CelluloidKid
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Posts posted by CelluloidKid
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Richard Widmark's only film I ever liked him in was W./Marilyn Monroe In "Don't Bother to Knock"!
Alan Ladd was only good when he teamed W./Veronica Lake!
Jean Harlow....gone too soon! It would have been interesting too see what she could have done if she lived past her 20's!
Sharon Tate...another gone to soon...lover her in "The Fearless Vampire Killers & Valley of the Dolls", "Don't Make Waves as well as "Eye of the Devil"!
Susan Hayward...Another actress that was very good, but I can only handle her in small doses.
(I love her line in "Valley of the Dolls"..."im tired and busy what do you want!?!"! LOL!
Agnes Moorehead ...loved her in "Hush? Hush, Sweet Charlotte"...
Mercedes McCambridge ..loved her voice...
Jack Buetel .....very good as Billy the Kid in "The Outlaw"..he could have gone far if Howard Hughes had not ruined his career!
Jessica Lang...(We can forgive her for the monkey movie!)...watching her gives me a nose bleed...any of her performances are brave and fearless!
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Earle H. Hagen, Emmy-winning composer of some of the most familiar musical themes in television history, died of natural causes May 26 in Rancho Mirage, California. He was 88.
Hagen wrote the popular themes for "The Andy Griffith Show," "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "The Danny Thomas Show," "I Spy," "That Girl," "The Mod Squad," "Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer" and many more. He composed music for more than 3,000 individual shows during his TV career, which began in 1953 and lasted more than three decades.
He was also active in the film business, mostly as an arranger and orchestrator for 20th Century-Fox in the late '40s and early '50s. He received an Oscar nomination (shared with Lionel Newman) as musical director for the 1960 Marilyn Monroe film "Let's Make Love."
Born in Chicago, Hagen moved to L.A. as a child and began playing the trombone while in junior high school. By the age of 16, he was on the road playing with big bands that eventually included those of Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey.
It was while he was with Ray Noble's band in 1939 that he wrote "Harlem Nocturne," which became a jazz standard (recorded by Glenn Miller, Charlie Barnet and others) and became Stacy Keach's "Mike Hammer" theme more than 40 years later.
Hagen gave up playing and became a full-time arranger during his wartime stint as part of the Army Air Forces' Radio Production Unit in Santa Ana, Calif. After the war, he continued to arrange for popular singers including Frank Sinatra, Tony Martin, Dick Haymes and Frances Langford.
In 1946, Hagen accepted a contract offer from 20th Century-Fox music director Alfred Newman. There he contributed orchestrations and arrangements to dozens of films including such musicals as "With a Song in My Heart," "Call Me Madam," "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and "There's No Business Like Show Business."
Hagen left Fox in 1952 and formed a partnership with fellow arranger Herbert Spencer. Together, they scored "Make Room for Daddy" (later retitled "The Danny Thomas Show"), "The Ray Bolger Show" and other series; the partnership broke up in 1960.
Hagen became television's leading composer of the 1960s and 1970s. His other series included "Gomer Pyle, USMC," "Mayberry RFD," "The Bill Dana Show," "The Guns of Will Sonnett" and "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman." He contributed music to (but did not write the themes for) such other shows as "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis," "Eight Is Enough" and "The Dukes of Hazzard."
Three of Hagen's four Emmy nominations were for Hagen's colorful, jazzy music for the Robert Culp-Bill Cosby adventure series "I Spy." Hagen won for a third-season episode and also produced two albums of music from the series.
His final work for television was on the "Mike Hammer" series and the "Andy Griffith Show" reunion movie "Return to Mayberry" in 1986.
Hagen wrote three books: "Scoring for Films," which for many years was the only available textbook on how to handle the technical aspects of writing music for movies, published in 1971; another text, "Advanced Techniques for Film Scoring," in 1990; and an autobiography, "Memoirs of a Famous Composer (Nobody Ever Heard Of)" in 2002. After his retirement, Hagen taught the BMI Film Scoring Workshop for several years in the '80s and '90s.
Hagen's wife of 59 years, the former Elouise Sidwell, died in 2002. Survivors include his second wife, the former Laura Roberts; two sons, three stepchildren and four grandchildren.
