misswonderly3

Right, who removes stray golf balls from whales.

I'm surprised no one on the "I Just Watched" thread has mentioned this movie. I'd seen Picnic at Hanging Rock once before, years ago, but had forgotten much about it. I thought it was quite good. I love that mysterious feel to it, and I'm glad no explanation is offered as to what happens to the girls - and the school teacher - who venture into the rock, never to be seen again. The film is full of atmosphere, an unusual combination of suppressed eroticism and eeriness. I don't know who Peter Weir's sound effects technician was, but whoever they were they were brilliant in the sound they created to represent the rock and the land around it, giving it a strange frightening quality which suggests it is sentient and somehow compelling the girls to enter its realm. The scenes at the Rock were the best part of the movie. It's still interesting, but goes downhill a bit afterwards, with the story about Sara the sad orphan, the two young men who search for the girls, and the oncoming dissolution and madness of nasty but pitiable Mrs. Appleyard. Did anyone else watch this intriguing, strange movie? Any comments about it?

Just for fun, connect the dots. We could imagine this is a film ( a pretty bad one), in which the first half of the story is this: ....but the chick changes her mind, falls in love with the guy, and next thing you know she's begging him this: Come to think of it, that Eric is kind of cute. I could imagine making this request of him. (I'm talking circa 1974.)

Which was making us go "yuck !" ?

Yuck ! Good thing you're not really catering this thread.

I like the "after some initial confusion" part. For some reason it made me laugh.

Wait....how come the apple pie comes even before the first course? Apple pie as an appetizer?

I thought the OP meant the movie itself wasn't watchable, as in, she thought it was so bad or confusing or annoying she found it impossible to watch. If it was just some technical problem, with either the print copy or the station, then that doesn't really need a whole thread about it, because it was just a temporary and /or technical issue that has nothing to do with the Preston Sturges film. (sorry Jeanne Crain, I don't intend to be rude.) Come to think of it, although I sometimes like Preston Sturges, sometimes I don't. And The Palm Beach Story is an example of when I don't. I like madcap comedies, and the celebration of chaos in comedy as much as the next person (unless that next person is a humourless poe-face), but I just can't get with the program when it comes to TPBS. It's just so frigging confusing !

I quite like Blackboard Jungle. I enjoy the cast, the story, and especially that mid-50s inner city atmosphere. But I can't stand to watch the scene in which the poor well-meaning teacher's jazz records get smashed !

You and DownGoesFrazer.

Thanks for the heads-up, Cid. Can't have too much Mitchum / Greer.

THE PALMOLIVE BEACH STORY A highly complicated tale of mistaken identities, twins, Weinie Kings, and assorted love affairs seems hopelessly confusing until the Soapie Queen shows up and spreads Palmolive detergent over everyone. Everything and everybody gets clean, and a slick ending washes away all difficulties. "What we need is a little Palmolive to wash up these glasses and cups. And maybe your hair, too, darling. It looks like it could use some soap." "Well, Tom, here we are at last at Palm Olive Beach. I think this bikini along with my faithful use of Palmolive soap will solve all our marriage problems." "Gerry baby, I just wish I'd invented the stuff. We'd be floating on bubbles by now..."

The Turkish one?

Then he should have added, " and a cup of joe".

At first, when I read your first sentence here, I thought you'd turned into DownGoesFrazer. sorry, I'm missing the pie reference. Humble? American? Chart?

There's something I want to say, and this thread seems like a good place to say it. I'm in full confessional mode today. A lot of people on this site - in fact, my impression is most people on this site - say one of the reasons they come here is for information and to learn from other posters. To learn. (About movies and movie history, presumeably.) I don't come here for that, and never have. This is why I said above that I'm feeling "confessional", because it feels like a confession, something I should be vaguely ashamed of, that I don't care about "learning" anything on this site. The vast majority of you almost all talk about how it's a good place to learn from other posters. Please don't misunderstand, I fully agree that there are many well-informed and knowledgeable posters here, who have much to share with others. And I respect them. But I don't really care about "learning" as such. I have a ton of books about movies, on just about every topic. Anything I wanted to find out about, I could refer to one of them. I'm not saying I'm so knowledgeable, I have no need to learn from others. Gawd knows I am a complete ignoramous about movies and movie history in many ways. But "learning" is so not the reason I come to this site. I feel kind of odd about this, because I think I'm the only person who doesn't come here to learn. Now, that's not to say that I don't appreciate suggestions from fellow posters about other films I might be interested in. Nor does it mean I don't enjoy reading a post about a movie, director, genre, whatever, that I was unaware of before. I enjoy people sharing what they know about these things. But for me, "learning" is a tiny part of why I come here. It's more about sharing ideas about films, and having fun conversations about them. Except that I suppose we "learn" something every time we interact with others, I don't really consider that learning, not in the knowledge-acquiring way that most people mean. I'd rather just hear another poster's feelings and ideas about a film they've watched, why they liked or disliked it ( and you don't have to be an "expert" to do that) and have - if possible- a wide-spread discussion about it, hopefully with a lot of board members chiming in. I'm much more interested in my fellow posters' personal ideas and impressions about movies than* their book-larnin' knowledge about them. I think people associate "learning" with being virtuous; if you learn something when you come here, then you've kind of justified the time spent. But I am lazy, and not virtuous; if I want to acquire that kind of information, I can refer to my books, the internet (oh, we all know how reliable that is), or enrol in a course. (If I could afford it....) I just want to have fun. edit: * When I saw this post in a quote, I realized I'd used "thEn" instead of thAn". I am duelly embarrassed about this, and have fixed it. But I wanted to confess the mistake first, and not try and hide it. I know better thAn to try and sneak past such an error on these boards.

