kingrat
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Posts posted by kingrat
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I'm pleased at the opportunity to see the three Orson Welles Shakespeare films, which I've never seen. Same with The Tree of Wooden Clogs, not longer available on Criterion and extremely expensive when offered for sale.
ABBA: the Movie. As opposed to, say, ABBA: the Lunchbox. (Not an original joke, unfortunately). Directed by Lasse Hallstrom, no less. OK, I have to see this. Just as I have to check out The Iron Sheriff where Sterling Hayden's leading lady is apparently . . . Constance Ford???
Laurence Harvey's The Ceremony is back on the schedule.
Special recommendation: Crime Wave. The first half hour, especially, is brilliantly directed by Andre de Toth. A top-notch film noir, with excellent performances and interesting glimpses of the LA area of the 1950s. Of course, if you haven't seen The Killing and The Asphalt Jungle, shown just before Crime Wave, they are amazing films which deserve their high reputation. May 8 has Purple Noon, equally brilliant, and May 15 has The Reckless Moment.
Though it's hard to believe, The Red Shoes has never been shown as an Essential. (I used it once in a programming challenge of obvious choices which had never been picked as an Essential.) Powell's The Tales of Hoffmann doesn't often turn up on TCM, either.
Westbound isn't usually considered as good as the Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott collaborations written by Burt Kennedy, but that's another movie I want to check out.
Calamity Jane turns up on May 17.
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Fred, thanks for posting my favorite opening of a movie ever.
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Thanks for a very thoughtful post, jlewis. That's the kind of post that really adds to our discussion and appreciation of classic films.
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Skimpole, thank you for setting up and tabulating this poll. It was a lot of fun to participate and to see what others chose. Wow, seven of my picks made the top eleven.
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Swithin, thanks for posting this. I remember that skimpole had a thread comparing the Oscar and NY Film Critics winners a few years back.
It's curious that I have more post-1970 favorites on the NYFC list than on the Oscar list. However the NYFC 1935-1944 decade is perhaps less impressive than the Oscars, even with the addition of Kane.
In chronological order:
The Grapes of Wrath
Citizen Kane
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
All About Eve
High Noon
Quiz Show
L.A. Confidential
Sideways
Brokeback Mountain
Honorable mention: Prizzi's Honor, A Passage to India, Broadcast News, In Which We Serve
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Looking at the list of Oscar winners, I realize that the Oscar usually goes to a film I like, but not a favorite.
Top 10:
Gone With the Wind
Lawrence of Arabia
The Best Years of Our Lives
Casablanca
All About Eve
Rebecca
From Here to Eternity
On the Waterfront
All Quiet on the Western Front
West Side Story
Close: Grand Hotel, An American in Paris
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A noteworthy premiere, Andy? Cast your noir-loving eyes on Edward Dmytryk's MIRAGE (1965), a belated example of noir. One of the best uses of the amnesia theme. Gregory Peck at his best, an excellent Diane Baker, Walter Matthau and Jack Warden in support. I keep recommending this for the film festival.
Is CHARADE a premiere? It's not often seen around these parts. Same with THE MAKIOKA SISTERS. Like skimpole, I want to check out FRENCH CANCAN and THE GOLDEN COACH. Although I VITELLONI shows up from time to time, it's always welcome on the schedule. I might have to check out the two films by Raffaello Matarazzo, too. Who??
Anthony Quinn is a fine star of the month. Not only do I like him, I like a lot of his films. If anyone hasn't seen LA STRADA, VIVA ZAPATA, or ZORBA THE GREEK, those three are not to be missed. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA isn't what I think of as a Quinn film (although he's certainly good in it), but it's one of the greats. Among less familiar Quinn titles, CITY FOR CONQUEST is worth checking out, and Quinn, Irene Papas as his wife, Inger Stevens as his mistress, and Sam Levene as his best friend are all terrific in A DREAM OF KINGS, which is almost unknown. THE SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN is a gorgeous pageant, better than I expected.
Thanks to TCM, some of us have caught up with Vivien Leigh and Charles Laughton in ST. MARTIN'S LANE, but it's hardly overexposed.
SUSAN SLADE is one of the all-time Bad Movies We Love greats. The whole Troy Donahue tribute is irresistible to some of us.
I'm always happy to see THE NUN'S STORY and THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN on the schedule.