Donations may be made to the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation, www.mhopus.org.
Thanks,
Variety!
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Joseph Pevney (1911-2008) - Director, Actor - Directed James Cagney as Lon Chaney in "Man of a Thousand Faces", Boris Karloff in "The Strange Door", Debbie Reynolds in "Tammy and the Bachelor", Frank Sinatra in "Meet Danny Wilson", Joan Crawford in "Female on the Beach", Martin and Lewis in "3 Ring Circus", which he also co-wrote, and Rock Hudson in "Back to God's Country", "Shakedown", "Air Cadet", 1951's "Iron Man" and "Twilight for the Gods". Beginning in the '60s, he mostly directed for television, including a number of episodes of Star Trek. Prior to directing, he acted in films noir of the '40s, including Robert Rossen's Body and Soul and Jules Dassin's Thieves' Highway. He died May 24 in Palm Desert, California. (The Desert Sun)
Directed by Joseph Pevney!
Sydney Pollack (1934-2008) - Oscar-winning Director, Producer, Actor - Won two Academy Awards for directing and producing Out of Africa and was nominated for directing and producing Tootsie and for directing They Shoot Horses, Don't They and for producing Michael Clayton
Del Ankers (1916-2008) - Cinematographer, Photographer - Shot the early Jim Henson shorts Wilson's Meats Meeting Film #1 and Wilson's Meats Meeting Film #2 and appears as himself in the former. He also shot Henson's actual Wilson's Meats commercials. He died May 15 in Great Falls, Virginia. (Washington Post)
Irma C?rdoba (1913-2008) - Actress - Argentine star of the '30s and '40s who appears in many films directed by Manuel Romero, including Buenos Aires Nights, Fuera de la ley (Outside the Law) and A Light in the Window. She also co-starred in the 1996 biopic Eva Per?n, which was Argentina's answer to the Madonna-starred Evita. She died May 18 in Buenos Aires. (Tvpolemica)
Bob Florence (1932-2008) - Band Leader, Jazz Arranger, Pianist - Orchestrated music for The Wiz and arranged music for Sharky's Machine and Sebastian. He died May 15 in Thousand Oaks, California. (Washington Post)
Earle H. Hagen (1919-2008) - Composer - Oscar-nominated for co-composing the score for" Let's Make Love" (with Lionel Newman). He also orchestrated music for: "Carousel", "Gentleman Prefer Blondes", "Monkey Business", "Don't Bother to Knock", "There's No Business Like Show Business", "Thieves' Highway" and "Nightmare Alley", among many other films. He died May 26 in Rancho Mirage, California. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Huntington Hartford (1911-2008) - Producer - Formerly one of the richest men in the world, he was heir to The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (aka A&P Supermarkets) fortune. He also was the original owner of Paradise Island in the Bahamas, and so he served as producer of the Paradise Island sequences in the 007 movie" Thunderball". He also produced the Abbot and Costello feature "Africa Screams" and James Whale's short film" Hello Out There". He appears in Brian DePalma's 1966 documentary short "The Responsive Eye". He died May 19 in Lyford Cay, New Providence Island, Bahamas. (NY Times)
Robert Knox (c.1990-2008) - Actor - Appears in this fall's "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince".
