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My purpose is to express what I think and how I feel about movies. What's yours? Do you have a fundamental need for everyone to share the same reaction to them as you? So I don't think very many studio-era movies hold up very well. So what? Is your insistence that they do any less - as you put it, pointless - than my opinion that they don't? Please learn how to take disagreement without questioning another member's motives. We're all equally free to post our thoughts here.

At least people talk like real people rather than cartoon caricatures or memorized stage soliloquists.

If they hold up for you, that's wonderful for you. The number that are still relatable to me would be probably fewer than 2 percent. I grew up with them, but realized very young what nonsense most of them were. My buddies all liked John Wayne movies. Even as a child, those bored the hell out of me. Same with Gable, Flynn, Ladd and pretty much all those pretend "actors". And the happy ending, crime never pays, men have al the patience in the world for listening to long, long speeches from their oh so earnest love interests productions were never convincing to me at all. I never saw anyone in real life act or speak like people in movies. My dumb-a$$ friends might've thought it was all good, but I longed for some truth - something interesting. Lon Chaney Junior, for all the low-budget shlock he was forced to be in to make his living, had more natural acting talent in him than all those carefully manufactured studio one-noted macho men put together.

The "Golden Age of Hollywood" is so-called that because it represents a period of time when the industry was at its most powerful in terms of talent contracts and exhibition policy, while being overseen by Conservative social-engineering watchdogs who decided for everyone what was permissible as subject matter or "message" content. It also represents an industry still in its childhood, producing stagey-acted stories that were "bigger than life". That's why they don't hold up - dialogue is spoken too quickly, too loudly, too articulately perfect for belief. There's no blood, no intimacy, no cussing, no realness - and anybody who would actually speak in real life the way a Bogart or Cagney speaks in movies would've been laughed off the street and/or had their a$$es kicked with regularity. People today recognize that silly affected nonsense for what it is - phony. Once movie-makers were allowed to start making movies that represented actual truths of living, then the long-stunted childhood ended. And "The Golden Age of Hollywood" came to its very welcome end - to be replaced by The (Choose Your Element) Age of Cinema.

Movie of the week. Each of the 3 networks had at least one per week.

That's how I react to 98 percent of so-called "Golden Age of Holywood" productions. Phony boring nonsense for yesterday's children. I'm eternally grateful to the Supreme Court for finally allowing movie-making to grow up.

Never cared much for the Marlowe character. Always seemed phony - made up nonsense (like the bullsh!t movies of John Wayne). Hollywood product for a Conservative-indoctrinated audience. 'The Long Goodbye' is exceptional, though. Loved that update - far and away my favorite Marlowe.

Cold Comfort (1989). A strange one. Almost hypnotic - you can't stop watching. Maury Chaykin is a loser with a teenage daughter living out on the frozen plains, miles from town where he's constantly getting in trouble with local law for taking tow jobs without a license. A traveler, played by handsome Paul Gross (Due South), breaks down close to the house and becomes a kind of prisoner of Chaykin - who is at first seemingly harmless and helpful, but who turns out to be one very weird and scary dude. Like I said, it's a strange one - but I watched it a few times when it was on pay-tv - and I'd give anything to get a copy of it now. Well, not anything - but you know what I mean.

Regarding David Cronenberg - 'A History of Violence' (2005) is one helluva movie. Maria Bello and Viggo Mortensen give amazing performances with some notable support from Ed Harris and Wiliam Hurt. Highly recommended movie. I've already watched it 5 times (counting twice with commentary) and I'm nowhere near tired of it yet.

Especially in this community - one that's so dedicated to old movies of the 30's, 40's and 50's. Canadian movies didn't even really start until 1970. There were some from before that date, but they were few, far between and unheralded. It was Shebib's seminal 'Goin' Down the Road' that proved a Canadian movie could garner an audience and make money, and the industry up here was truly born as a result - albeit to grow slowly. This does discount Quebec, of course. That province had had a regional industry for a decade already - but unless they were dubbed into English, they were strictly for an in-province audience back then. What did manage to get played in English speaking provinces - dubbed - were usually soft core sex-themed films of the 60's. So, with the industry being virtually non-existent to both Americans and English speaking Canadians prior to 1970, it's absolutely true that there's little chance of most Americans being aware of these Canadian titles. 'Black Christmas' (1974) notwithstanding.

Not bad, Holden. Hope you don't mind me saying how much it reminds me of the Barenaked Ladies song style.

'Quest for Fire' (1981) is brilliant! I've seen it a dozen times and it always touches me. Rae Dawn Chong is absolutely wonderful in this - as are the 3 male leads (Everett McGill, Ron Perlman, Nicholas Kadi). While there's not a single piece of modern language spoken anywhere in the movie, there is never any doubt as to what is being expressed in the languages that Anthony Burgess invented for the film. Every human being on earth should watch this movie at least twice. Any adult who claims there's nothing relatable in it needs to seriously examine their soul.

