MarianStarrett
-
Posts
396 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Never
Posts posted by MarianStarrett
-
-
> {quote:title=musicalnovelty wrote:}{quote}
> How sad to read that.
> I had just been saying nice things about her in the thread on Luise Rainer over on the Information Please forum. Had no idea we were about to lose her.
That's always the saddest way to find out a great performer you liked has passed away.
-
You're right on both counts, CineSage. And it's kind of a shame that such a wonderfully skilled director as Curtiz gets less credit than he deserves precisely because he cared more about making the best movie he possibly could than about putting in "personal touches" that might just get in the way of the entertainment.
-
> {quote:title=JackFavell wrote:}{quote}
> P.S. Who in their right mind thinks Mariska Hargitay is a bigger star than Jayne Mansfield ?
I would suspect the real problem isn't thinking that Mariska is a bigger star than Jayne Mansfield - the problem is not even knowing (or caring?) who Jayne Mansfield was.
-
Since I think not all actors deserve the Oscar for the particular performance for which they are given it, I can live with Eva Marie Saint having won the Oscar for "On the Waterfront". After all, who _really_ deserves the Oscar? Whomever the Academy decides, really. They have their priorities and their biases, I guess.
And I'm certainly glad that she was given an acting Oscar, even though I might be persuaded it wasn't for what was really her best performance.
-
Jawohl!
-
Jane O'Brien Dart dies at 90; actress and her husband were in Reagan's inner circle
By Valerie J. Nelson
5:33 PM PDT, April 10, 2009
Jane O'Brien Dart, an actress who gave up her career to marry Justin Dart, the kingmaker who helped persuade Ronald Reagan to enter politics, has died. She was 90.
Dart, who was also an arts patron and philanthropist, died Wednesday at her home in Pebble Beach, Calif., after a lengthy illness, her family said.
Warner Bros. renamed her Jane Bryan after signing her to a contract around 1936 and often cast her as the ingenue. Bette Davis took the actress under her wing, and Dart was "far more effective in roles calling for disillusionment in pathos," notably as Davis' sister in 1937's "Marked Woman," wrote Hal Erickson in the "All Movie Guide."
She gave her finest performance in "We Are Not Alone" (1939) as the doomed mistress of Paul Muni, Erickson wrote.
With Reagan and his first wife, Jane Wyman, she appeared in 1938's "Brother Rat" and "Brother Rat and a Baby," the 1940 film that was her last.
On New Year's Eve 1939, she married Dart, who would take over the floundering Rexall Drug chain in 1945 and build it into Dart-Kraft Inc., a food and consumer products conglomerate. He died in 1984 at 76.
When she walked away from Warner Bros. to wed, The Times' headline on the 1939 story declared: "Love Triumphs Over Career." She had appeared in almost 20 films.
The Darts lived in Chicago and Boston before moving to Los Angeles in the mid-1940s and becoming involved in civic affairs and charity work, her family said. The couple built a house in Bel-Air and had a weekend home near Palm Springs.
They soon began having dinner with Reagan and Wyman.
"At the time he was a rabid Democrat," Justin Dart recalled in 1980. "My wife warned me not to talk politics."
After Reagan married his second wife, Nancy, in 1952, the Darts remained part of Reagan's inner circle. The former first lady came to appreciate Jane's "discretion and independence," Bob Colacello wrote in the 2004 biography "Ronnie & Nancy."
"Jane Dart was an old and very dear friend, and I was sorry to hear of her passing," Nancy Reagan said Friday through a spokeswoman.
Justin Dart was among a handful of wealthy Southern California businessmen who helped persuade Reagan to enter politics and then run for governor in 1966.
The Darts amassed a collection of about 70 artworks that Jane donated to the Monterey Museum of Art. They are housed in the Jane and Justin Dart Wing in La Mirada, a satellite facility of the Monterey museum, where she served as a trustee.
A native of Los Angeles, Jane O'Brien was born June 11, 1918, to James Matthew O'Brien, a lawyer, and his wife, the former Irene Murray.
Justin Dart was known to be blunt and outspoken, but his wife was "shy, reserved, self-effacing," Colacello wrote.
She had a keen interest in archaeology and Egyptology and liked to be called by the nickname her husband gave her -- "Punky."
Dart is survived by her three children, Guy Michael Dart of Los Angeles, Jane Tucker of Dallas and Stephen M. Dart of Pebble Beach; brothers Donald O'Brien of Denver and William O'Brien of Paradise Valley, Ariz.; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Services will be held at 4 p.m. Friday at the Church in the Forest, 3152 Forest Lake Road, Pebble Beach.
Memorial donations may be made to the charity of the giver's choice or to the Monterey Museum of Art, 559 Pacific St., Monterey, CA 93940.
-
> {quote:title=scsu1975 wrote:}{quote}
> What is Joan Shawlee doing as a biker-babe? Apparently she uses her senior-citizen discount to get six-packs for the gang. She has a swastika on her rear end. Then again, her rear end is about the size of Germany.
>
A swastika on her rear end? Maybe she longs for the good ol' blitzkrieg?