Zekial Marko (c.1934-2008) - Novelist, Screenwriter, Actor - Authored the novels Scratch a Thief and The Big Grab, which were turned into the movies Once a Thief and Any Number Can Win, respectively. Both films starred Alain Delon. He died of complications related to emphysema May 9, in Centralia, Washington. (Variety)
Dick Martin (1922-2008) - Actor, Comedian - Best known for co-hosting TV's Laugh-In with Dan Rowan. He appears in The Glass Bottom Boat, Carbon Copy, Air Bud: Golden Receiver, Father's Little Dividend and the 2001 version of Bartleby. He died of respiratory complications May 24, in Santa Monica, California. (AP)
Robert Mondavi (1913-2008) - Winemaker - Appears as himself in the 2004 wine documentary "Mondovino". He died May 16 in Yountville, California. (AP)
Lawrence Roman (c.1922-2008) - Playwright, Screenwriter - Wrote the play "Under the Yum Yum Tree," which became a movie starring Jack Lemmon in 1963. He also wrote the screenplays for "Red Sun", "A Kiss Before Dying", "Paper Lion" and "McQ", which he also co-produced. He died from a stroke complicated by kidney failure May 26, in Woodland Hills, California. (LA Times)
Michael Rossman (1939-2008) - Activist, Author - Helped organize the Free Speech Movement in the '60s. He appears as himself in the Oscar-nominated documentary "Berkeley in the Sixties". He died May 12 in Berkeley, California. (NY Times)
Jimmy Slyde (1927-2008) - Tap dancer, Actor - Appears in The Cotton Club, Tap and 'Round Midnight. He died May 16 in Hanson, Massachussetts. (NY Times)
Yue Wong (1955-2008) - Actor - Co-starred in Hong Kong martial arts films, including The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (aka Shaolin Master Killer), Enter the 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Invincible Pole Fighter, Dirty Ho, Executioners of Death (aka Shaolin Executioners) and The Flying Guillotine. He also appears in Stanley Kwan's Rouge. He died of viral hepatitis May 17, in Hong Kong. (IMDb)
Thanks,
Cinematical
May 27th 2008
By Christopher Campbell
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Fred MacMurray .,..He can say Baby.
Marilyn Monroe...The stuck in the Porthole scene in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes".....LOL!..Crazy!
Eve Arden
George Raft
Jane Russell
...I have more ....give me some time...
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Per Cinematical.com
R.I.P., Sydney Pollack, Dead at 73
Posted May 26th 2008
By Eric D. Snider
Oscar-winning director and occasional actor Sydney Pollack died of stomach cancer on Monday at the age of 73. The New York Times has a fairly astute and comprehensive obituary that details his achievements behind the camera, which include The Way We Were, Absence of Malice, Tootsie, and The Firm. He was nominated for three directing Oscars, winning for Out of Africa, and directed a dozen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances.
To me, it seems like Pollack never quite got his due. Despite the majority of his films being above-average in quality (and at least one, Tootsie, being a genuine classic), he was rarely mentioned in the same breath as the other 1970s and '80s powerhouse filmmakers. Maybe he wasn't prolific enough: In a 40-year theatrical career he made just 21 films, and only a few were major box-office blockbusters.
People liked him, though. I know I did. His frequent supporting roles (sometimes in his own films) gave moviegoers a face to go with the name, and he always came across as a friendly, knowledgeable man, the kind of guy you could chat with. (It's a pity his final onscreen performance was in the wretched Made of Honor. Then again, Orson Welles' last film was the 1985 Transformers movie, so Pollack's in good company.)
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Cnn.com/Entertainment
Director Sydney Pollack dies of cancer
Story Highlights:
Academy Award winning director was 73
He died at his home in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, his agent says
"Sydney made the world a little better," says actor George Clooney
His most notable film was "Out of Africa," which won two Oscars
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Academy Award-winning director Sydney Pollack, who achieved commercial and critical success with the gender-bending comedy "Tootsie" and the period drama "Out of Africa, has died. He was 73.
Pollack died of cancer Monday afternoon at his home in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, surrounded by family, said agent Leslee Dart. He had been diagnosed with cancer about nine months ago, said Dart.
Pollack, who often appeared on the screen himself, worked with and gained the respect of Hollywood's best actors in a long career that reached prominence in the 1970s and 1980s.
"Sydney made the world a little better, movies a little better and even dinner a little better. A tip of the hat to a class act," actor George Clooney said in a statement issued by his publicist.
"He'll be missed terribly," Clooney said.
Last fall, Pollack played Marty Bach opposite Clooney in "Michael Clayton," a drama that examines the life of a fixer for lawyers. The film, which Pollack co-produced, received seven Oscar nominations, including best picture and a best actor nod for Clooney.
Pollack was no stranger to the Academy Awards. In 1986, "Out of Africa" a romantic epic of a woman's passion set against the landscape of colonial Kenya, captured seven Oscars, including best director.
Over the years, several of his other films, including "Tootsie" and "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" got several nominations, including best director nods.
Pollack's last screen appearance was in "Made of Honor," a romantic comedy currently in theaters, where he played the oft-married father of star Patrick Dempsey's character.