Ralph Thomas' 'Ticket to Heaven' (1981) is a very fine movie - probably the best feature film ever made using the 70's phenomenon of "moonie" type brainwashing cults as its base. Truly standout performances are the norm in this remarkable film - Nick Mancuso, a teacher who is lured into the cult after his longtime girlfriend breaks up with him. Mancuso has never been able to do anything better than he did with this role; Saul Rubinek as his best friend who learns that something is very wrong when he receives an interrupted phone call; Meg Foster as a thoroughly chilling leader in the cult; Guy Boyd as a delightfully "immune" searcher, looking for his sister; R.H. Thomson as a bracing, no-nonsense de-programmer; Robert Joy as a thoroughly brainwashed (and abusive) member; and Kim Cattrall is amazing (the energy!) as the manipulative bait that draws guys in. Speaking of Cattrall, I also like Bob Clark's 'Porky's' (1982) very much. Helluva entertaining movie. I can just hear Kim howling now.

Vic Morrow alert! He seems to have a couple of rabid fans within this community, so..... 'Treasure of Matecumbe' is scheduled on Thursday.

Don Shebib's 'Goin' Down the Road' (1970). Simple and perfect in its depiction of two east coasters coming to The Big Smoke in the late 60's. A movie about cultural shock and survival. As realistic a movie as I'd ever seen back in 1970. Also, Don Shebib's 'Rip Off' (1971). A funny and touching movie about a group of high school buddies, one of whom (Don Scardino) inherits a piece of land way up north from his grandfather. He and his friends, who are not popular kids, get the idea that they should set up a "commune" on the property. When word gets around the high school about it, the kid with the land is suddenly considered very cool. The four friends take a road trip to check out the property and ready it for the urban hippie kids they envision will be coming to it. The movie also stars a young actor by the name of Peter Gross, who became a celebrity in Toronto many years later when he became a tv reporter/anchor on the CITY-TV station. Again, realism is just spot on. Shebib's movies have a genuineness to them. I feel I've lived and observed in real life what is depicted on the screen.

Good one, DGF. What I've been finding with so much of today's "hits" and popular acts is such a lack of lyrics. Seems so much of the time the writer comes up with one line - maybe two - and it's just repeated over and over for 4 and a half minutes. Melodies have been pretty much used up now as well, so unless you're into watching chicks show all of their legs, there's really very little happening musically anymore. Yet, apparently it sells to the young. I really miss the days when songwriters had some gift for actually writing a full song.

I don't consider movies made for cable - like HBO - to be the same as movies made for tv. Movies made for tv were from approx 1964-1989. Then, for all intents and purposes, the networks discontinued producing "movies" as they found they were at too great a content disadvantage against premium channels like HBO, Showtime, etc. Those premium producers, in addition to having far greater freedom of content, could create movies that did not have to be edited with commercial breaks in mind and are therefore legitimate movies - no different than theatrically run movies. I consider made for tv movies legitimate as well, but the commercial interruption consideration does make them uniquely identifiable. The puritanical standards that ruled the airwaves for so long have turned out to be one of the primary causes of network contraction.

Oh, what the hell. Gotta add this one - the very first recording of Webb's 'By the Time I Get to Phoenix'.

Oh, man - when I get goin' on Johnny Rivers, it's hard to stop. Here's one more Webb song from Rivers' 'Rewind'. This one became a hit single later on for Al Wilson. Webb owes enormous gratitude to Johnny Rivers for showcasing all this stuff.

Here's another Webb song that Johnny placed on his 'Rewind' album. The group 'The Fifth Dimension' took it the following year and had a hit single with it.

Jimmy Webb is a songwriter who meant quite a lot to me in the mid to late 60's. It was rock star Johnny Rivers who discovered him. Webb had written a bittersweet ballad called 'By the Time I Get to Phoenix' in 1964 and it was Rivers who finally recorded it two years later - the first artist to record a Webb song - and placed it on his 1966 album 'Changes'. Rivers' rendition of the song became a modest hit, but it was Glen Campbell's version that hit biggest some 18 months later. Webb was just what Rivers was looking for in '66, as Rivers was making a big change from his previous roots rock style to more of a ballad singer. He liked Webb's unrecorded catalogue of songs so much, he devoted nearly an entire album to them - the album was called 'Rewind' in early 1967. Here's my own particular favorite Webb song from that album. Really spoke to the lovesick 16 year old me.

I've used that expression numerous times over the decades. Used it about a month ago. I believe it came about as an alternative to "belly up" - which meant being dead.

I still see sun dresses (yum). No straw hats, though.

In a Simpsons Halloween episode in which the haunted house the family is living in envelops itself out of existence, Homer goes "wow" and Bart exclaims "bitchin'" just as it finishes happening. Great to see the expression being kept alive.