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DougieB
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Posts posted by DougieB
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The way some people feel about "Hot Spell", I feel about "About Mrs. Leslie" (1954). Her characterization showed such a quiet intelligence and such a supportive nature that she gave Robert Ryan the opportunity to meet her on that level, which he was more than able to do. The movie is a very touching but bittersweet lesson in how transcendent (to borrow TB 's word) even the most fleeting moments can be. (He's married, but that's not really a spoiler since it's established in the beginning.)
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Your job just got a lot tougher, didn't it, having to find new words for...ne'er-do-wells?
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Michael Dunn in Ship of Fools.
"Ship of Fools" is a great example. I'm glad you thought of it. It's been a while, so now I really want to see it again.
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Weren't Hope and Crosby the first to do this? George Burns may have been the first on TV.
I don't know if Hope and Crosby were the first, but they sure took it to the limit. George Burns was the master. Your post made me realize that I've only ever seen the Hope-Crosby movies on TV; it was probably even more fun to be in a theater and have Hope tell you it was a good time to hit the snack bar.
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My first thought was Frank Capra's "Dirigible" (1931), about an expedition by dirigible to Antarctica. TCM has shown it, but it's been a while since I've seen it. It could explain the tunnels of ice, though I don't remember anything like that. However, the haircut with concentric circles makes it sound more like a fantasy of some kind, especially if it involves a flying sailing vessel. "Master of the World" (1961) with Vincent Price features a flying ship that roams the world destroying weapons of war and fighting machines of all nations.
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Sepiatone mentioned John Huston in the original post and that's a good one. How amazing was he in "Chinatown"? Although "Myra Breckinridge" is often maligned, I think his Buck Loner, the proprietor of a bogus acting academy, is hilarious. Another director who's acted often is Peter Bogdanovich. Also, Sidney Pollack primarily directed but always brought a certain charm and gravitas to his acting roles, such as in "Tootsie".
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I like "Travels with My Aunt" (1972) with Maggie Smith as the eccentric (borderline criminal) aunt who drags her nephew across Europe on the Orient Express and involves him in shady dealings with customs officials, etc. The Orient Express in its heyday seems like the ultimate outing to me. "Murder on the Orient Express" and "Death on the Nile" would probably also qualify for this thread.
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Bonnie Hunt wrote and directed "Return to Me" (2000), a rom-com with David Duchovney and Minnie Driver, about a man who unknowingly falls in love with the recipient of his late wife's heart. She also wrote the script for "Cars" (2006) and did one of the major voice-overs. She's someone I really admire for her smarts and her talent, but she seems to have always been stuck in some kind of mid-level showbiz limbo.
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It seems the practice for some instances derives from the aside of the theater. Asides are used to allow the audience an insight into the thought process of a character--and as an opportunity for the playwright to make comments indirectly on the action of the play through the mouth of a character.
In theater it can sometimes be used to express "interior" thoughts a character is having but is maybe unwilling to express openly. In O'Neill's "Strange Interlude" it's a constant, with characters checking out of the dialogue they're having onstage to express "private" thoughts about what's happening and what's being said. I guess different productions of that play handle it in different ways. I remember Jane Fonda talking about a production she was in in the early 1960's in which characters spoke to each other from behind masks, then removed the masks to express their private thoughts (or was it the other way around?). I have no idea how it was handled in the movie version, or whether or not the device was even used. Anyone know?
Virginia Woolf wrote a novel called "The Waves" in which the characters are followed over a span of years. In each section the characters interact, but each also "speaks his (or her) mind" by voicing what they're not saying to the others. I don't think it's ever been dramatized and it would probably be a mess if it were, but it's an interesting read.
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I do agree with the author to some extent when she says the male stars of today are scrawny and that the stars of yesterday could probably kick their a sses. Of course, there are some stars today that would definitely hold their own in a fight, but for every Mark Wahlberg, you've got the pansies from Twilight.