In recent years, Pollack produced many independent films with filmmaker Anthony Minghella and the production company Mirage Enterprises.
The Lafayette, Indiana, native was born to first-generation Russian-Americans.
In high school, he fell in love with theater, a passion that prompted him to forgo college and move to New York and enroll in the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater.
"We started together in New York and he always excelled at everything he set out to do, his friendships and his humanity as much as his talents," Martin Landau, a longtime close friend of Pollack's and an associate from the Actor's Studio, said through spokesman Dick Guttman.
Studying under Sanford Meisner, Pollack spent several years cutting his teeth in various areas of theater, eventually becoming Meisner's assistant.
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This 1927 Palm Springs house was actor Cary Grant's personal hideaway for more than 20 years, starting in the 1950s. It's on the market for $4,995,000.
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I didn't know you own the boards!?
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Favorite Actors/Actresses of :
Christian Bale, Kate Winslet, Sidney Poitier, Toni Collette, Ewan McGregor, Julianne Moore, Russell Crowe, Sharon Stone, Annette Benning, Daniel Craig, Joaquin Phoenix, Michael Douglas, Ed Harris, Terrence Howard, Bruce Campbell, Kevin Spacey, Kathleen Turner, Steve McQueen, Sigourney Weaver, Catherine Denuve, Julia Roberts, Faye Dunaway, Burt Rynolds, Jack Lemmon, Jason Statham.
Favorite Actors/Actresses (Golden Age of Hollywood):
Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, Grace Kelly, Bela Lugosi, Marilyn Monroe, Vincent Price, Bette Davis, Deborah Kerr, Rita Hayworth, Rudolph Valentino, Burt Lancaster, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Richard Burton, Robert Mitchum, James Stewart, Elsa Lanchester, Norma Shearer, Gene Kelly.
Some stars I love for example, Jack Lemmon made films from the 50's & on up, so it's hard to classify Golden Age of Hollywood or not!
Joan Crawford...I'm just mad for Crawford (No pun there)....
Audrey Hepburn..My mother was big into Hepburn, so I owe my passion for her to my mom!
Rita Hayworth...breathless.....(If I'd been a ranch, they would have named me The Bar None!)
Elsa Lanchester...she is so much fun to watch...
Gene Kelly...would love to have had the chance to dance with him....
Vincent Price.....Very interesting actor...I think he missed his calling as a funeral director ..LOL...my mother met him when he came to Arizona in the late 80's to sign 1 of his cookbooks...yes he wrote cookbooks,,,who knew!!!
Catherine Denuve...she is the reason I learned to speak French..."The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" her best film...I cry everytime I get to the ending!!
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RIP ..THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES!
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I always liked Suzanne Pleshette in "The Birds"!!
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Creepy!!!!!
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Another actress that I can't stand is Sophia Loren! I never thought she could act! I was flipping through the Encore channels and came across "Legend of the Lost" W./both John Wayne and Sophia Loren...I have seen this film at least once or twice through the years, & even today 2008 it's godawful laughable! I wish both had gotton lost in the desert or found an acting couch on there quest!
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Academy Award-winning director Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay who achieved commercial success and critical acclaim with the gender-bending comedy "Tootsie" and the period drama "Out of Africa, has died. He was 73.
Pollack died of cancer Monday afternoon at his home in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, surrounded by family, said agent Leslee Dart. He had been diagnosed with cancer about nine months ago, said Dart.
Pollack, who occasionally appeared on the screen himself, worked with and gained the respect of Hollywood's best actors in a long career that reached prominence in the 1970s and 1980s.
"Sydney made the world a little better, movies a little better and even dinner a little better. A tip of the hat to a class act," actor George Clooney said in a statement issued by his publicist.
"He'll be missed terribly," Clooney said.
Last fall, Pollack played Marty Bach opposite Clooney in "Michael Clayton," a drama that examines the life of fixer for lawyers. The film, which Pollack co-produced, received seven Oscar nominations, including best picture and a best actor nod for Clooney.
Pollack was no stranger to the Academy Awards. In 1986, "Out of Africa" a romantic epic of a woman's passion set against the landscape of colonial Kenya, captured seven Oscars, including best director.
Over the years, several of his other films, including "Tootsie" and "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" got several nominations, including best director nods.
