HollywoodGolightly
-
Posts
21,233 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Never
Posts posted by HollywoodGolightly
-
-
Thank you, Dougie. And you're right, going to watch this movie was probably one of the most exciting things for a lot of us who were kids back then. Even more astonishing was the fact that we enjoyed the movie so much, even though, for the most part, it constitutes nothing but a series of complete or partial setbacks for the heroes we'd grown to love in the first movie.
By the end of the movie, I think Lucas had made a good point that sometimes the greatest victory is to simply live to fight another day. You don't get that in a lot of movies aimed primarily at younger audiences.
-
Fun facts about Danny Kaye:
* Birth name: David Daniel Kaminski
* His father, Jacob Kaminski; his mother, Clar; and his two older brothers, Mack and Larry, emigrated from Ukraine to the United States in 1910
* He awarded 3 Stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Recording at 6125 Hollywood Boulevard; for Motion Pictures at 6563 Hollywood Boulevard; and for Radio at 6101 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California.
-
The Comic - overlooked Reiner film?
next: The King of Comedy
-
You're welcome - and enjoy!
-
> {quote:title=Poinciana wrote:}{quote}
> Anyone want to give your opinion of Heavenly Creatures?
When this came out in theaters here in America, nobody really seemed to know who Peter Jackson was, but for a handful of dedicated film buffs. The movie itself seemed a revelation, with some quite hallucinatory imagery that I found very memorable.
Overall it's still one of my favorite Peter Jackson movies.
Other Australian favorites include Flirting (1991), from the director of The Year My Voice Broke and starring Nicole Kidman and Thandie Newton, before they became famous in America.
-
Yes, The Killers with Burt Lancaster
-
O'Connor - Allen Jenkins in Professional Sweetheart
-
Powell, Michael - co-directed The Red Shoes
-
U - Road to Utopia
-
Jones, Jennifer
-
Gig Young was in Teacher's Pet with Doris Day
-
Libeled Lady
-
Very sad news
*Eddie Carroll, voice of Jiminy Cricket and Jack Benny impersonator, dies at 76*
He became the second actor to voice Disney's diminutive character, beginning in 1973. Carroll also staged one-man shows in tribute to the legendary comedian.
By Valerie J. Nelson
April 11, 2010
Eddie Carroll, an actor who for decades gave voice to Jiminy Cricket in Disney projects and impersonated Jack Benny in a noted one-man stage show, has died. He was 76.
Carroll died Tuesday from a brain tumor at the Motion Picture and Television Fund Hospital in Woodland Hills, said his wife, Carolyn.
"He was so proud to do both roles," his wife said. "He just admired the whole fantasy of Jiminy Cricket, and he loved the man . . . who was Jack Benny."
In 1973, Carroll became the second actor to voice the cricket, who was the title character's conscience in the 1940 animated film "Pinocchio."
Before auditioning, Carroll studied Jiminy's signature song, "When You Wish Upon a Star," sung by Cliff Edwards. The Canadian-born Carroll realized that he needed to adopt a Midwestern accent.
His agent did "back flips" when Carroll got the part, he told the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News in 2008. "He knew the role was a cottage industry," Carroll said. " . . . There's something practically every month -- a singalong film, computer game, recording as spokesman for Disney on Ice, a show at Disneyland or Disney World."
No one else has voiced a Disney character for as long as Carroll did, said Rick Dempsey, senior vice president of Disney's Character Voices division.
"He totally was Jiminy Cricket," Dempsey said. "He really took what the character was into his own heart and in a sense lived that in his own life. He also was one of the best Jack Benny impersonators on the planet."
When a crew member on a 1982 film set ruined a scene by dropping a prop, Carroll broke the tension by bursting out with a trademark Benny line, "Oh, for heaven's sake, Rochester!," and "everybody laughed," Carroll later recalled.
It led to him being cast in the one-man show, "A Small Eternity With Jack Benny," which opened in 1983 in Santa Monica.
After touring in that show for a year, he wrote a tribute, "Jack Benny: Laughter in Bloom," and continued appearing as the comedian, who died in 1974, until late last year. He often toured six months a year.
Los Angeles magazine's reaction to the show in the 1990s was typical: "Before our eyes, he truly becomes the legendary comedian."
