LsDoorMat

Yep, I agree. Anatomy of a Murder is another one in which a rape may not be treated as cavalierly, but the rape victim behaves more like somebody who ran over a stop sign by accident and needs an attorney (James Stewart) to help her with the insurance paperwork. I don't know if that was because, decades ago, stranger rape was more uncommon and thus there were just not that many people who knew how that would affect the victim's personality, or because people considered the woman to always be at fault in these matters, or maybe a little bit of both.

I got "Let's Get Married" from a private collector. You collect a network of such people when you like rare old stuff like I do. I had to resort to making a DVD of "Coffee Tea or Me" from a youtube video though, because none of the collectors I deal with are into made for TV 70s stuff, and that film aired in 1973 and was pretty much a fossil by the beginning of the VHS era.

And we have another movie with a good song on the end credits - "Through the Eyes Of Love" by Melissa Manchester. I think there was an earlier thread about this subject.

Let's Get Married (1937) Columbia Stars Walter Connolly as a kingmaker/politician who is comically crooked versus seriously crooked. After all, this is a screwball comedy. Ida Lupino plays his grown daughter who calls him by his first name - Joe. He calls her "red". Connolly is trying to engineer a marriage between his daughter and the son of a society scion, played by Reginald Denny. Denny plays an affable but clueless guy, and Connolly is helping Denny run for congressman. Lupino's character, with her fierce Irish temper, is already friendly with Denny, but is furious with her dad when she finds out he is trying to get her married to this empty suit so he can break into society. She is telling him off when a weather balloon contraption falls from the sky and hits her in the head. It has a tag saying "Return to Kirk Duncan". Oh for the days before anybody worried about being sued for stuff like this falling from the sky. Duncan is played by Ralph Bellamy, who is the self confident scientific type and works for the federal weather bureau. So Lupino and Bellamy go back and forth trying to get/return the weather balloon - which turns out to be an invention of Bellamy's character - but they keep getting into heated arguments and the thing just never seems to get returned. But, of course, the heated arguments are just cover for sexual tension, which slowly the characters give into. Meanwhile, Connolly is having a hard time delivering the rural vote for Denny. The rural kingmaker Connolly is bargaining with wants two judgeships in return for the rural vote. But Connolly realizes the rural vote won't turn out if it rains...and he realizes his daughter's new friend can forecast the weather. Will Bellamy sacrifice his professional integrity to help his new love's dad? Will he be insulted by the whole idea? Watch and find out. I really loved this film. It got the best out of all three lead characters - Lupino, Bellamy, and Connolly. And what a weird premise - a weather balloon as phallic symbol. I have no idea why such an inventive film has such a banal title and why it is not better known. I'd give it 8/10.

Speaking of being afraid for TCM, and I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this, what is up with that weird Dracula "Word of Mouth" promo piece? There are fictitious characters in the Universal horror canon talking about another fictitious character - Dracula. Has TCM ever done anything like this before? If Robert Osborne was still alive would he have burst in on the set and said "enough of this silliness!". Is his ghost doing that now? In 10 years will Deadpool have a Word of Mouth promo on TCM with the rest of the fictitious Marvelverse talking about him? It just seems like a leap from the film school atmosphere of these short pieces to pure camp, and maybe TCM is just limiting it to October because Drac is the "monster of the month". Anyways, I did raise an eyebrow when I saw this piece the other day.

Speaking of deplorables, that woman on the right bears a strong resemblance to somebody who ran for president last year.

Indeed. I spent the first 35 years of my life in the DFW (Dallas/Ft Worth) area of Texas, born into a religiously confused household with a Baptist mother and a Methodist father. They are still happily together after what will be 62 years of marriage if they can both make it to February.

Agreed. And today a 20 year old girl getting married might be considered a recipe for disaster, but in 1980 it was par for the course. I had a friend who married at 21 to a guy who was only 20. Today, 38 years later, they are still happily married. In 1981, when I turned 23 and was not married, I had people openly calling me an old maid and my parents began to get visibly worried.

I can't stand Joan Collins. She ruins every movie I've ever seen her in. Can't act, can't sing, can't dance. Every time I start to get into "Seven Thieves" out she trots and just kills the mood. However, I did think that she was great in Dynasty - probably saved the series - because Dynasty was pure camp in the first place and camp is the only thing I ever thought she did well.