Pollack's last screen appearance was in "Made of Honor," a romantic comedy currently in theaters, where he played the oft-married father of star Patrick Dempsey's character.
In recent years, Pollack produced many independent films with filmmaker Anthony Minghella and a production company Mirage Enterprises.
The Lafayette, Ind. native was born to first-generation Russian-Americans.
In high school, he fell in love with theater, a passion that prompted him forego college and move to New York and enroll in the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater.
"We started together in New York and he always excelled at everything he set out to do, his friendships and his humanity as much as his talents," Martin Landau, a longtime close friend of Pollack's and an associate from the Actor's Studio, said through spokesman Dick Guttman.
Studying under Sanford Meisner, Pollack spent several years cutting his teeth in various areas of theater, eventually becoming Meisner's assistant.
After appearing in a handful of Broadway productions in the 1950s, Pollack turned his eye to directing, where he would ultimately leave his biggest mark. But Pollack, who stood over six feet tall and had a striking presence on the screen, never totally gave up acting.
At the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival, Pollack said "Tootsie" star Dustin Hoffman pushed him into playing the actor's exasperated agent.
Pollack said Hoffman repeatedly sent him roses with a note reading, "Please be my agent. Love, Dorothy," -- a reference to the lead character's female persona, Dorothy Michaels. At that point, Pollack hadn't acted in 20 years.
"Most of the great directors that I know of were not actors, so I can't tell you it's a requirement," he said. "On the other hand, it's an enormous help."
In the 1982 movie, Hoffman plays an out-of-work actor who pretends to be a woman to land a role on a soap opera.
"I didn't think anyone would believe him as a woman," Pollack said. "But the world did, they went crazy."
Pollack is survived by his wife, Claire; two daughters, Rebecca and Rachel; his brother Bernie; and six grandchildren.
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I can't stand Laura Dern, there is just something that bugs me about her! I always wanted a dinosaur to eat her in "Jurassic Park"! "Blue Velvet" is mabey...mabey the 1 film I can handle watching with her init!!
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Out of all the actors past and present ..I can't stand both ..are both Ms. Hepburn & John Wayne ..and that film they did together "Rooster Cogburn"....man I need to take some antacid to make it through the 1st 30 minutes...I don't think I even made it to the end!! LOL!!
The only film that I can even stand W./John is "Reunion in France" since Joan Crawford is in it!!But still " Reunion in France" is a silly little film, but damn Joan looks smashing in gowns by Adrian!!
"The Conqueror" had to be the WORST film of his career! John Wayne as the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan just makes me giggle everytime I tried to watch it!!
I always thought it was funny that John Wayne's real name was Marion Robert Morrison!
Can you imagine going up to him and say "Hello Marion"!!!?? ROFL!
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Story Highlights:
Comedian Dick Martin dies of respiratory complications
Martin known for co-hosting "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In"
After "Laugh-In," Martin became director, working on several TV shows.
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Dick Martin, the zany half of the comedy team whose "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" took television by storm in the 1960s, making stars of Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin and creating such national catch-phrases as "Sock it to me!" has died. He was 86.
Martin, who went on to become one of television's busiest directors after splitting with Dan Rowan in the late 1970s, died Saturday night of respiratory complications at a hospital in Santa Monica, family spokesman Barry Greenberg said.
"He had had some pretty severe respiratory problems for many years, and he had pretty much stopped breathing a week ago," Greenberg said.
Martin had lost the use of one of his lungs as a teenager, and needed supplemental oxygen for most of the day in his later years.
He was surrounded by family and friends when he died just after 6 p.m., Greenberg said.
"Laugh-in," which debuted in January 1968, was unlike any comedy-variety show before it. Rather than relying on a series of tightly scripted song-and-dance segments, it offered up a steady, almost stream-of-consciousness run of non-sequitur jokes, political satire and madhouse antics from a cast of talented young actors and comedians that also included Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson, Henry Gibson, Jo Anne Worley and announcer Gary Owens.
Presiding over it all were Rowan and Martin, the veteran nightclub comics whose standup banter put their own distinct spin on the show.
Like all straight men, Rowan provided the voice of reason, striving to correct his partner's absurdities. Martin, meanwhile, was full of bogus, often risque theories about life, which he appeared to hold with unwavering certainty.
