misswonderly3
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Posts posted by misswonderly3
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I just saw *The Mortal Storm* for the first time this weekend , and realized afresh how much I love watching James Stewart in pretty much anything. This was a fine movie, I'm surprised it isn't more well-known, but even if it had been a dud I would have enjoyed it just for Stewart's presence in it.
Young and babbling, old and bitter, altruistic, disillusioned, romantic, cynical - he's been and done it all in his long and great career, and with impeccable style and sincerity.
I love the young, optimistic Jimmy Stewart, pleading for some noble cause - you just have to believe this guy, whatever he's talking about. Embittered and world-weary yet willing to take on whatever new challenges confront him ( his HItchcock era). Hard-edged and disgusted with the world, as he appears in so many Westerns later in his career - whatever James Stewart is doing, he's doing it well, in a way that engages our interest and our sympathy.
And another thing about him that is rarely said -he's damn sexy. Well, +I+ think he is . The scene near the end of *Shop Around the Corner* is one of the sexiest films from that era. Some may say that he's a poor fit for a romantic lead, but I say otherwise. When he's playing a romantic scene, he plays it like he means it - not with spectacular embraces and kisses, but with his voice and his eyes.
I'm sure there must be older threads about this wonderful ( an apt word for him) Hollywood treasure, but I haven't seen anything specific about him since I've been reading these boards, and after watching *The Mortal Storm*, I just had to write about how good he is in a forum where I know I'm not alone in my appreciation.
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Oh, it's sadder than *Old Yeller*. Shirley six parentless children are even sadder than one sick doggie. And their acting is what the best child acting should be: natural, straightforward, not playing for cuteness. It's heart-breaking to think that that brave, smart, young boy is going to give up school( as well as his brothers and sisters. )
Edited by: misswonderly on Dec 5, 2010 1:03 PM
Edited by: misswonderly on Dec 5, 2010 1:05 PM
...sorry if I called you "Shirley".
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cujas, have you seen Brenda performing live? Wow !
"Pick Me Up on Your Way Down" - classic country word play. Those guys really loved those contradictory song titles ( examples: "Success Has Made a Failure of Our Home", "You're Right, She's Gone, I'm Left" ).
Yesterday we had Rufus Thomas and his dog, today we'll keep it in the family with Carla Thomas and her Christmas party. Very timely; I look out my window, and "oh, by the way, it's snowing."
Hope it's not too early for "Gee Whiz, It's Christmas" :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVigCNi8X2Q
Edited by: misswonderly on Dec 5, 2010 12:59 PM
Edited by: misswonderly on Dec 5, 2010 1:26 PM
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mark, and anyone else who likes the *Thin Man* movies: check out the 20th Century Vole thread in the Hot Topics forum...there's a very funny post on it about the Thin Man.
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G e o g r a p h y
is different from paragraphing, although they both involve covering space. I'm in favour of freeing up text from the confines of run-on paragraphs.
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..prefer it to what? Sinatra? Shirley not.
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I have seen the series you're referring to, Kinokima, and I agree, that's one of the "exceptions" I was referring to. It's very well done, Colin Firth makes a perfect Darcy, and Jennifer Ehle an equally charming Elizabeth. (Did you know she played Oscar Wilde's wife in the film *Wilde* that came out in the 90s? Stephen Frey played Oscar himself.)
I think a series on a book can do a better job, obviously because it has a lot more time to unfold the story and include many details from a book that a two hour movie has to leave out.
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> {quote:title=clearskies wrote:}{quote}
> ... I would like to see more movies made of Shakespeare's plays, more Jane Austen & the Brontes as well as Agatha Christie. I know many versions of these works have alrady been made but there's always room for more, thereby introducing many who might not be familiar with these classics.
I love those 19th century women writers, but for some reason I prefer my Victorian literature on paper, not celluloid. With a few exceptions, I've never really taken to the Brontes or Austen translated into film. But I kind of have a problem a lot of the time with books being converted into movies. I always like the stories better in my imagination. I know I'm in a small minority with this.
