kingrat
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Posts posted by kingrat
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A wonderful short film late tonight/early Sunday morning: The Red Balloon.
I'll also second Bogey's recommendation of Summer with Monika. It's interesting to see what Bergman was like just before he made the films which established his reputation. There's also Harriet Andersson, a fine young actress, and her occasional lack of clothes.
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Yes, the cost of the festival has gone up significantly since the first years. Here are some thoughts about cheaper alternatives:
There are quite a few hotels within easy walking distance (no more than four city blocks) of the festival venues. You should be able to find a hotel for $200/night or less. I never stay at the Roosevelt, which usually sells out quickly, even at its inflated prices.
Investigate the cost of getting airport transportation to and from your hotel. Driving a car in LA is extremely unpleasant, and you will probably have a daily fee for parking your car at your hotel. Unless you have specific reasons to go places other than the festival, don't bother with a rental car.
For many people, the Classic Pass at $649 is perfectly adequate. If you get to your movie at least 45 minutes in advance, you should probably get in.
There are fast food places and inexpensive restaurants near the festival sites. Some of the hotels include breakfast in their price. For most people, food is less expensive than on a regular vacation because you eat whenever there is time between your movies or other events.
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Thank you for alerting us to the sad news and for your appreciation of a fine actress.
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Rayban, I'd also like to mention the big scene toward the end between Yvonne Furneaux and Maurice Ronet, where the audience has good reason to believe that one or the other is the killer. Notice how Chabrol has the actors moving in and out of the wide screen shots appearing headless as they go out or come into the frame. Because the killer strangles the victims, this is quite appropriate. Chabrol probably was influenced by the police station scene in Rebel Without a Cause, where Ray uses this notion as a point-of-view shot to indicate what James Dean sees of his surroundings. The ending of The Champagne Murders is indeed remarkable.
Thanks to TCM for showing this film. Is this really only the fifth Chabrol film they've shown: Le beau Serge, Les cousins, Une affaire des femmes (Story of Women), L'enfer?
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Lawrence, I think you'd enjoy both the 1890s story and the 1840s story on Dark Shadows. Thayer David as Count Petofi was a big favorite of mine.
Last night I saw some silent films: two Laurel & Hardy gems, Do Detectives Think? and That's My Wife, followed by the 1927 Paul Leni version of The Cat and the Canary. All were shown with an organist playing the accompaniment. Leni gave many German Expressionist touches to The Cat and the Canary. Laura La Plante looks much more modern than most silent stars. Flora Finch as Aunt Susan and Martha Maddox as Mammy Pleasant added many amusing touches. Creighton Hale does a good job as the nerdy hero, but if you've seen Bob Hope in the 1930s remake, that's a hard standard to match.
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I have not seen The Champagne Murders or Fear Strikes Out and hope to record those Friday night.
Saturday has the 1951 Joseph Losey remake of M, which I love. Many great shots of downtown L.A., along with first-rate cinematography and a fine cast.
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Lawrence, I'm thoroughly enjoying your year by year reviews. You draw our attention to movies I've loved and point out some I want to investigate.
I liked The Half-Naked Truth better than you did. Easily an 8/10 for me. Gregory La Cava was an excellent director of comedies, and it's unfortunate that alcoholism shortened his career.
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Though I haven't seen all of the Sissi trilogy yet, what I've seen is outstanding. Historical romance doesn't get much better than this. Ernest Marisca gets the tone exactly right. Here's an outstanding director most of us have never heard of.
The film version of The Sound of Music owes quite a bit to the first Sissi film. When you see some of the early scenes, you may be singing, "How do you solve a problem like Maria?" Sissi presents the same kind of problems to the adults. Romy Schneider has the warmth and charm without which these films simply would not work.
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The 28th, on TCM Imports, there's a nearly-3-hour documentary from Portugal about a heroin addict. Titled In Vanda's Room, it sounds like a fun time.
Not to mention that it's directed in ultra pretentious artsy fashion. Almost every camera set-up is a scream for attention from film students. I lasted about an hour. Well, it seemed like an hour.
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Saturday, Oct.21st/22nd. All times E.S.T.:
6:00 p.m. "Trapeze" (1956)--Lancaster, Curtis, and Lollobrigida mix their circus lives and private lives. Good stunt work.
Not to be shallow or anything, but Burt, Tony, and Gina all look pretty darn good in their tight circus duds.
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Having seen Victoria and Abdul, we wanted to see Mrs. Brown (aka Her Majesty Mrs. Brown), which like V&A was quite enjoyable. The movies have a great deal in common, including Judi Dench as Queen Victoria. Billy Connolly as Mr. Brown makes an admirable partner, and Antony Sher is a delight as Disraeli.
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Watched A Lion is in The Streets and it is no where near All the King's Men.
Maybe it is Cagney or maybe it is the music or the screenplay or the director, but to me it is more of a comedy than a drama. The accents are horrendous, especially Cagney's.
Comes closer to The Beverly Hillbillies. or maybe Green Acres.
Having read King's Men and seen the movie several times, no way would I have thought Lion is even based on a similar scenario.
Cid, you're so right about the quality of Lion, but it is based on the career of Huey Long, just like All the King's Men.
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Carny was a good little film. I'll second cigarjoe's recommendation.
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Tom, many thanks for running the Laurette Luez screen test. That's priceless.
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Rayban, I agree that Hepburn and Perkins make a fine romantic couple. Too bad Green Mansions wasn't directed by, say, Frank Borzage in his prime.
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Mickey One is worth seeing for Ghislain Cloquet's cinematography, but, as both of you said, it doesn't really work as a whole.