-
I've seen it at least once or twice, and wouldn't mind watching it again. I really dig William Powell... :x
-
Hi john,
I know next to nothing about the musical version of the film, I'm sorry to say. Did you have a large part or a small or medium role? If it's not too personal a question, what is/was your voice range? (is that what it is even called? you know, soprano, alto, etc.)
And which recording, if any, of the musical version do you recommend?
-
I know very little about Ricky Nelson, if it wasn't for the bonus features in the disc I wouldn't have known how big he was in the late 50s thanks to his appearances in TV. Maybe that's why I enjoyed watching him - knew next to nothing about him, and I really liked his singing in that scene in the jail where Borrach?n also sings.
-
> {quote:title=LonesomePolecat wrote:}{quote}
> Most people know Princess Mononoke and his oscar winner Spirited Away , but my favorite is *Howl's Moving Castle* . I also would recommend *Porco Rosso* ,*Whisper of the Heart* , and my other all time favorite *Castle in the Sky* , which has one of the greatest beginnings ever.
*Howl's Moving Castle* is an unforgettable epic, I badly want to see it again!
-
> {quote:title=musicalnovelty wrote:}{quote}
> Instead of Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire, I have to say Gene Kelly AND Fred Astaire.
> I could not and would not choose one over the other.
I like the way you put it, musicalnovelty! B-)
-
> {quote:title=PearlHarbor wrote:}{quote}
> Last November, I saw one of my nese's put on a play based on The Wizard of Oz at South Side High School in Fort Wayne, IN.
>
> I've heard of The Wizard of Oz but I've never seen the 1939 movie of The Wizard of Oz
>
Which part did your niece play?
-
Clara Bow looks so darn cute in her boxing outfit... :x
-
Que Bella! Another grrrrreat poster! B-)
-
Just in case anyone out there needs another reminder... Ford's *They Were Expendable* is showing this Saturday at noon Eastern. B-)
-
Many classic movies released on DVD by Warner Home Video came with "A Night at the Movies" supplements, including trailers, a cartoon, and a newsreel.
They seem to be doing that a bit less these days, though.
-
> {quote:title=ChipHeartsMovies wrote:}{quote}
> THIS is why I love the TCM Boards...wherever we live, there are only a handful of people who really, really love movies like we do. And when somebody like Filmlover chooses a movie I've never heard of as his absolute favorite, that's a movie I'm watching!
>
Well said, Chip. I also admit I'd never heard of that movie, and I'm very grateful to filmlover for sharing this movie with the rest of us. It is probably the single title I am most looking forward to in all of next week's schedule. B-)
-
> {quote:title=coopsgirl wrote:}{quote}
> This is very cool
.>
> http://news.independentminds.livejournal.com/1786738.html
Really cool, indeed! I would love to have a copy of that poster. B-)
-
Interesting story about Satyajit Ray's movies showing at the Walter Reade theater in Lincoln Center:
Film
Satyajit Ray?s World of Restless Watchfulness and Nuance
By TERRENCE RAFFERTY
?I find I am inimical to the idea of making two similar films in succession,? wrote the great Indian director Satyajit Ray in 1966, and in this, as in everything he wrote or filmed, he spoke the truth.
At that point, 11 years after the premiere of his first movie, ?Pather Panchali,? he had written and directed 13 features, all of which will be on view at the Walter Reade Theater starting Wednesday, along with seven from the next decade of his career. The films are at least as various as his statement suggests, and you?re not likely to worry, as Ray did in 1966, whether their diversity indicates ?a restlessness of mind, an indecision, a lack of direction resulting in a blurring of outlook ? or if there is an underlying something which binds my disparate works together.?
Restless, yes. Blurry, never. And the ?underlying something,? which is simply his bottomless curiosity about how people negotiate the most urgent demands of nature and culture, is impossible to mistake, no matter what kind of Satyajit Ray movie you?re watching.
Some of the films in this series (co-sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Columbia University), like the nutty fairy-tale picaresque ?Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne? (1968), can be a little baffling for non-Indian audiences; nothing travels worse than folk humor. And some might make you feel as if you needed to know a good deal more about the history and politics of the subcontinent ? and specifically Ray?s native Bengal, where most of his stories are set ? to understand the finer nuances of the characters? behavior. Ray, however, has nuances to burn: you can miss quite a few and still feel as if you know his people intimately.
The radiant ?Charulata? (1964), for example, takes place in Calcutta in 1880, and its characters, educated and well off, spend a lot of their time in earnest discussion of literature and politics of the day. Their spirited debates are full of names few Westerners will have heard and issues perhaps long forgotten even by Bengalis. What is clear, though, is their fierce passion for ideas, and the small, surprising ways in which that passion colors their feelings for one another.
That?s how dialogue usually works in Ray movies, even ones like ?Charulata? and the superb, Chekhovian ensemble piece ?Days and Nights in the Forest? (1970). Ray is always less interested in what people are saying than why, and in his best pictures the most revealing moments tend to be silent, or nearly so.