The thing is, people change over time. Let me tell you a true story. Somebody I knew in college got a job with GTE in San Angelo. A year later he brings back this San Angelo simple country girl to meet us. She had just a HS degree and was working in retail and seemed to have no real career goals, BUT she was only 20. 25 years later she gives my friend, now her husband of 25 years an ultimatum - either they move to wherever she can get into medical school OR they get a divorce. He was a 48 year old exec at Verizon! Why would he leave a job when he was at the peak of his career? She probably wanted him to say no because she probably wanted the divorce. Texas is a community property state. She took half of their substantial savings, managed to put herself through medical school on it and buy a house with cash after she finished her internship and moved to Minnesota. Oh, and part of that settlement was half of his mother's estate which is ironic because their unexpected and WWIII like divorce is part of what put his mother in the grave in the first place. Fortunately their kids were grown so no child support. So with stories like this in circulation - and I can't be the only person who knows one - I can see why men would be gun shy about marriage and especially kids. But if you decide to stay away from women I don't see the need or the productivity of all of the hate on these reddit threads. And like somebody said below we are getting off topic for General Discussions, so let me wind it up with a movie analogy. Apparently this problem has been going on a long time if you watch 1967's "Divorce American Style" where the ex husband lives in poverty and at that time the wives continue to live in the large family home, not employed, and everybody seems OK with that.

I may be jumping the gun a little, but I seldom have time to write in the middle of the week due to work. Let me highly recommend Dynamite (1929), DeMille's first talkie, which airs 5AM on Tuesday.. It actually has well done dialogue for an early talkie with the conversations seeming quite natural, and it has an interesting story. Also the motion is quite fluid for early sound too. This was actually the role that brought Charles Bickford to Hollywood. The female lead, Kay Johnson, is the mother of actor James Cromwell. Also, don't miss the tribute to Buster Keaton on October 4, his birthday. In Coney Island I believe he actually laughs. And notice all of the sight gags in "The Cameraman" and "Speak Easily". If MGM did not think him to be of any value, why were they using Buster's gags for the next twenty years after they fired him in everything from "A Night at the Opera" to just about every comedy Red Skelton did? EDIT: Actually TCM is not airing Speak Easily, but it is public domain and easily found on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcYppAs6ZdI Ba doom pa! I couldn't let that go by with a mere up vote

I was actually going to say that most of the guys in the film clips may literally be "men going their own way", but do not share the characteristics of the guys posting on the reddit threads for MGTOW. These fellows, to be going their own way without women, spend a tremendous amount of time talking badly about women. If they intend to live without women, to not have children, to not marry, to keep their resources for themselves, why is every thread about how bad women are? I intend to have nothing to do with coyotes. I thus don't spend my time thinking about them or conversing about them with others. Take this thread for instance: https://www.reddit.com/r/MGTOW/comments/6ilt33/what_shocked_you_most_about_women/ Every man who posts there - 1376 of them to be exact - has something bad to say about women. If they intend to leave them alone, why do they obsess over them?

I actually love Citizen Kane, and although you have some vital plot points wrong, you give your opinion so eloquently and with such enthusiasm I give this write-up a hearty thumbs up!

I didn't just watch it, but I recently revisited "The Dark Knight" (2008). Although I don't think it is the fourth best movie ever made, I do think it stands head and shoulders above its super-hero peers, mainly because it is NOT a superhero movie. Batman is a mere mortal with lots of time to train himself physically and money to design the nifty gadgets he uses. SPOILER WARNING if you've been on a desert island and never seen the film. Everybody on earth has seen this film, so no use regurgitating the plot. I think Heath Ledger's rendition of The Joker is a masterpiece. Every time he leaves the screen I keep waiting for him to come back. Ledger really should have won best actor rather than supporting actor, because this is really a two leading man film - Bale as Batman and Ledger as The Joker. I always liked Nicholson's rendition of the Joker in the 89 film, but Ledger just blows his performance away. Maybe it is because Nicholson's Joker had a past and an explanation of his behavior. Ledger's Joker is like the devil decides to become incarnate, but unlike Ray Milland's devil in "Alias Nick Beal" shows his true self - somebody who wants to break the spirits of people, to turn them on one another, to wantonly destroy property, people, whatever. That's reinforced when the police can find no name, no past, no prints, no DNA associated with this guy. His past is a great big question mark.. I like Michael Caine's Alfred - it's good to have someone be more of a wise father figure to Wayne in this role, rather than just a kindly museum piece. Likewise, Morgan Freeman is pitch perfect as Lucius and Wayne's version of Q - somebody who invents his gadgets and runs his business since this really is not where Wayne's mind is. And finally I like the fact that Rachel is not played by someone who is some unrealistic 10.5/10. She's a cute girl, but her attributes lie in her mind and her heart as well. The negatives - I think Harvey's transformation into Two Face iis a little too pat. I don't know why Batman has a totally different voice from Bruce Wayne. Is he doing that on purpose? And I think I found one editing error. Gordon in the end talks about how hard it will be to cover up Harvey/ Two Face's murders including "two cops". Harvey let Ramirez live and just knocked her out. But if she had lived then Gordon and Batman's plan to cover up Harvey's crimes would never have worked because she would have known what happened. So which scene was wrongly included/scripted? I'd recommend it as one of the better films made since the turn of the century that was also a blockbuster.