Well, it's been a week, now, and I'm still plugging away with *Confederacy of Dunces*. Embarrassing thought this is to admit, I'm only about half-way through it. I have to remind myself to pick it up and read it. Why do I continue, when there are a million books to read? Well, I feel kind of committed to it now, and I do want to find out what happens to the dysfunctional Ignatious. Maybe I should take a break and check out that George Bush (auto)biography hamradio mentioned. I'm wondering if Bush and Ignatious Reilly had a few things in common...
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With all the danceable songs being posted here lately, I think we should suggest that the TCM Classic Film Festival hosts a "hop" for all attendees. Mr.Osborne can MC it, and all the dance tunes that have been posted here can be featured, along with any others people want to suggest. They could have one of those "spotlight" contests for best dancer, and the winner could take home their very own copy of *The Girl Can't Help It*. Or maybe one of those Busby Berkley spectacles, everyone can try and imitate the moves on those.
Here's one they could play : Rufus Thomas, reminding us to go "Walking' the Dog" :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLSaZEySydc
Edited by: misswonderly on Dec 4, 2010 1:25 PM
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Thanks, MovieProfessor, that was very nice. Matt Dusk, eh? Well, I am chagrined to admit that I had not heard of him. How can this be? My music-knowledge vanity will never be the same. I looked him up; he must have made it, because he has a wikipedia entry. And yeah, his style may be a bit different, but in many ways I think we could put him in the same general category as Michael Buble.
casablancalover, I'm still on the moon. Your musical selection tasteful as always.
You commented, by the way, that there seemed to be many more male singers carrying the classic songbook torch than female. I venture to suggest that Diana Krall (a Canadian, by the way ! -Oh, I'm so predictable ) is doing a great job of this. Here's an example of her style:
Of course, it's hard to go wrong with a fantastic song like "Cry Me a River".
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Mr. Destroyer, I'd be more apt to pay attention to your posts if they were easier to read. With all the expostulations and exclamations in your message, there's plenty of opportunity to
leave
some
space
between
the sentences.
It's called paragraphing. (The above is not a good example.) It's hard on the eyes to read one continuous block of text like that. I'm no grammarian myself, I'm just talking about something that would make your post more visually , shall we say, accessible. Just a suggestion. ( smiley face.)
Edited by: misswonderly on Dec 3, 2010 5:30 PM
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> {quote:title=TCMWebAdmin wrote:}{quote}
> Maybe a little email helped as well.
>
> Glad it's up now.
Thanks, guys !
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Everyone seems to have forgotten Harry Connick Jr., who did the same thing as Buble and is still around.
I don't mind Michael Buble; I've heard him interviewed, he sounds like an unpretentious and fun guy, serious about the music, but not taking himself too seriously.
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This is a nice little pop song, clever lyrics, very catchy arrangements. kind of off-kilter rhythm to it.
Vampire Weekend with "Oxford Comma"
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Looks like this may have been a bit of a tempest in a teapot. I checked the Canadian schedules this evening, and the ones for both January and February are now posted. (Hey, maybe we humble message board posters have more influence than we thougnt...)
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> {quote:title=lzcutter wrote:}{quote}
> I don't think anyone is criticizing Ken Burns' research and music choices. Rather, it is the style that I think TikiSoo was talking about.
> He has been doing this style now for almost twenty five years without many changes: still images with a moving camera going across or zooming, famous actors reading newspapers, letters, book passages, etc, modern exterior footage that gets more grandiose as he goes on and interview footage shot in rustic home settings that look like they could be living by candle light.
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> ... Burns has settled into a style that he keeps repeating documentary after documentary and doesn't seem to show any desire to move beyond it....
Well, I freely admit that I am unfamiliar with these other documentaries Burns has made, and it sounds as though he did significantly lower his standards with them. I still think that the two examples of his work that I have seen, The Civil War and Jazz (quite possibly not their exact titles) are amongst the best documentary-filmmaking that I've ever seen.
They were both made many years ago, the one in the 80s and ( I think) the other in the 90s. So I guess I'm letting him rest on his laurels.
Anyway, I don't feel strongly enough about it to debate it further; I take yours' and TikiSoo's word for it that his later work was of a lower quality.