The fluid opening sequence of ?Charulata? is six almost-wordless minutes of a woman ? the title character, played by the beautiful, fiery-eyed Madhabi Mukherjee ? walking rather aimlessly from one room to another in her house. The languid rhythm of her steps tells us how wearily familiar everything seems to her, and the rapt attention she devotes to people passing on the street tells us something sadder still: in her comfortable but unstimulating life, the ordinary activities of ordinary people look exotic, wondrous. She watches everyday life with opera glasses, to feel a little closer.
Ray has a particular affection for the watchful, for patient observers like this lonely wife and like Apu, the child hero of ?Pather Panchali,? who becomes a student in ?Aparajito? (1956) and then a husband and father in ?The World of Apu? (1959), looking at life a little differently at every stage but always looking, searching for clues about who he?s going to be.
The Apu Trilogy is easily Ray?s best-known work, largely by default: few of the films he made between ?The World of Apu? and his death in 1992 are available on DVD in the United States and Britain, and theatrical retrospectives like Lincoln Center?s are, for an artist of his stature, shockingly rare.
This series is full of memorable, affecting movies that have been just about impossible to see in recent years, like ?Devi? (1960), a remarkable exploration of religious madness, and ?Kanchenjungha? (1962), Ray?s first color film. ?Kanchenjungha? chronicles a few hours in the lives of a wealthy Calcutta family vacationing in Darjeeling and manages, with no action more dramatic than strolling and talking, to create a startlingly vivid (and, of course, nuanced) portrait of Indian society in transition.
The films that may resonate most strongly in 2009, though, are the ones that deal with economic hardship and the strange parallel universe that is business, big or small. The grinding rural poverty of ?Pather Panchali? is powerfully rendered, but it?s not entirely typical of Ray?s approach to the vexed question of money and its absence. Abject need is, in a way, too stark, too absolute for his restless sensibility.
He?s more at home with situations like that of the struggling middle-class family of ?Mahanagar? (1963), who have just a bit less income than they require and therefore have to make awkward choices: in this case, the wife (again, Ms. Mukherjee) takes a job, and she discovers that the world outside the home is both more exciting than the world within and much uglier.
?Mahanagar? has a happy ending, of a highly ambiguous sort. By the time Ray made ?The Adversary? (1971) ? the first of what has come to be called the Calcutta Trilogy, though the plots and characters of the three films are unrelated ? the economic and political landscape of India had darkened considerably. He had to watch even more closely, and more coldly, to understand this changing world.
The protagonist of ?The Adversary? is a recent university graduate who can?t find a job and is briefly tempted by violent revolution. The second film, ?Company Limited? (1971), is perhaps Ray?s chilliest, bleakest vision of his society, the story of a rising young executive who squirms out of a potentially promotion-killing crisis by devious, dangerous means. He gets the promotion, but there?s a pesky observer in this film, too: his quiet, intelligent sister-in-law, with whom he is slightly in love and who knows, in the end, exactly what he has done in the name of success.
Somnath Bannerjee (Pradip Mukherjee), the hero of the third film, ?The Middleman? (1975), is the most interesting and the most tragic, because he embodies aspects of both his predecessors: unemployed for the first half of the film, and in the second half beginning to succeed as an independent operator in what his mentor calls the ?order-supply? business. The term for his position as a commercial middleman is dalaal, which in Bengali can also mean pimp. He isn?t a villain ? hardly any of Ray?s characters are ? but he is, as so many in these films are, a young man who lacks the courage to fail in the eyes of the world.
Somnath?s a watcher, watching himself, but not rigorously enough. Even when, as in this picture?s devastating final scenes, he hates the self he is becoming, he can?t stop what he?s doing: it?s as if he were looking at someone else.
And in the audience you watch in melancholy horror because you?re looking through the eyes of Satyajit Ray. The ?underlying something? of his rich, various body of work is, ultimately, a kind of close observer?s faith: if you can see the world clearly enough, you?ll never be a stranger to yourself.
?First Light: Satyajit Ray From the Apu Trilogy to the Calcutta Trilogy? opens Wednesday and runs through April 30 at the Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center; (212) 875-5600, filmlinc.com.
-
> {quote:title=CelluloidKid wrote:}{quote}
> I never cared for Blockbuster Video ...Hollywood Video is no better ....maybe the Mom and Pop stores will thrive again!!!??!
If Netflix vanquished BB Video, what makes you think mom-and-pop stores could compete any better?
-
Kim
I rented "The Big Country" and should be watching it fairly soon, possibly over the weekend. I'm looking forward to a nice discussion later on in the Westerns section.
-
> {quote:title=CineSage_jr wrote:}{quote}
> Cineastes and the Cahiers du Cinema auteurist crowd, who essentially granted themselves inordinate power to make or break a director's reputation in the 1960s (and relegate others, such as producers, to the periphery) have shown themselves very susceptible to those considerations (and not necessarily to their credit).
>
This probably also worked against directors like Michael Curtiz, wouldn't you say CineSage?
-
I know a theater that's playing it, but I'm torn between watching it now and waiting for the video.
Movie Rambles
in Films and Filmmakers
Posted
> {quote:title=molo14 wrote:}{quote}
> Thanks for sharing that. Going to a bar and having Jane Mansfield show up sounds like a perfect way to start your vacation.
Her name was _Jayne_ Mansfield.