Against this backdrop, audiences were taken from scene to scene by quick, sometimes psychedelic-looking visual cuts, where they might see Hawn, Worley and other women dancing in bathing suits with political slogans, or sometimes just nonsense, painted on their bodies. Other times, Gibson, clutching a flower, would recite nonsensical poetry or Johnson would impersonate a comical Nazi spy.
"Laugh-In" astounded audiences and critics alike. For two years, the show topped the Nielsen ratings, and its catchphrases-- "Sock it to me," "You bet your sweet bippy" and "Look that up in your Funk and Wagnall's" -- were recited across the country.
Stars such as John Wayne and Kirk Douglas were delighted to make brief appearances, and even Richard Nixon, running for president in 1968, dropped in to shout a befuddled sounding, "Sock it to me!" His opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, was offered equal time but declined because his handlers thought it would appear undignified.
Rowan and Martin landed the show just as their comedy partnership was approaching its zenith and the nation's counterculture was expanding into the mainstream.
The two were both struggling actors when they met in 1952. Rowan had sold his interest in a used car dealership to take acting lessons, and Martin, who had written gags for TV shows and comedians, was tending bar in Los Angeles to pay the rent.
Rowan, hearing Martin was looking for a comedy partner, visited him at the bar, where he found him eating a banana.
"Why are you eating a banana?" he asked.
"If you've ever eaten here, you'd know what's with the banana," he replied, and a comedy team was born.
Although their early gigs in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley were often performed gratis, they donned tuxedos for them and put on an air of success.
"We were raw," Martin recalled years later, "but we looked good together and we were funny."
They gradually worked up to the top night spots in New York, Miami and Las Vegas and began to appear regularly on television.
In 1966, they provided the summer replacement for "The Dean Martin Show." Within two years, they were headlining their own show.
The novelty of "Laugh-In" diminished with each season, however, and as major players such as Hawn and Tomlin moved on to bigger careers, interest in the series faded.
After the show folded in 1973, Rowan and Martin capitalized on their fame with a series of high-paid engagements around the country. They parted amicably in 1977.
"Dan has diabetes, and his doctor advised him to cool it," Martin told The Associated Press at the time.
Rowan, a sailing enthusiast, spent his last years touring the canals of Europe on a houseboat. He died in 1987.
Martin moved onto the game-show circuit, but quickly tired of it. After he complained about the lack of challenges in his career, fellow comic Bob Newhart's agent suggested he take up directing.
He was reluctant at first, but after observing on "The Bob Newhart Show," he decided to try. He would recall later that it was "like being thrown into the deep end of the swimming pool and being told to sink or swim."
Soon he was one of the industry's busiest TV directors, working on numerous episodes of "Newhart" as well as such shows as "In the Heat of the Night," "Archie Bunker's Place" and "Family Ties."
Born into a middle-class family in Battle Creek, Mich., Martin had worked in a Ford auto assembly plant after high school.
After an early failed marriage, he was, for years, a confirmed bachelor. He finally settled down in middle age, marrying Dolly Read, a former bunny at the Playboy Club in London. Survivors include his wife and two sons, actor Richard Martin and Cary Martin.
At Martin's request, there will be no funeral, Greenberg said.
Martin lost the use of his right lung when he was 17, something that never bothered him until his final years, when he required oxygen 18 hours a day.
Arriving for a party celebrating his 80th birthday, he fainted and was treated by doctors and paramedics. The party continued, however, and he cracked, "Boy, did I make an entrance!"
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I liked "The Mortal Storm", this was the 1st time I got to see it. For a film made before the American entry into the Second World War, it really took alot of chances.
There are two things about The Mortal Storm" make it unusual. First, it comes from MGM, primarily known as the studio that produced glossy technicolor musicals. Secondly, the entire cast have roles that are unusual for their persona.
Very brutal and honest. A must see filmfor everyone!
Then ending was shocking!
"The Mortal Storm" infuriated the Nazi government and it led to all MGM films being banned in Germany, which was a large market for American films at the time.
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Found this on Cinematical...thought I would share...
'Star' to be born in new light.