I wish that TCM would show "Paid in Full" (1950) a rather soap opera-ish film that she made for Paramount. Supposedly TCM now controls distribution of Paramount's classic films, so that would cover everything made from 1950 forward to whatever cutoff date that was agreed upon. I haven't seen it since it was on AMC 15-20 years ago. By the way, October 2 marks 15 years since American Movie Classics became Always More Commercials. How time flies.

You never heard of them because they never leave their basements. Run over to https://www.reddit.com/r/MGTOW/ where they all post. It is truly a disturbing experience to read what they think. Should really be labelled "Men Who Cannot Get a Woman and Blame it All on Women". Of the ten movies, some of the modern ones I did not recognize, but I love Nicholson's line on how he writes about women so well - "I think of a man and take away reason and accountability". Sounds like my husband's first wife. But seriously, isn't George Sanders essentially playing a MGTOW in about half of his films?

PBS' weekend "programming" is a sore spot of mine. Do they really think we are so dumb as to believe Suze Orman is airing an educational program rather than an infomercial? I liked Suze when she was on MSNBC on Saturday nights about 10 years ago. In her early 50s at the time, she was flirting with and smiling at her 30 something rather buff male assistant producer to the point where I thought she was going to slink out of her chair and wrap her legs around him, that is, if he didn't make a run for it. Such is the power of HRT.

"Millions in the Air" (1935) Paramount 6/10 Title : "Millions of plot holes!" I was very surprised to find out this was a Paramount film, because it played out like a B film from one of the smaller studios of the 30s in that it was entertaining, but important plot points seemed to be missing. Plus there were no big stars in it. In fact, this is Robert Cummings' third credited film role and John Howard's fourth! The film is about an heiress, Marion Keller (Wendy Barry), daughter of the owner of the KELLO soap company, who wants a singing career. Her dad is the bellowing bellicose type (George Barbier as Calvin Keller) who wants Marion to marry her obnoxious fiancé Gordon and forget this career nonsense. She lies to dad and says she is auditioning for a society recital. She is actually auditioning for the WOX radio station amateur hour, sponsored by her dad's company. While waiting to audition she meets Eddie Warren, ice cream truck driver (John Howard). Eddie wants the 500 dollar prize money to buy a spot for his ice cream truck in front of the natural history museum, where he will make more money. The two have one of those "lightning strikes" moments when they meet, and then the initial chemistry turns to friendship and then to love. But meanwhile Marion has to hide her identity from Eddie too, claiming to be somebody who works in a dime store and whose father is unemployed. So now Marion is balancing plates on multiple poles. She has to explain all of her absences to her dad and to fiancé Gordon while she is out with Eddie, and she has to pretend to be the plain working girl to Eddie, even having him walk her to a boarding house door that isn't even hers. Of course all of this is going to collide into a situation that makes everybody mad at her, so watch and find out how that happens. Now the story of the heiress who pretends to be a commoner is as old as the hills, but what makes this fun is how it is combined with old time radio. Vying for the radio prize is a guy who thinks he is Houdini but can't escape from anything, and another guy who thinks that just because he is Italian he is destined to sing opera and keeps popping up on stage with poorly done disguises with actual operatic singers. Joan Davis does a comic number decades before Jim Backus could say "I Married Joan" (No, they weren't really married). And who can't find a singing and dancing 7th billed 25 year old Bob Cummings endearing? Those plot holes I was talking about? Somehow in the middle of the film Bob Cummings' character is trying to get the same ice cream truck spot that John Howard's character is trying for, but this is just slipped into conversation and there is no introduction to the topic or Cummings' character at any point. Wendy Barry and John Howard talk about rehearsing together, but their acts started out and remain separate. What are they talking about? And then Barry's character's father and fiancé suddenly just show up at the radio station the night of the contest. How did they find out? This is never mentioned. No, it's not like those poverty row films where things get so involved and unexplained you have to keep rewinding to figure out what just happened, but it causes enough confusion I took a star off of my rating. I'd still recommend it for the nostalgia and fun of it all.