I've been following this conversation with interest, but you lost me with "the pansies from Twilight". If holding your own in a fight is the standard, then we get the men and the culture we deserve. A "fight club" mentality also bleeds over into men's relationships with women.
I'm not trying to derail an interesting thread; I just thought it needed to be said. Carry on.
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STARZ is showing this now, if any of you are subscribers. It's one of those movies made up of many small moments so it may not be the kind of big statement piece some people would be looking for, but it's true and sweet and rewarding.
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I also am wondering how much this play/film is a forerunner for things like LOVE! VALOUR! COMPASSION! and Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City.
Both "The Boys in the Band" and "LOVE! VALOUR! COMPASSION!" are essentially a look at gay men in their natural habitats and in their own company. The birthday party and the pastoral weekend both serve as means of getting together a cast with interwoven histories. It wasn't a new premise for either a play or a film, but the fact that these two featured gay men exclusively made them kindred in that way at least. Ironically, the men in "L!V!C!" were less the social pariahs that their "TBITB" counterparts were but, in the age of AIDS, were even more beseiged.
"Tales of the City" seems to be more about the integration of straight and gay culture, though it's possible it wouldn't have had the same hold on popular consciousness, courtesy of PBS, if "TBITB" hadn't paved the way by removing some of the stigma.
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A very interesting conversation in the Theater Talk segment. Michael Musto was right to compare it to "A Raisin in the Sun", another touchstone for a cultural minority.
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Has anyone seen this milestone film? I have not (yet). And I'm wondering how it holds up. I would guess it's probably at this point a time capsule of attitudes from the late 60s/early 70s.
William Friedkin is the director and supposedly does audio commentary on the DVD.
At the time of its release some gay people thought it was already a time capsule, of 1950's attitudes and values. In a way I can see why, with the self-loathing of some of the characters, but it was still light years ahead of previous treatments of gay characters. You could make a good case that this was the first truly gay-themed play and film, as we use the term today. It's really the first instance of a gay writer giving the general population a look inside "the life" in the field of theater (and film). James Baldwin was amazingly candid at an even earlier time in the field of literature, as were others, but popular entertainment has probably always lagged behind literature in that way.
I'm sure Crowley had to make concessions along the way, but to me it still seems pretty uncompromising. TCM showed it back in 2007 during gay pride month and I thought it stood up amazingly well, but I'm an old f*a*r*t. God only knows what you youngsters would think, seeing it for the first time. But it's always had my respect as a piece of writing. I think it actually looks way beyond the self-loathing in that we see some of its consequences, particularly in the fact that focus on self leads one of the main characters to miss the veiled need of a "questioning" friend who hoped for help from him but who got burned in the process by the kind of scattershot venom from this particular character. It was a missed opportunity the character was never even aware of, which is sort of what tragedy is all about.
Anyway, there's some sweetness and lots of silliness along the way and some of the smartest dialogue this side of "All About Eve." Definitely watch it and let us know what you think.
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I was surprised to see it used in Rene Clair's "And Then There Were None" (1945), which TCM showed this past week. In a scene at a dinner table, people who were making confessions to each other were suddenly shown in closeup talking directly to the camera. It seemed gimmicky and unnatural and took more away from the scene than it added. At another point, Walter Huston gave a knowing look at the camera, even though (spoiler) it was a red herring, since his character wasn't the murderer. It wasn't used consistently and was kind of a dud dramatically.
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Haven't seen Codebreaker, although I would like to see it. Two good actors in it -- Ed Stoppard (son of Tom); and Henry Goodman, the best Shylock I've ever seen. I did see the play Breaking the Code (1987), starring Derek Jacobi and Michael Gough, many years ago. I remember liking it but not much else about it.
PBS broadcast Breaking the Code, though it's gone the way of the rest of my VHS tapes. I don't have a good memory of it either.
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I am really not interested in what FOX schedule is since most of the classics run in early morning and mostly are projected in the wrong ratio. Very few of the 1940s films look good as many of the Technicolor prints are washed out. I keep repeating this but FOX could care less I think it would help if we could determine which films are projected anamorphically or pan and scanned or whatever.