Laura Leff, president of the International Jack Benny Fan Club, told The Times: "Jack's humor is based so much around character, and Eddie was able to recreate that in a very authentic way. It was the next best thing to having Jack himself there."
Eddie Eleniak was born Sept. 5, 1933, in Edmonton, Canada, and acted in high school alongside another student, Robert Goulet.
A bout with polio was not far behind him when Carroll came to Los Angeles in the mid-1950s with Goulet as part of an NBC talent program.
Soon after moving to the U.S., Carroll served in the Army. For two years, he wrote and produced shows for Armed Forces Radio and Television.
When his mother suggested he needed a simpler last name, he adopted "Carroll" for a favorite aunt.
In an acting class after the war, he met Jamie Farr, who would appear in the TV series "MASH." They formed a production company in the 1960s that developed a number of projects for networks and studios.
"We were like brothers, and we still are," Carroll said in 2005 in the Toledo (Ohio) Blade.
Carroll had appeared in more than 200 commercials, according to his website, and was a regular on the early 1970s variety program "The Don Knotts Show."
To portray Benny, Carroll taught himself to play violin and joked with a Times reporter in 1999: "Thank goodness Benny wasn't a great violinist or I'd be in trouble."
After walking onstage as Benny, he would put the violin down and drolly say, "Don't look so relieved; I play it later."
Actress Erika Eleniak of TV's "Baywatch" is his niece.
For almost 37 years, he lived in Encino with his wife, whom he married in 1963.
He is also survived by his children, Tia Monti and Leland Carroll; and two brothers, Bob Elen and Dale Eleniak, all of Los Angeles.
-
Thank you, Laura!!
Yes, in a way it is a little scary, but on the other hand it is amazing that the movie holds up so well three decades later, and credit for that should go not only to Lucas but also to director Irvin Kershner and screenwriter Leigh Brackett, imho.
By the way, there's going to be special screenings of the film in some cities, some for charitable contributions, so stay tuned!
-
> {quote:title=JimL wrote:}{quote}
> I like Joel McCrea a lot. I enjoyed him in Preston Sturges' *Sullivan's Travels* and, unless I am mistaken, I think he was also the lead character in *The Palm Beach Story*, which I like a lot. He was also in the under-rated *Foreign Correspondent*
>
I think he was great in all of those movies, certainly lucky to have worked with Preston Sturges and with Hitchcock early in his career.
-
Looks like it could be a PD copy - I know Movies Unlimited sometimes offers those, from its own supplier. (Which doesn't mean it's not a good quality copy).
-
I looked for another thread about this movie, but couldn't find any. I had never heard of this silent directed by Ren? Clair, but it's coming out on DVD next Tuesday. Hope somebody here can tell me if it's a good silent (though it definitely sounds interesting from reading Kehr's column).
April 8, 2010
*The Horse That Ate the Hat That Spoiled a Wedding*
By DAVE KEHR
The Italian Straw Hat
The French filmmaker Ren? Clair continued to work well into the 1960s, but his most creative period came much earlier and, mysteriously, didn?t last long. His achievements bridge the period from the aggressively experimental Parisian avant-garde of the early ?20s ? when he made his debut with ?Entr?acte,? a 1924 Dadaist dream farce conceived by Francis Picabia and scored by Erik Satie ? and the rise of the Popular Front in the mid-?30s, which Clair celebrated in three free-spirited social comedies that have remained favorites: ?Le Million? (1931), ?? Nous la Libert?? (1931) and ?Quatorze Juillet? (1933).
?The Italian Straw Hat? fits squarely in the middle. Made in 1927, as the silent era was drawing to a close, the film is a highly kinetic farce that contains some residual surrealist elements, including a fantasy sequence with sinister men in silk hats, a bed that scoots around by itself, and a general delight in that favorite surrealist trope, furniture being flung out of windows. But this is an audience-friendly film, not meant to scandalize and provoke but to comfort and amuse while evoking a warm nostalgia for a recent past.