The main reason I would not join the TCM Backlot is that it seems to be an elite group, and you are occasionally required to speak. When I speak before a group I tend to say three words, pass out, and throw up, not necessarily in that order. Now let me defend some of TCM's scheduling choices. I burned to DVD a perfectly beautiful copy of Viennese Nights a few years back from youtube, so I'm not sure what the problem with that is. However, "The Trial of Mary Dugan", Shearer's first talkie, is embroiled in a rights controversy that not only effects that film but the later one made in the 1940s. I think there was even a third made in the 1950s, and it is not able to be broadcast either. As for the Russian Communist regime, I'm pretty sure TCM broadcast "Miss Mend" - a very long movie - at least a couple of times since it was restored. Its length is probably why it has not been shown that much. Battleship Potemkin also gets shown quite a bit, and besides being a landmark film is Soviet propaganda. "His Glorious Night" no longer belongs to MGM, instead the rights were sold to Paramount. So who knows if it even still exists. Paramount managed to let a couple of their very early Oscar winners disintegrate. As for our own bad choices, TCM showed "My Son John" several years back, I think only one time. That makes the U.S. look very bad at the time - sort of like the Commies they were so afraid of. It's sexist even by 1950s standards, very patronizing to menopausal women as though they become children again and need looking after, and insinuate that all good American youth are good looking and athletic while those prone to disloyalty will probably be intellectuals and academics. TCM only showed it once because that film belongs to Republic and TCM has no inherent rights to it.

I liked all but the last 15 minutes of Monterey Pop. It was great for all of the reasons you say. I liked the shots of the crowd. I think I saw a woman carrying a baby around in a homemade tie-dyed backpack of a thing with a peace symbol on it. I wonder whatever happened to that kid, who would be 50 today? Although they only showed shots of the audience smoking cigarettes, I'm sure from the dilated pupils some were on stronger stuff than that. What I absolutely did not like and would take 2 to 3 stars out of ten off of any review would be Ravi Shankar's prolonged performance. It went on for at least 15 minutes. At about 10 minutes into his performance it seemed like he was winding down and the audience clapped. I would have been clapping because maybe he was going to STOP! So maybe I'm just not culturally well rounded, but I just think his music makes "Horse with No Name" sound like Mozart. And it's just not the old me - I was 9 when this film came out. When George Harrison did his benefit for Bangladesh back in 1972, when I was 14, it was being broadcast on the radio. It started with a proloooooonged version of Ravi Shankar's music. After what seemed an eternity I turned off the broadcast and did something else. And that was in the day when the only way to hear the Beatles was either a radio or a big round piece of vinyl. Now I shall wait for one particular commenter who always likes to come around and call me stupid when I make these kinds of comments and wait for her to do just that. But don't you criticize her! She'll have your posts taken down, I mean, how DARE you criticize her. I live in the DC area. I'm used to people who behave like that. Sorry for getting OT in the last paragraph.

I'm disappointed that Lana Turner is SOTM. She is just so bland to me. In her early MGMs she just went around looking doe-eyed and beautiful, and as she aged she just got this hard edge to her performances that did not interest me. I realize TCM usually picks crowd pleasers for December SOTM whose catalog of films they largely have in their library already. Past December choices have been William Powell, Mickey Rooney, and Barbara Stanwyck, for example. I realize that Lana fits that bill with so much of her career being at MGM, but except for a few rarities I may not have seen I'm going to sit these pics out.

I can think of several. The first is a very old one - "Honey" (1930) with Nancy Carroll and Zazu Pitts. The thing is just so boring. It is an adaptation of a stage play and it looks like one - very static. It even manages to make Zazu Pitts boring. How exactly do you do that? And don't think it is a technology limitation of early sound, because I am a real lover of the early talkies, even the ones that are so bad that they are good to the point of being endearing - think Lights of New York here. The next would be Independence Day (1996). It takes inane dialogue to new heights. When Bill Pullman as the president speaks, his oratory sounds like a third grader wrote it. He makes Donald Trump look like Shakespeare. In fact 90% of the dialogue sounds flat and Ed Woodish. Judd Hirsch as Jeff Goldblum's dad is the worst Jewish stereotype I've seen in modern times. Brent Spiner as the Ph.D, likewise, is the worst stereotype of a nerd I've ever seen. I can only figure he owed the IRS some money. Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum are the only two players who make it remotely watchable, and then it is only the scenes they are in, separately and together. I can only figure they took the dialogue they were given, threw it in the trash, and decided to improvise.

If you want to see a whodunnit where you know whodunnit but none of the principals do, then try "Under Cover of Night tomorrow. I recorded this over six years ago and it hasn't played since. The oddest scene - Lowe as a detective, Nat Pendleton as the same kind of thick cop he played in The Thin Man, and the wrongly accused suspect sit around in a sauna airing out their pores trying to figure out this whole mess of a mystery. It's MGM, so I can't figure out why so many years between runs for this one on TCM.

If you broaden the definition of Cagney's roles from pure gangster to "mug" then you have just about all of his precodes and some of the ones afterwards. Cagney got so tired of playing a "mug" that in "Jimmy The Gent" he had his hair cut short and a scar painted on his head. The first shot you see of him in the film is of the back of his head with that ugly fake scar. Cagney's sentiment - after being so tired of playing variations of the same kind of character - was "If they (WB) wants a mug I'll give them a mug!".