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Connoisseurs of camp will not want to miss Sunday morning's A Lion Is in the Streets, which is the backwoods cousin to All the King's Men. Folkses (as Jimmy Cagney says in the movie, cuz that's how us Suthun folkses talk), you don't want to miss the scene where Anne Francis as the swamp gal Flamingo tries to feed Barbara Hale to the alligators.
Favorite line of dialogue:
Flamingo (as she spies Barbara Hale): "Who all's that?"
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Recommendation for late Wed./early Thurs. -- Hotel Berlin. Imagine Grand Hotel (it's by the same author, Vicki Baum) set in the final days of WWII when all the Germans who can are looking for escape routes before the Allies take over. Raymond Massey is the best-known cast member, and he gives a fine performance as a rather complex Nazi officer, but Andrea King, Faye Emerson, Helmut Dantine, and the rest of the cast are also strong. Peter Godfrey directs.
Hotel Berlin would make a dynamite double feature with Rene Clement's Les Maudits, which has Nazis escaping by submarine.
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My recollection (not sure where I read this quite a number of years ago) is that Mildred Newman and Bernard Berkowitz, the husband-and-wife authors of How To Be Your Own Best Friend, a self-help book that was a huge bestseller at the time, were the ones who attempted to "cure" Perkins and steered him to Berry Berenson.
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We both enjoyed Victoria and Abdul, well-made, with excellent sets, costumes, cinematography (Danny Cohen), and location shooting in Scotland. Capable and blissfully unflashy direction by Stephen Frears, fine performances by all. An obvious recommendation for Judi Dench fans. Like almost all films that trend to an older demographic, it will receive some patronizing reviews.
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For domestic drama, I can recommend The Light in the Piazza. Olivia De Havilland faces a double dilemma when her mentally challenged daughter (Yvette Mimieux) attracts the attention of a handsome young Italian (George Hamilton). The young man's father (Rossano Brazzi) seems to be falling for Olivia, as well.
For over-the-top camp, there's Two Weeks in Another Town. Many talented people are involved, but something went dreadfully wrong. The script would be Culprit #1.
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Tonight's Burl Ives tribute: Day of the Outlaw is an outstanding film, a western set in the snow, expertly directed by Andre de Toth. Burl Ives has one of the best entrances in any film, and he would be my choice for Best Supporting Actor for this year. Robert Ryan, as usual, is outstanding in the lead role. Ryan and Ives both play complex characters.
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I was excited about getting to see Le cercle rouge on TCM. Too excited, for this was a serious disappointment. If this is how the film is supposed to look, then I think Henri Decae's cinematography wrecks the film. Most of the scenes look so unnecessarily dark that I could be watching almost any dramatic show on TV these days. It would be a reasonable assumption that the "Prince of Darkness" himself, Gordon Willis, used Decae's work in Le cercle rouge (1970) as the basis for his similar work in Klute (1971) (I loathe the cinematography of Klute) and the dark interiors (which I dislike) of The Godfather. Decae has two very fine moments in the film: the criminals in a darkened room pulling on their white plastic gloves (this is brilliant) and Yves Montand making his way up the staircase in a black-and-white interior.
The big heist scene in Le cercle rouge is clearly based on similar scenes in The Asphalt Jungle and Rififi, and the comparison is simply brutal. Imagine Rififi in color, but you can't see much of what's going on, and you'll have a good idea of what Le cercle rouge is like. If Rififi and The Asphalt Jungle get 10 out of 10 for suspense, Le cercle rouge is about 4 out of 10 for suspense for its big heist sequence. As for the final shootout, it occurs in total darkness, and we only learn the fate of the characters because someone else reports it to us.
Melville gets remarkably little out of a great cast that includes Alain Delon, Yves Montand, Andre Bourvil, and Gian Maria Volonte. This isn't the kind of film that concentrates on character or even plot, but most directors would have made their presence count for more. I have liked the other Melville films I've seen, and I usually love Henri Decae's work (Purple Noon, to name only one). Decae dominates the director the way Gordon Willis dominates Alan J. Pakula in Klute, and Decae's approach in Le cercle rouge contradicts the style he brought to the early New Wave films he photographed.
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Is Simmons convincing as a teen? She was 23 \ 24 when the film was released.
James, I think she's pretty convincing, but then I'm usually a fan of hers. Spencer Tracy is in full-out ear-tugging, scene-stealing mode. Perkins and Simmons make a believable couple. It's somewhat shocking to me that Teresa Wright is playing the mother of the ingenue only seven years after she played the ingenue in The Best Years of Our Lives.
The Actress is based on Ruth Gordon's play Years Ago, which is based on her own experiences as an aspiring actress.
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ann wedgeworth dies
in General Discussions
Posted
Thank you for posting this sad news about an actress who delighted audiences for decades. I first saw her as Lahoma Vane on Another World. This is essentially the character she played the rest of her career. As stated above, Lahoma was brought on as the other woman in a triangle with Sam (Jordan Charney) and Lee (Barbara Rodell). If memory serves, she had won a rigged beauty contest as Miss Citrus Fruit. Ann Wedgeworth could make us sympathize with Lahoma as well as providing much comic relief. When the show foolishly killed off Lee (Barbara Rodell was another talented actress whose specialty was playing fragile women), Sam and Lahoma became the main couple of a spinoff show, Somerset.
Ann Wedgeworth's scenes with Gene Hackman in Scarecrow were a hoot. My favorite moment was this:
Ann (breathy and seductive): "What did you miss most in prison?"
Gene (deadpan): "Home cooking."