark 8.0 4.19M2001
1. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings 8.8 315.54M
2. A Beautiful Mind 8.2 170.74M
3. Donnie Darko 8.1 ???
4. Monsters Inc. 8.1 289.92M
5. Mulholland Drive 8.0 ???2002
1. Lord of the Rings: Two Towers 8.7 342.55M
2. The Pianist 8.5 32.57M
3. Catch Me if You Can 8.1 164.62M
4. Bowling for Columbine 8.0 21.24M
5. The Bourne Identity 7.9 121.66M
2003
1. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King 8.9 377.85M
2. Kill Bill: Volume 1 8.1 70.10M
3. Finding Nemo 8.1 380.84M
4. Pirates ofthe Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl 8.0 305.41M
5. Mystic River 8.0 90.14M2004
1. Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind 8.3 34.40M
2. Million Dollar Baby 8.1 100.49M
3. Hotel Rwanda 8.1 23.47M
4. The Incredibles 8.0 261.44M
5. Shaun of the Dead 8.0 13.54M2005
1. Batman Begins 8.3 206.85M
2. V For Vendetta 8.2 70.51M
3. Sin City 8.0 74.1M
4. Cinderella Man 8.0 61.65M
5. Serenity 7.9 25.51M2006
1. The Prestige 8.5 53.09M
2. The Departed 8.5 132.38M
3. Casino Royale 8.0 167.45M
4. Pursuit of Happiness 8.0 163.57M
5. Blood Diamond 8.0 57.37M2007
1. Into the Wild 8.1 18.35M
2. There will be Blood 8.1 40.22M
3. No Country for Old Men 8.1 74.28M
4. Bourne Ultimatum 8.1 227.47M
5. Ratatouille 8.0 206.45M2008
1. The Dark Knight 9.0 534.86M
2. Wall-E 8.4 223.81M
3. Gran Torino 8.2 148.10M
4. Slumdog Millionaire 8.0 141.32M
5. Iron Man 7.9 318.41M2009
1. Inglourious Basterds 8.3 120.54M
2. Up 8.3 293.00M
3. Hachi: Dog's Tale 8.1 ???
4. Mary and Max 8.1 ??? (Australian)
5. Star Trek 8.0 257.73MItems of note:
1. The Dark Knight made the most money and was highest rated IMDB film for
2008 yet was not even nominated for Best Picture that year.
2. Pixar films did well in both critical acclaim and box office.
3. LOTRing films did well in both critical acclaim and box office.
4. This is the first decade in which the endless recycling of material
is obvious, yet it is rewarded in sales.
5. Avatar made the most money of any film released in U.S. Box office
terms for the decade, and even has a 7.8 IMDB rating, but seems
almost completely forgotten just eight years later. -
I go down the list of top rated films until I have five English speaking films, but I include the other films with > 2000 votes that are foreign language films too. I changed strategies because there are just so many foreign films in the top contenders. In 1955 the top five films are foreign ones. It is obvious from this list that the Japanese and European film industries recovered rather quickly after WWII.
1950
1. Sunset Boulevard 8.5
2. All About Eve 8.3
Rashomon 8.3
Young & The Damned 8.3
Orpheus 8.1
3. Harvey 8.0
4. In a Lonely Place 8.0
5. Night and the City 8.01951
Early Summer 8.3
1. Ace in the Hole 8.2
2. The Browning Version 8.2
3. A Christmas Carol 8.1
Awaara 8.1
4. Strangers on a Train 8.05. A Streetcar Named Desire 8.0
1952
1. Singin in the Rain 8.3
Ikiru 8.3
Umberto D. 8.2
The Life of Oharu 8.2
2. Limelight 8.1
3. High Noon 8.0
4. The Quiet Man 7.9
5. Bad & The Beautiful 7.91953
Wages of Fear 8.2
Tokyo Story 8.2
Ugetsu 8.2
Welcome Mr. Marshall 8.2
1. Roman Holiday 8.1
2. The Big Heat 8.0
I Vitelloni 8.0
3. Stalag 17 8.0
Earrings of Madame De 8.0
El 7.9
4. Pickup on S. Street 7.8
5. Shane 7.71954
Seven Samurai 8.7
1. Rear Window 8.5
Sansho The Bailiff 8.4
2. On the Waterfront 8.2
3. Dial M For Murder 8.2
4. The Caine Mutiny 7.9
5. A Star is Born 7.81955
Pather Panchali 8.4
Rififi 8.2
Ordet 8.2
Diabolique 8.1
Shree 420 8.1