HONEYMOON FOR THREE is a comic gem. Ann Sheridan didn't do nearly enough comedies, and who knew that George Brent, of all people, could do screwball comedy?
April 30 is Johnny Day, and JOHNNY EAGER, JOHNNY ANGEL, and JOHNNY BELINDA are all more than welcome, and JOHNNY O'CLOCK isn't too shabby, either.
For those just beginning to explore the wonderful world of classic film, there are many more fine movies.
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Add "Give Me That Old Time Religion" in INHERIT THE WIND to the list of songs overplayed in a film. Using it once was a good idea. Using it over and over again . . . well, Stanley Kramer was never known for subtlety.
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Taran, I'm also a fan of the Lloyd Alexander books and like your handle. Glad you've entered the challenge.
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Tom, thanks for posting the painting of Ava in PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN. So glad you remembered that gigantic painting of the late Mary Meredith in THE UNINVITED, which shows how important she was, and still is, to the Cornelia Otis Skinner character.
The 1940s was the great era for romantic fantasy, and in quite a few of them a painting is the connection to someone dead or from a different time. Our group has mentioned quite a few of these. After PANDORA (1951) the woman in portrait/romantic fantasy connection is less common.
Those paintings in THE AGE OF INNOCENCE were great. Swithin, thanks for posting that. This is a great topic, with lots of interesting examples.
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Sorry I don't have the ability to show a picture of the portraits:
The portrait of Ava Gardner in PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.
THE NAKED MAJA takes its title from a Goya painting, and Ava Gardner stars in this one, too.
Poor Joan Fontaine dresses up like a portrait in Manderley, as suggested by the wicked Mrs. Danvers in REBECCA.
There are quite a few bios of painters, like REMBRANDT and LUST FOR LIFE, which include self-portraits by the artists.
Tom, I think you're right that, for whatever reason, this motif is more common in the 1940s.
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This is a fun topic. I think Julia Roberts would have been a star in any age, including silents. She would probably have matched up well with most of the actors who did screwball comedy, for instance. It's easy to imagine Sissy Spacek as one of D.W. Griffith's Mountain Girls or Dear Ones.
In an earlier age where Broadway was more important and more central to the culture, Meryl Streep might have spent more of her career on stage.
Joan Crawford had such drive that she would have been a star in any era. Today she would have taken extensive kung fu and kickboxing lessons and become an action star like Lucy Liu.
Would Audrey Hepburn have listened to all the producers and agents who would tell her today that she needed chest implants?
Spencer Tracy might have become the star of a Law & Order or NCIS franchise. John Garfield would have many opportunities for both films and television. Katharine Hepburn is a little harder to cast in a contemporary non-Romulan setting.
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This is a great topic, MovieMadness. You've come up with a lot of good examples. Another one is David and Lisa (1962). David has a mother from hell, so mother complex for him. Lisa, if I remember correctly, has a split personality and talks in rhymes.
The Mark - child molesting
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I prefer BETWEEN TWO WORLDS to the earlier OUTWARD BOUND. The added characters, especially the one played by Faye Emerson, are all pluses. The updated setting to WWII and the bombing of Britain works well, and as good as the cast of OUTWARD BOUND is, I prefer all of the actors in the later film. Leslie Howard hadn't quite learned how to work for the camera in OUTWARD BOUND, though he would quickly learn.
Imagine being able to call up John Garfield, Eleanor Parker, Paul Henreid, Faye Emerson, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Edmund Gwenn, Isobel Elsom, etc.
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Happy New Year, Frank. I'll comment about a few of the lesser-known films on your list that I've seen.
A Stolen Life: Doggies are smarter than people, and this movie proves it. This same device was used in the recent Poirot entry, Elephants Can Remember. I'm very fond of this movie, though it can't go where we want it to, namely, would Glenn Ford know the difference if the other twin slept with him?
Heat Lightning: Mervyn LeRoy does a great job directing a play on a low budget. Aline MacMahon is great in the lead role, and what a supporting cast: Glenda Farrell, Ruth Donnelly, Jane Darwell. Both funnier and more moving than you would expect.
Homecoming: Lana Turner is very appealing, and she has great chemistry with Gable. This film feels painfully real at times about how flirtation and unconsummated love feel just as devastating as actual physical adultery. Another on the plus side for Mr. LeRoy.