Warner Bros. restoring George Cukor's 1954 film
By Carolyn Giardina
May 23, 2008
Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging is restoring George Cukor's 1954 "A Star Is Born" in 6K resolution.
The film, starring Judy Garland and James Mason, is believed to be the first restoration project where the scanning, restoration work and mastering will be completed at that resolution.
Digital film restoration is most commonly accomplished at 2K, though an increasing number have been using 4K. A 4K file contains four times as much picture information -- measured in pixels -- as a 2K file, and 6K contains 2 1/4 times as much as a 4K file.
Ned Price, vp mastering, Warner Bros. Technical Operations, said that the facility's reason to go to higher resolution was because "The original camera negative contains more information than 2K, though 2K is today's typical display resolution. But we anticipate higher display resolution in the future. So we are attempting to preserve the asset, rather than just create an element for exhibition."
The key goal of the project is preservation, but the restored version of the film will also eventually be released on Blu-ray Disc and standard DVD.
"There has been photochemical work done on this particular title, but with new digital tools we are able to retrieve the original color balance of the faded negative in a way that we could not reproduce photochemically," Price said. "We made film preservation elements since the film had differential fading, meaning ... the edges of the film had more oxygen and deteriorated quicker. By scanning it, we're able to get a completely flat field of color."
Numerous restoration industry leaders share the belief that the community needs to step up to a resolution higher than 2K for restoration and preservation. Still, opinions vary, as more storage and bandwidth is needed to handle these larger files, which along with cost, is a challenge.
"6K is typically a costly proposition, so that's why we are testing the waters on 'A Star is Born,' " Price said. "As the size of data is more easily managed and the tools become more accessible, we will increase our resolution."
Restoration of "A Star Is Born" is expected to take four to six months. Said Price: "Our expectation is that the restoration would live for easily 100 years."
Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging, the studio's digital post and restoration facility, has recently restored such titles as "Bonnie and Clyde," "Dirty Harry," "Cool Hand Luke" and "How the West Was Won."
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Laurence Olivier always bugged me!!!
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The Missles Of October & The Bridges at Toko-ri
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Everyone talks about Ingrid Bergman in the Alfred Hitchcock films: "Spellbound" (1945) & "Notorious" (1946), but they never mention "Under Capricorn" (1949)....I wonder why that is!??
Per Wikipedia (& other sources incld books on Hitchcock!)
The film was Hitchcock's second film in Technicolor and uses ten-minute takes similar to those in Hitchcock's film "Rope" (1948). The film's failure, partly due to its slowness, and partly due to the adverse publicity of Bergman's extramarital affair with film director Roberto Rossellini, led Hitchcock and Bernstein to dissolve Transatlantic Pictures.
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Hepburn, in 1938, along with Fred Astaire, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, and others -- was voted "box office poison"
Fred Astaire...Creepy!
Katharine Hepburn...just annoying!
Marlene Dietrich..I can take her in doses!
Joan Crawford ...never... "box office poison"!!! I just think she got bad parts, since MGM thought she could make them good!!! I love the fact she won her Oscar for Warners Brothers & "NOT" MGM...I bet Louis B. Mayer was mad as hell!!!
My favorite quote from Miss. Crawford was: "We're paid to turn "crap" into gold."...LOL!!! Gotta Love her!!!!! Love a woman who speaks the truth!
MY FAVORITE STARS OF THE SILVER SCREEN
in Hot Topics
Posted
Sharon Stone ....."Casino" ...her break down scene....another nose bleed moment!
Annette Bening.."Being Julia", "The Grifters", "Running with Scissors" & "American Beauty"..just to watch her act is a amazing!
Kathleen Turner..."Romancing the Stone"...who wouldn't want to be lost in the jungle with really nice shoes, running around with a hunk of man (in the rain), trying to rescue someone all the while knowing this could be it for romance....?!?!?
John Garfield..."The Postman Always Rings Twice"....ALWAYS when he was around..
Greogy Peck....the ending of "Roman Holiday" ...breaks my heart...I end up screaming say something ..tell her you love her...I liked Mr Peck.
Joseph Cotten...Creepy as hell in "Shadow of a Doubt'...he makes my skin crawl at times..
Jane Russell...."I like a man who can run faster than I can."!!...LOL!!