Nice thread idea, Eugenia. Hmm. When I first started posting here, it was because I had recently discovered and fallen in love with TCM. A television station after my own heart,... non-stop old movies- sans commercials ! I don't count the promotions, shorts, mini-features on a particular star or director, or even their "infomercials" for their wine club ( ! ) as commercials. I kind of enjoy them. Anyway, after a couple of years of TCM love, I was bursting with the desire to talk about it and the films it shows with other similar-minded people. I think it was because of some "ad" (but hey, they don't show commercials !) on TCM about this website that I found out about it. I don't think they show that promo anymore. I really liked the idea of in-depth discussion with other movie-lovers about films. Sometimes we still get that, but the site seems to have morphed a bit into a more general kind of movie conversation board. But that's ok. I guess I just got sort of addicted to the TCM message boards, especially after I made friends ( in an internet sort of way) here. Plus, as others have said, the site can be quite fun, and I've had a lot of laughs participating here. Also, it's the only "social media" site I go on. I don't do Facebook, Twitter, or any of the thousand other social media "platforms" on the internet. Just this and email. I get any need for a "social" internet fix from this site, don't have time for any other. It can definitely become addictive ! And a bit of a time vampire. I've logged on here with the intention of spending half an hour, just to check a couple of threads I'm following, and have ended up checking the time to see that it's two hours later ! Time flies....you know the rest.

I feel I should know this, but I don't....What's the nickname Dargo christened you with, GD ?

film lover, baby, with respect, it's beyond a stretch to say "Night of the Hunter" is a Western, even if we're being flexible about what a western is. (Now, calling it a "noir" I have no problem with.)

Nope.

Well, james did a good job of supplying some of the multiple reasons why the movie stinks. I'm with him on all his points. But, I'll see if I can add to the list, and maybe inject some well-deserved scorn into the mix, too. First, I hate epics. There are probably one or two exceptions to this (can't bring any to mind at the moment, though), but generally I intensely dislike movies that are over 2 1/2 hours in length and that cover decades in their story-line time span. At a cool (make that uncool) 164 minutes, and covering over 50 years of American history, How the West was Won qualifies on both counts. Any movie that big, - big in all ways, duration, casting, plot(s), ambition -- is bound to end up bombastic and un-engaging ( is there such a word?) in my movie-watching world anyway. See, the thing about big fat epics is they're too big for me to love. Just as you get to know and care about one character, the thing moves on and introduces a bunch more. Yes, the Debbie Reynolds character is consistent throughout. But she's annoying to me. (sometimes I do like Debbie Reynolds a lot, as of course in Singing in the Rain and other films. But not this one. * ) As james said, it's all just one big mish-mash, too many cooks spoiling the cinematic broth, too many big name stars in relatively small parts, too many story ideas. I suppose I should admire the producers of this mess for their big sky thinking, but the whole thing is too huge to work, it's unwieldy and falls apart under its own weight. I can just imagine the suits having a planning meeting about How The West Was Won: "Hey, let's do a movie about the expansion of America-- you know, boys, the settlement of the West. We'll make it span practically the whole 19th century. " "Good idea...Epics are big right now (sorry boys, no pun intended), And let's get Henry Fonda and Gregory Peck and James Stewart - any other western icons you can think of...we won't have to pay them too much if each one has only about 15 minutes or less of screen time, but they'll be a draw...." "...and let's throw Debbie Reynolds into the mix....Everyone likes Debbie. It'll be fun to age her 40 years. Hey, what happened to the bagels and Cheeze Wiz? Pass me that plate..." And so on. *....But then Debbie went and committed the crime of making The Unsinkable Molly Brown. I could have sworn this thing was at least 3 hours long, but when I checked, it's apparently only slightly over 2. Some of the longest 2 hours I've ever spent watching a movie.

THE LURCHERS A revenge-obsessed Civil War veteran and his young sidekick set off on a quest to find a little girl who was captured by Comanches. But their search goes on for years and years, so long in fact that the two men die and don't even realize it. They continue their endless search as zombies. Every time they dismount from their horses (also zombies by this time), they cannot help but walk in an odd, zombie-like fashion. This immediately tips off everyone they try to interrogate about the missing girl that there's something weird about them, and they can get no answers, as all their potential informants run screaming from the two undead seekers. " It's something to do with the way we walk....I reckon mebbe we should just admit that we've become zombies and move on...." "That'll be the day." "How come we all have to walk with a lurch? No wonder we can't go very fast." "We could try riding horses...but they'd have to be zombie horses, and they walk with a lurch, too..."

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is another Westerns day at TCM. I see they're featuring some of the Westerns of Anthony Mann in the evening. One of my favourite western directors, I like him much more than John Ford. Looks like the only John Ford western being aired this Tuesday is How the West was Won. I have no words to describe how much I loathe this film. I only mention this - -after all, this thread is supposed to be about The Searchers -- because the subject of John Ford as a director, and specifically a director of westerns, has come up several times here.

...one year for every thief.

Kind of like in the film Amadeus, when asked his opinion of one of Mozart's works, the emperor says "too many notes".