Our Man in Havana: Another winner for Carol Reed. Noel Coward's scene in the men's room with Alec Guinness is hilarious.
She Couldn't Say No: This is the Jean Simmons/Robert Mitchum comedy, isn't it? Much better than I expected. Simmons and Mitchum are good together.
These Three: Not one of Wyler's first-rank films, but still quite entertaining. Merle Oberon, Miriam Hopkins, and Joel McCrea make this well worth seeing. A bowdlerized version of The Children's Hour, but despite or because of that, holds up much better.
We Were Strangers: Imperfect, but this one has a special place in my affections. An intelligent film about a revolutionary group, with no punches pulled about the kind of decisions that such a group would have to make. The John Garfield character is pretty clearly a Communist, though that can only be implied. On release, it was attacked from both the right and the left, which might suggest that Huston & Co. made a pretty good film.
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I love A CHRISTMAS STORY and have seen it many times. In a discussion a few years back, someone suggested that it may appeal more to men, who find the portrayal of the Darwinian world of boyhood accurate as well as funny.
To me, it's just about a perfect film. Favorite scene: visiting Santa. Favorite line: "I love Santa" (from the kid in line behind Ralphie).
Now I like ELF and found it pretty funny. But I love A CHRISTMAS STORY.
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Two Weeks in Another Town shows a clip from Minnelli's earlier The Bad and the Beautiful.
A big scene in Douglas Sirk's The First Legion shows home movies from India while an important event is happening upstairs.
In Brief Encounter Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard go to the movies on their date, and they see Donald Duck and also an invented, very bad film called Flames of Passion. Movie dates are common in the movies.
Sunset Boulevard shows a clip from Queen Kelly, which starred Gloria Swanson.
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The use of color in Black Narcissus is about as good as it gets. If you ever get the chance to see it on the big screen, don't miss it.
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I'd make a distinction between the revisionist western and the avant-garde western. The revisionist western insists on the unheroic nature of the settlers, praises the Indians,etc. Little Big Man is a perfect example, as several of you noted. Sometimes the sheriff is the bad guy and the outlaws are the good guys.
The avant-garde western de-emphasizes story of any kind. The director's vision, sometimes affected by the drugs he's taken, is the main thing. The Shooting is a perfect example, and I like it as little as some of the rest of you.
McCabe and Mrs. Miller has elements of both. The villains are businessmen, not outlaws. For a preacher's wife to become a **** is seen as unquestionably a good thing. These are some of the revisionist elements. The avant-garde aspects include the mannered cinematography, the Leonard Cohen songs which are nice but don't fit the period, the emphasis on Warren Beatty's narcissistic posing rather than on character development.
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Thanks for posting this, Jake. I remember her well as Albert Finney's ex-wife in Charlie Bubbles, a film which may never have been shown on TCM.
She had a distinguished career on stage in Britain.
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Skkimpole, I'm with you all the way on the relative merits of Separate Tables and Bonjour Tristesse. I tend to believe that the 1950s was the decade where the official taste, as represented by the Oscars, is furthest from our (or at least my) preferences today. Earlier this year, when we were doing polls of our favorite Oscar-nominated films from the 30s and 40s, I had no problem finding a top 20. Granted, there were 10 nominees for some of those years. Of the fifty 1950s best picture nominees, I could only find eight that I strongly like--three of those were directed by Fred Zinnemann--and another group that I like, but wouldn't consider favorites.
Movies recently viewed, not including my spousal unit's watching Home Alone and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Road to Utopia was very funny, with even a couple of off-color jokes, as some of you noted in another thread. Bob Hope knows how to sell even the lamest jokes. Through a Glass Darkly has superb cinematography by Sven Nykvist, some imaginative direction by Ingmar Bergman, and a very strong cast. The script is not quite up to their efforts. The Eternal Return matches a great Jean Cocteau script with equally strong direction by Jean Delannoy and a fine cast. This updated re-telling of the Tristan and Isolde story shouldn't work, but it does. Not available on DVD; I saw it on a VHS tape. This was the best of the week.
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Virna Lisi also plays the good girl in Joseph Losey's Eva, with Stanley Baker as the tormented guy who chooses Jeanne Moreau instead. I don't think TCM has ever shown this. It's an exercise in baroque style which not everyone will like, but the three stars are all very good.