The idea of wondering what kind of results Ken Burns would have come up with for this topic was more or less something that just occurred to me while I was thinking about my overall impression of "Moguls" just after I saw the most recent segment.
In any case, "Moguls and Movie Stars" is undeniably fascinating, whatever criticisms I may have of it, and I'm looking forward to Episode 6.
Edited by: misswonderly on Dec 2, 2010 10:36 PM
Edited by: misswonderly on Dec 2, 2010 10:45 PM
( lost track of which episode was next : not 5, been there, done that: 6 is up next.)
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That's it ! I'd forgotten his name. Thanks, casablancalover (baby).
Sometimes I think those Bugs Bunny cartoons were amongst the most intelligent offering on screen in bygone times. Certainly amongst the funniest.
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Ok, I just checked the schedule...both the January and February ones for Canada are up now. Hmm, guess I overreacted a little -still, it was strange it wasn't posted before. And as soon as there's talk about it here, it's up the next day ? Just a coincidence, I'm sure - I don't think we have enough power to make something happen like that.
I'm so relieved; the prospect of no more Turner Classic Movies in 2011 had me panicked.
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"Crimes against humanity" ? Buble ain't got nothin' on Justin Beiber, another Canadian.
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VP19 wrote of Ken Burns:
"...he might have taken one specific angle and ran it into the ground (just as "Baseball" is spoiled by his obsession with the Boston Red Sox, and a similar New England-centric bias tainted "The Civil War"). "
You think? I didn't get that from his Civil War series at all, I thought it was remarkably unbiased. However, I am not American, so perhaps am not sensitive to these matters. Of the three documentaries by Burns that I mentioned, the only one I have not seen is "Baseball", so I cannot comment on that one.
Tikisoo was critical of the visuals in his series, citing bad lighting and too much repetition of shots of various individuals. I have never noticed any aesthetic problem with the lighting in his interviews, which were most often of academics sitting at their desks. I had no problem with that. The use of repetition, especially for the Civil War series, was, I imagine, due to the fact that he had to make the most with what he had in terms of visual material. I believe there's some kind of caveat at the beginning of that series, acknowledging that most of the visual aspect is comprised of sepia photographs from that time, so he was probably somewhat limited in his options. I don't know, perhaps the visual aspect of his documentaries is somewhat lacking for some people, depends what you're looking for (no pun intended).
Certainly the research, the way both series (Civil War and Jazz) were organized, and most of all the use of music, were outstanding. And I still think he would have done an excellent job with a documentary on the history of movies and movie-making in the United States.
However, John Wilkman and Bill Haber did impressive work, and it was not my intention here to denigrate them.
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Sweet Soul Music, oh yeah ! The second, live version was great fun. I like the way the horn players swung those saxes back and forth in time. Only problem was a technical one. I'm finding that all this week, youtube is acting weird. Every song I look up on it stops and "buffers", not only once in the song, but many times. Kind of wrecks the flow. This happens now and then with youtube, but not usually for days in a row like this. Is it just me? ("It's not you, it's me".) Is it something to do with my computer, or with the internet reception I get where I live? The newly arrived wintry weather? Is anyone else having this problem?
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Before Buble, there was Harry Connick Jr. Who, I think, is still going on strong.
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TikiSoo, regarding the Ken Burns documentaries, judging by the way you describe them, I cannot believe we've watched the same films. The "cheesy" style you speak of is totally absent in the documentaries by him that I've watched - The Civil War and Jazz series. I can't speak for the one on baseball, since I haven't seen all of it. Burns is extremely thorough in his research, and the people interviewed are either very knowledgeable or have personal experience with the topic. They are outstanding documentaries in every way, in my opinion, entertaining and very informative. I have to wonder if we've seen the same documentaries. I think Ken Burns would have done a fantastic job on a subject like "Moguls and Movie Stars". And I still think the episodes , engrossing though they are, whip through everything too fast and with too little depth.
THE THIN MAN rocks!
in General Discussions
Posted
Check this out, guys, it's quite funny:
http://forums.tcm.com/jive/tcm/thread.jspa?threadID=152322&tstart=15