I'm interested in the schedule but haven't gone to their website in years, so Arturo's doing something which I appreciate. When I was in high school there was a prime time Saturday night show called "Saturday Night at the Movies" which premiered Fox films every week, so I got to love Fox films and Fox stars. I still feel a lot of that affection, so I always look for Arturo's postings.
I'm not sure I agree that very few of the 1940's films look good. Let's not forget that Fox isn't an HD channel. But I totally agree about the pan and scan or "whatever". It would be very helpful if they let us know in advance what the format of the film will be. The "whatever" seems to be taking the form of new 16:9 prints of some CinemaScope films which formerly were only available as 4:3, but it still means they're butchering their own films.
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I finally saw this. It was interesting seeing it after the Call the Midwife episode, since the arrests and treatments were somewhat the same, though CTM was clearly a case of entrapment. Given what an odd duck Turing seems to have been, it would have been nice to see more of how he actually functioned as a gay man, since he was such a bust (at least initially) as a coworker and collaborator, but the movie didn't seem to want to go there. But, as you said, Benedict Cumberbatch was brilliant and the story is an important one.
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You don't often get Laurence Olivier and Mel Brooks on the same thread. I suppose you could say it's a convention of movie musicals too, where the action stops and characters perform for the camera.
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I love that CGI hasn't killed off stop-motion animation. It's interesting that it's a French production but filmed in the English language. Does this make it more of a contender in the world market, I wonder, or is it merely a consequence of the fact that so many of the big name voice artists are English-speaking?
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More really good examples. Especially in the cases of Alfie and Ferris Beuller, the feeling that the character is taking the audience into his confidence creates a kind of bond that maybe wouldn't happen otherwise. We get to share their experience vicariously along with them.
Sometimes in literature there's what's called an unreliable narrator, someone who can't be taken at their word. I suppose the same could happen with a film character, someone who's being deliberately misleading when he or she talks to the audience, though I can't think of an example at the moment. It seems like it would be a good setup for a noir.
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One example where this technique was done effectively was in the case of "The Matchmaker" with Shirley Booth. Most of the main characters at one time or another spoke directly to the audience while in character. To me, it enhanced the comedy aspect.
Terrence.
I'd forgotten about "The Matchmaker". Great example. Maybe it works best in film if done by people who've also done theater.
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I just saw "Jersey Boys" and it used this technique throughout. I never saw the stage show but I'm assuming the device was carried over from the theater. I remember "Delovely", the musical Cole Porter biopic, used a narrator who spoke directly to the audience. It's not very common in films, maybe because it can seem more jarring than it does in theater. I'm not talking about voice-over narration, but speaking in character directly to the audience in the course of the film. I thought it was very effective in "Jersey Boys", so I'm wondering how others feel about it when filmmakers use traditional theater techniques. In the recent "Anna Karenina", what began as a theater setting shot documentary style alternately expanded into traditional filmed settings and retreated back into the theatrical setting. I know people who find this kind of thing tolerable only if it's broadly done, as in the case of Bob Hope or Mel Brooks, but I have to say I'm open to it in more serious contexts if it's done well. Any thoughts?
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It probably doesn't strictly fit your subject, since it seems like you're mostly looking at secret agent-type movies, but "L'il Abner" (1959) is definitely cold war era and has some major babes: Leslie Parrish as Daisy Mae, Stella Stevens as Apassionata Von Climax and Julie Newmar as Stupefyin' Jones. Dogpatch was targeted as a bomb testing site (not as ludicrous at that time as it now seems) and there was a lot of cold war-era political satire. It's even possible that Apassionata Von Climax paved the way for **** Galore.
Can't believe the name of a 50 year old movie character was auto-bleeped.
RICH'S B (AND WORSE) JUVENILE DELINQUENT THREAD
in Films and Filmmakers
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John Byner? John Dehner?