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Palmerin is correct. If you've read the book, you know that Oz is real. The whole dream and doppelganger stuff is Hollywood dreck. In subsequent books, Dorothy, Toto, Aunt Em (never called "Auntie Em" in the novels), and Uncle Henry move to Oz.
In the book, Glinda doesn't appear until the last section of the novel, after the Wizard's balloon has flown away. That wasn't included in the movie because, frankly, it's a bit anti-climactic. Glinda is the Sorceress of the South, not the Good Witch of the North. The movie combines the two characters. So Glinda doesn't give Dorothy the silver (not ruby) slippers.
The Wizard arrives in Oz when his balloon crashes. The inhabitants believe he must be a great wizard to have come there, and he feeds this illusion. Actually he controls only the Emerald City. Any of the witches could have disposed of him quickly.
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The Friday night theme of Roadshow Musicals is probably in connection with the excellent new book Roadshow!, which follows the harrowing story of the studios' attempts to create another Sound of Music.
I'd also like to note some less familiar films on the schedule:
3/4 - Trade Winds is a charming film with both mystery and comedy elements.
3/5 - The Seventh Victim and Tender Comrade are both worth seeing, and I hope that A Matter of Life and Death is being shown in the gorgeous new restoration shown at the TCM film festival.
3/7 - Jean Cocteau's Orpheus is really imaginative, even for those who ordinarily don't like foreign films.
3/8 - I missed Grey Gardens when it was previously shown and am also looking forward to Agnes Varda's Le Bonheur.
3/10 - I've never seen the Irene Dunne film Symphony of Six Million.
3/12 - Four different looks at the story of General Custer and Sitting Bull.
3/13 - Connoisseurs of camp will not want to miss A Lion Is in the Streets, especially the scene where the swamp gal Flamingo (Anne Francis) tries to feed Barbara Hale to the alligators.
3/14 - Stanley Kubrick's early film Killer's Kiss is really well directed and photographed.
3/16 - Milos Forman's The Fireman's Ball was a popular comedy on art house circuits in the 1960s.
The Wages of Fear is another of those foreign films that may appeal to those who don't ordinarily like to read subtitles. Once the trucks carrying nitroglycerine start on their journey over dangerous roads, the suspense is almost unbearable.
3/17 - A good St. Patrick's Day lineup. Odd Man Out hasn't been on TCM in a while.
3/20 - The morning lineup features films which include the name of roads in their titles. I missed Highway 301 when it was recently shown and am happy to see it here. St. Martin's Lane (aka Sidewalks of London) brought Vivien Leigh to the attention of David O. Selznick's people. Charles Laughton is awfully good, too.
3/22 - Alf Sjoberg was one of the forerunners of Ingmar Bergman, and Torment and Miss Julie were two of his best-known films. I look forward to seeing them. Don't expect many laughs.
3/23 - Speaking of camp, there's Torch Song, with Joan Crawford in blackface for one scene's that's unforgettable, no matter how hard you try.
3/24 - Primetime features British noir from Hammer. Pulp is a little-known but funny 1972 satire of the genre, with Michael Caine and Mickey Rooney. Quirky and weird, but some will like it.
3/25 - Blood on the Moon is a good noirish western which Robert Mitchum fans won't want to miss.
3/29 - A tribute to Vicki Baum, author of Grand Hotel. Hotel Berlin is like a variation of the original, but set in Berlin in the last days of WWII, as some of the Nazis are looking for exit strategies. Not well-known but quite good, with Faye Emerson, Andrea King, Raymond Massey, and Helmut Dantine heading the cast. Later that night, Simon of the Desert is one of my favorite Luis Bunuel films, and it's only 45 minutes long.
3/31 - I'm a fan of Broadcast News. Holly Hunter has a thick Southern accent, and she's the smartest person in the room. As far as I know, that had never happened on film before.
Sterling Hayden May 2015 Star of the Month
in General Discussions
Posted
The May 6 lineup is incredible. The Killing and The Asphalt Jungle are about as good as it gets, and Crime Wave is not to be missed, either. The first half hour and the ending, in particular, are sensationally directed by Andre de Toth. Timothy Carey makes an unforgettable appearance in that film, too. Imagine your wife being held hostage by Timothy Carey. That is a serious noir nightmare.