1. East of Eden 8.0
2. Night of the Hunter 8.0
Criminal Life of Archibald de la Cruz
3. The Court Jester 7.9
The Unknown Soldier 7.9
Smiles of a Summer Night 7.9
4. Rebel Without a Cause 7.8
5. The Ladykillers 7.81956
A Man Escaped 8.2
Aparajito 8.2
The Burmese Harp 8.1
1. The Searchers 8.0
2. The Killing 8.0
Street of Shame 8.0
3.10 Commandments 7.9
4. Invasion of the Body Snatchers 7.8
Bob Le Flambeur 7.8
Samurai II Duel at Ganryu 7.8
5. Forbidden Planet 7.71957
1. 12 Angry Men 8.9
Pyaasa 8.5
2. Witness For the Prosecution 8.4
3. Paths of Glory 8.4
The Cranes are Flying 8.3
Tokyo Boshoko 8.3
4. Bridge over the River Kwai 8.2
The Seventh Seal 8.2
Wild Strawberries 8.2
Nights of Cabiria 8.2
5. Face in the Crowd 8.21958
1. Vertigo 8.4
2. Touch of Evil 8.1
3. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 8.1
Hidden Fortress 8.1
The Music Room 8.1
4. Auntie Mame 8.0
Elevator to the Gallows 8.0
Big Deal on Madonna St 8.0
Equinox Flower 8.0
5.The Big Country 7.91959
Human Condition 1- No Greater Love 8.6
Human Condition 2 - Road to Eternity 8.6
1. North By Northwest 8.4
The Great War 8.4
2. Some Like It Hot 8.3
World of Apu 8.3
3. Ben-Hur 8.1
4. Anatomy of a Murder 8.1
The 400 Blows 8.1
Ballad of a Soldier 8.1
5. Rio Bravo 8.0The following shows the top films by US Box Office. This shows what 50s films people of the past thought were the best. However, some films had multiple runs over multiplebyears, such as the Disney films Cinderella and Peter Pan, making it hard to gauge how popular they were in the year of their release.
U.S. Box Office
1950
1. Cinderella 85M (over multiple releases in multiple decades)
2. All About Eve 8.4M
3. Annie Get Your Gun 8M
4 .Destination Moon 5M
5. Sunset Boulevard 5M1951
1. Quo Vadis 24.29M
2. Streetcar named Desire 8M
3. Strangers on a Train 7.63M
4. American in Paris 4.5M
5. Ace in the Hole 3.97M1952
1. This is Cinerama 41.6M
2. Greatest Show on Earth 36M
3. Snows of Kilimanjaro 18M
4. Moulin Rouge 11.8M
5. The Quiet Man 10.55M1953
1. Peter Pan 87.4M
2. The Robe 36M
3. From Here to Eternity 30.5M
4. House of Wax 23.75M
5. Shane 20M1954
1. Rear Window 36.76M
2. White Christmas 30M
3. 20K Leagues Under the Sea 28.2M
4. Demetrius & The Gladiators 26M
5. Caine Mutiny 21.75M1955
1. Lady and the Tramp 93.6M
2. Cinerama Holiday 26.6M
3. Mister Roberts 21.2M
4. Galapagos 18.57M
5. Battle Cry 17.44M1956
1. The Ten Commandments 93.74M
2 Around the World in 80 Days 42M
3. Giant 35M
4. Seven Wonders of the World 32.1M
5. The King and I 21.3M1957
1. Bridge over the River Kwai 44.91M
2. Sayonara 26.3M
3. Peyton Place 25.6M
4. Old Yeller 21.91M
5. Gunfight at OK Corral 11.75M1958
1. Auntie Mame 23.3M
2. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 17.57M
3. Gigi 13.21M
4. Separate Tables 7.4M
5. Hercules 5M1959
1. Ben Hur 74.7M
2. Sleeping Beauty 51.6M
3. Some Like it Hot 25M
4. Operation Petticoat 23.3M
5. Pillow Talk 18.75M -
I don't know what you folks are talking about, but back to the original question, why is Fredric March forgotten? I'd say because he did so much work for Paramount, especially from 1929 into the mid 1930s, when he was playing leading men. He also did work for Universal in the 1940s. Since Universal owns, not only their own films but Paramount's pre 1949 talking picture catalog, and Universal has done practically nothing with either, nobody has seen him in leading roles that much. He played supporting roles in later films that get more play when he was older, but the spotlight was not on him that much by the 1950s.