Clair?s source, a stage piece by Eug?ne Labiche and Marc Michel, was first performed in 1851, but he has moved the action up to a more fondly remembered age: 1895, at the height of La Belle ?poque, a time of mutton sleeves, tailcoats and discreet adultery. Fadinard (Albert Pr?jean) is driving his horse and buggy to his wedding rehearsal when he stops for a moment in the Bois de Vincennes, just long enough for his horse to take a bite out of an elaborate ladies? hat hanging temptingly on a branch.
The damaged article turns out to belong to a young married woman (Olga Tschechowa), who has been dawdling in some nearby shrubbery with her lover, a lieutenant (Geymond Vital) whose carefully twirled moustache bodes no good. Following Fadinard back to his apartment, the irate officer demands that he replace the lady?s hat ? she won?t be able to return to her husband without it ? threatening to smash every stick of furniture in the place if Fadinard can?t provide an exact duplicate. Even in mercantile Paris, this proves difficult, as the distracted Fadinard keeps darting away from his wedding party, frantically searching for a substitute.
There was another reason for Clair?s decision to update the material: 1895 was the year the Lumi?re brothers first successfully projected motion pictures on a large screen for a paying audience. (We see a poster for that program affixed to a Morris column.) The hidden subject of ?The Italian Straw Hat? is how much the movies had changed in the three decades since then, changes Clair doesn?t entirely approve of.
By the 1920s French filmmaking had evolved to a point of high sophistication ? of complex editing (as in Abel Gance?s 1927 ?Napol?on?), elaborate d?cor and dramatic lighting (?L?Inhumaine,? 1924, directed by Marcel L?Herbier), and elusive, metaphorical imagery (Jean Epstein?s 1927 ?Glace ? Trois Faces?). By cutting through the clutter and emphasizing movement above all, Clair hoped to reclaim the spirit of early comic chase films like Ferdinand Zecca?s ?Fun After the Wedding? (1906, and included as a supplement on this disc), in which crowds of anonymous players pursued one another from scene to scene (and shot to shot, much the same thing in those primordial days), leaving acres of destruction behind them.
Clair?s film does just that, though with the controlled pacing essential to expanding a chase from 1 reel to 10. As the initial situation expands to involve dozens of characters and one perfectly timed plot twist, Clair maintains a delicate balance of anarchic energy and formal symmetry.
Like all great farces, ?The Italian Straw Hat? is as much concerned with order as disorder; Fadinard?s world spins around furiously but never topples. The loveliest part of the film may be its slow denouement, as the chaos dissipates and the underlying patterns emerge.
This new edition from Flicker Alley presents ?The Italian Straw Hat? in its complete version for the first time in America, drawing on a negative made for a British release in 1930, with some missing shots taken from an original French print. For musical accompaniment, the viewer is given a choice of two soundtracks: a graceful arrangement of period themes from Rodney Sauer?s Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra and a rollicking piano score by Philip Carli. (Flicker Alley, $29.95, not rated)
-
> {quote:title=clore wrote:}{quote}
> At least that way you'll get to see Harrison Ford with such a baby face, you'll want to pinch his cheek.
Well, see, that might just be a good enough reason for me to give it a try!
-
> {quote:title=clore wrote:}{quote}
> I could go on, but the film isn't really worth the verbiage I've given it thus far. Consider this a public service message and beware at all costs.
Well, sorry to hear it isn't a better movie, I recorded it but wasn't going to watch it until later. Now I wonder if I will ever bother at all.
-
I've been meaning to watch that one, as well.
-
You may have a point there, helenbaby. I find that with a lot of Leone movies, the plot machinations may not be entirely clear on first viewing. However for Leone fans that's not an issue, because we've seen them tons of times.
Good observation, though
-
As far as I know, the Republic film library is now owned by Viacom (Paramount), at least in the U.S.
So, for instance, for a movie like Johnny Guitar to be released on DVD in the U.S., Paramount Home Video would have to release it on its own, or license it to someone else, like Criterion.
(Another example is Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, which used to be on the Republic Home Video catalog and is now a Paramount Home Video release).
But I emphasize that this only applies to the U.S., and rights may belong to other companies in other countries.
-
Quinn, Patricia
Quayle, Anthony
-
Keough, Robby - Rene Russo in Outbreak
The Day of the Triffids (1963)
in Science Fiction
Posted
Thanks, TripleHHH, I'll see if I can locate one with the sellers!