It is odd he is so forgotten. He won Best Actor Oscars in 1931 and in 1946, and if you've ever seen him parody John Barrymore in Royal Family of Broadway, for which he was up for a Best Actor Oscar but lost, you would also be impressed. He was hardly the lead in this last film, but if there had best supporting role Oscars in 1930 I am sure he would have won. His mimicry of Barrymore's movements and ways were uncanny. It's just a shame that hardly anybody alive has probably ever seen it.
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6 minutes ago, TopBilled said:
Why did you put GRAPES OF WRATH over SHOP AROUND THE CORNER? Is that because it had the same score with more votes?
I'm pulling this straight off of IMDB's list when I do an advanced search of everything released in a given year, with more than 1000 votes, in order of the highest rating. Most of the time if the scores are equal, I see the most votes first. There are times when that is not the case. I can only wonder if they calculate the score out to more decimal places than they are showing in those particular cases. I've been experimenting, and I'm probably going to have to raise that floor of minimum votes in the 50's list. By the time I get to the 2010's it needs to be 100K votes as a floor. Also, in 1949 I ran into a few TV programs, so I'll have to start specifying feature films and TV movies and leave out TV programs. In 1949, for example, the Lone Ranger TV show turned up in my query! So I am now at the point where the attack of the small screens becomes a problem.
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This first set is done by top IMDB ratings for films with more than 1000 votes. If I think the box office numbers are reliable, I'll do that list later. This list is international, so there are not just American films included.
1940
1. The Great Dictator 8.5
2. Rebecca 8.2
3. The Grapes of Wrath 8.1
4. Shop Around the Corner 8.1
5. The Philadelphia Story 8.01941
1. Citizen Kane 8.4
2. The Little Foxes 8.2
3. The Maltese Falcon 8.1
4. Sullivan's Travels 8.1
5. The Lady Eve 8.01942
1. Casablanca 8.5
2. To Be or Not To Be 8.2
3. Now Voyager 8.0
4. Random Harvest 8.0
5. Magnificent Ambersons 7.91943
1. Life and Death of Colonel Blimp 8.2
2. The Ox-Bow Incident 8.1
3. Shadow of a Doubt 8.0
4. Day of Wrath 8.0
5. The More the Merrier 7.91944
1. Double Indemnity 8.3
2. Laura 8.1
3. Arsenic & Old Lace 8.0
4. To Have and Have Not 8.0
5. Gaslight 7.91945
1. Children of Paradise 8.3
2. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 8.1
3. Brief Encounter 8.1
4. Rome Open City 8.1
5. Mildred Pierce 8.01946
1. It's A Wonderful Life 8.6
2. Best Years of Our Lives 8.1
3. Stairway to Heaven 8.1
4.The Big Sleep 8.0
5. Notorious 8.01947
1. Out of the Past 8.1
2. Black Narcissus 8.0
3. Monsieur Verdoux 8.0
4. Miracle on 34th St. 7.9
5. Ghost & Mrs. Muir 7.91948
1. Bicycle Thieves 8.3
2. Treasure of the Sierra Madre 8.3
3. The Red Shoes 8.3
4. I Remember Mama 8.2
5. Rope 8.01949
1. Late Spring 8.3
2. The Third Man 8.2
3. White Heat 8.2
4. The Heiress 8.2
5. Kind Hearts & Coronets 8.1
I Just Watched...
in General Discussions
Posted
I liked this film too, although it has been awhile since I watched it. I have to say, though, the values it tries to put forth are somewhat goofy. There is Cedric Hardwicke as the cleric who convinces Flynn to take the blame for a death in the operating room that is the fault of a distracted doctor who came in late because he was trying to rescue his portfolio. How focused is that distracted doctor going to be now that he has the collapse of Flynn's career on his conscience? If you listen to Hardwicke's words like you are reading a court transcript, they are like so many fortune cookie sayings stitched together into some kind of psycho-babble. Plus Hardwicke's cleric seems to enjoy putting people together in the same room who have no idea of the importance each other plays in their lives and then exposing the situation, usually with explosive results.
And Flynn injects himself with the fever disease AND the serum so he can somehow atone for...what exactly??? He is the guy who allowed himself to be unjustly accused and fired for something he didn't do, lost the girl he loved - Phyllis - to maintain the ruse, and he thinks he's anything but a prince of a guy?
Anyway, just my two cents.